DC Trails

AVOID! I counted 12 big buses while I waited 40 min for 1 DC Tours bus. Slow slow slow

I did the midnight tour last weekend with Henry as the guide. He was fantastic and made the tour the best it could be! He was very informative, was very relaxed, likable, and overall cheery even when it was so late in the evening. He even did special requests for some of us who wanted to stop at other locations. Overall, the trip was highly enjoyable because of our tour guide.
While I have not done the hop on/​hop off tour with DC Trails, I do recommend the midnight tour with Henry!

Directions for where twilight tour suck! I walked around for 20 trying to find the pick up point. The employee in The station told me to go out the door and down the stairs and around the back which ended me in the garage. Then I called the office and they insisted there was only one food court, yet, there are two, so trying to find where to pick up was a challenge. When I finally found the pick up place the employee who gave me directions insisted he said to go up the stairs instead of down. And then he laughed about it. That is beyond unacceptable
Extremely disappointed that the customer service is so bad

I was disappointed with my experience.
1. Very few buses compared with other companies. Read through the reviews – you’ll end up waiting more and seeing less than with other bus tours.
2. Commentators were sometimes difficult to understand, due to English dialect issues.
3. Mismanaged overemphasis: During the route south of the Tidal Basin (which includes FDR and MLK Memorials), our Commentator spent 12 minutes talking about MLK yet a mere 30 seconds about FDR (4-​time President Elect who served as our Commander in Chief for 16 years – one of the most influential Americans ever).
4. Focus/​continuity: Commentators collectively mentioned the African American Historical Museum and its 24 September grand opening FIVE TIMES. This is DC – I would prefer a more diverse enrichment of American culture.

This is for the twilight your. Our tour guide Henry was the absolute best-​recommend only going with him. He was know leave-​funny-​engaging and a pleasure to spend time with
We saw all of the highlights with little walking
Would recommend again!

Very few buses and long wait time between stops. Also did not like the enclosed windowed bus that u could hardly take pictures

Purchased tickets through Groupon. This is one of many ‘hop in, hop off’ bus operators in DC. Their website and brochure advertise they pick up and drop off at Union Station. They don’t. So, after buying tickets and traveling to Union Station, we had to walk several blocks to their nearest pick up point. Once on board, we had one of the worst narrated tours imaginable. Was it her first time– reading in public? Or the script? And the sound system was atrocious. So we hopped off to visit a museum and caught another of their busses. This time, the narration and sound system were as bad as the first. Avoid this operator and pay $ 1 for The Circulator, a city operated bus line.

The worst bus in DC. DO NOT TAKE THIS BUS. All customer support was extremely rude. Continuously put on «hold» while they passed around the phone to make up with reasons on why the bus was late. In a span of an hour and a half, we were told the bus was only «15 minutes away» multiple times. Spent a large amount of money for mediocre service. Very dissapointed, ruined our trip.

I grew up in the D.C. area so have seen all the sights many times. I live in Florida now and took the kids on a trip and decides to take the hop on hop off. i have to say it was the best trip threw the city ive ever had! I learned so much about the monuments from the amazing tour guides and seen things i had never seen before. Amazing tour of a amazing city. And wow beautiful and clean buses with kind knowledgeable driver/​guides.. Ive recommended to many people that have traveled since and all had same reaction.. thanks D.C. trails

WORST WORST WORST hop on and hop off tour! And Even WORST WORST WORST WORST is their customer service.
We booked the tour couple weeks in advance of our upcoming dc trip. When booking, I asked the person where we can start our 48 hours hop-​on-​hop-​off tour as we are going to stay in Arlington, VA and we were told the closest stop will be Arlington National Cemetery and the bus frequency is every 20 min.
Today, was our first day in DC and we were excited to start our trip with our 21 month old toddler. We reached Arlington cemetery but were having trouble finding the pickup as we were coming from opposite direction. we called the customer service to get the direction but were given the wrong street. Somehow we found the location where they do pickup and drop off.
We reached there about 10:30 and waited about 30 min and didn’t see any dc trail buses come in. In those 30 min we saw 3 BigBus Tour buses and other tour buses too. We called customer service to check in again and were kept on hold for over 10 min to check where the delay was and were told that buses come every 30 – 40 min and not 20 min (we were told 20 min when booking) and one should be there in about another 20 min.
We waited and nothing showed up. We called again and again after been put on hold, were told that some bus broke somewhere and we should have something soon in about another 20 min.
Nothing yet! Another call and were told to wait another 40 min! In Heat with a 21 month old toddler, at 12 o’clock in afternoon we paid to BigBus and got their tour tickets when the 4^th BigBus tour bus showed up.
After such a terrible start to our vacation, we called dc trail again to demand our refund. They told us they don’t believe what we are saying is true even though we offered that we would stop by their office and can show them the call logs and they can cross check with their staff answers calls in the morning, but they said NO to refund and told we should have waited longer until the bus shows up!
I don’t think it is fair that after waiting patiently for over 1.5 hours in heat with a toddler, they expected us to wait further and believe them that something will eventually show up when all they did was lie to us every time we have called them.
There are much better hop on hop off tours available in dc. I would urge people to avoid these cheaters who just want to run their business by taking people’s money for free and not giving any service in return!

This is one of the worst or maybe the worst hop on hop off I have taken so far. Do not go by the price, it is not really worth it. You can maybe use those dollars and have a taxi/​cab drop you.
Multiple issues with this operator:
1) Very few buses, even on long memorial weekend. For one bus of this operator, I could see there were roughly 5 to 6 buses of big bus or city sights.
2) We had to wait for almost 60 minutes at stop number 4. When the bus arrived, people were literally fighting to get on the bus. Some even had to drop off and God knows how long they had to wait again.
3) Their representatives manning the stops are extremely rude and ill informed. They do not do anything to help assuage your wait.
4) Apart from half a trip of 40 mins, I didnt use this service at all. Now how on earth does this qualify for hop on hop off.
My recommendation, go for big bus or city sights. They have far better frequency and service.

I bought my family of 4 tickets for the hop on hop off tour for Sunday May 29^th. I called the company 2 days before to make sure the buses we’re running because of Rolling Thunder event going on. I was told Yes. When we showed up at the fist stop no bus was there. I called and was told the bus was not running because of Rolling Thunder. Lady told me it wasn’t their problem. No refund would be given. This company is horrible. Pick another tour bus company.

Gigantic ripoff. It is mathematically impossible to visit most of the landmarks on their tour due to the fact that their buses come so infrequently and their hours do not align at all with the hours of the museums.
Also, they were closed on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. What? Another scam considering all bus passes are valid for either 24 or 48 hours.
Do not use this company. It capitalizes off of innocent tourists.

This whole operation is a scam. The buses are arrive every 30 minutes at best and take an additional 10+ minutes to unload and load. I expected to learn something remotely informative about DC, but instead our tour guide focused on the differences between the McDonald’s menus along the tour. He then told us we were passing «some government buildings.» Are you kidding me?
There are many other bus options in the city which will pass you over and over again as you wait for one DC Trails bus. Take any of them instead — they can’t be worse than DC Trails.
If you are wondering why multiple people wrote the same review it is because it was that bad. There were 9 of us. We wasted $ 500 and got off on the second stop just to try and salvage some of our day. Also, our 24 hour time continued through Monday because they were closed Sunday without any notice or posting of this when we bought our tickets. Ugh.

We got the 48 hour groupon deal with the twilight tour included. Our first daytime tour was great, the tour guide was funny, easily understood, and had great knowledge of the city that checked out. The staff was friendly and helpful, but it was during the week and not very crowded. The next day, when it got busier, it seemed they were disorganized with the reservations and the tour guide we got could barely be understood. The twilight tour only has one bus each night and he night we booked ended up being overbooked so we got started a half hour late and then ended about an hour to an hour and a half later than expected. The tour does allegiances with local souvenir shops and it seems it stops an excessive amount at places that don’t matter and not enough time at the cool monuments. I would recommend the hop on hop off tours during the day, on a weekday for sure! But steer clear of this company for a twilight tour. You also may want to plan better for a weekend due to the high volume of people.

We took a chance on a groupon for this bus tour and really felt sorry for anyone who paid full price. We took three buses during the day. The first one was ok, the second had a great guide but unfortunately the bus broke down. We then got on with a horrible tour guide and a sound system that blared his ramblings in our heads for an hour while we were stuck in traffic.

It appears to be the worse Hop-​on/​off in DC.
The Big Bus has excellent signs that show drop off-​pick up stops. DC Trails lack of signage which caused me to question if I was in the right spot.
It seemed like we just missed every bus which caused us to waste a ton of time waiting. As we waited at The Lincoln Memorial, we saw three Big Buses come and go (2 trolleys, 2 City Sites). We later learned that one of their buses were down.
Finally, I only liked one of the guides (the only guide). We were going to get off at the next stop (The Vietnam Memorial), but he was so good we were going to take the entire tour with him. But he was so enthusiastic about The White House Visitor Center and telling us that this was one thing we had to do before 4:30. Since we were leaving at 2 and we weren’t sure we’d get back there, we hopped off. We waited another 40 minutes and we hopped on the worse bus (baby & no air).
People please leave your infants and toddlers at home. They don’t understand anything and it isn’t a fun activity for them. It’s not fair for everyone to miss hearing about the sites because your child is fussing.

Awesome tour we went to all the great sightseeing areas of DC. The tour guide «Nick» was awesome and kept our interest the entire time. He was very knowledgeable and funny too! I highly recommend it especially if Nick is your tour guide!

The first driver almost hit a car!
The second bus (bus #3) driver of our day had his young daughter on the bus. Super inappropriate. Says it all.

Wish I would of looked at this earlier in our trip. 100% recommended to take DC tours to see the city. With the bus tour you will save you feet from the walking torture of site seeing DC.
You will get great views of just about all the sites from the bus with out even having to get off. But if you do get off the bus run so consecutive you will jump on the next bus in minutes.
The staff are really knowledgable (you would hope so right) and friendly. What i did like is that not all have a script so some may know more than others or explain things differently. Which is cool because every time you get on a different bus it feels like a new tour keeps thinks interesting.
Price is defiantly worth it. ENJOY!!! (Check groupon usually a sale for it}

I called tonight to make a reservation, and I was put on hold twice by a woman. After a 5 minute wait, I was talking to her about the reservation I was looking to make. All of a sudden, a guy jumped on the line and said: «Sir! Sir! Ma’am! We have an emergency here and I need her to help» and then hung up on me.
I took offense to being called Sir when I have a female voice. There was no apology. He was completely rude. I’m glad I did not give them any of my money.

We booked the Mt. Vernon tour the day before we wanted to go. Big Al and the tour bus picked us up at the JW Marriott promptly the next morning and he made conversation while they picked up the others at 5 area hotels. He knew lots about the drive on the way to Alexandria and was very conversational. The return trip from Mt. Vernon was also on time and he accommodated us by dropping us off closer to Chinatown instead of our hotel. I’d definitely book with DC Trails again.

I, and my husband did the all day bus tour, after seeing a deal on Groupon.
We stayed in Pentagon City, the bus picked us up right in front of the Metro station. (The hotel offered a shuttle to the Metro.)
Our driver/​tour guide was Charles.
Excellent tour, from stopping at all the monuments, Arlington cemetery we saw JFK’S grave site, the changing of the guards by the tomb of the unknown, military statues, the white house and capital buildings, what an excellent day, and an excellent job Charles did!
It was warm, but the bus was well air-​conditioned.
I highly recommend this tour! We saw so much, and did so much, we could never have done on our own.

I don’t know why all the negative reviews here but I joined the DC Trails tour yesterday and found they were awesome. We got a really good tour guide named Willis and the bus driver was Ike. They were friendly and Willis knew a lot of the backstory behind all the landmarks so it made for an enjoyable tour. Some people complained about having to wait long for the buses but we never had that problem at all. Buses were frequent considering its hop on hop off. We enjoyed it so much we gave a good tip and we are not usually big tippers. If you want a good priced enjoyable tour, you should try DC Trails.

I was never a customer of the company but I was cut off by a DC Trails bus 3 times on the highway and the bus driver had the audacity to stop his bus mid highway exit ramp to get off his bus to to come yell at me for reckless and aggressive driving. He even threatened to run me over with his bus. Watch out everyone who decides to use this company, you might be involved in an accident because the bus drivers are so incompetent.

Wow, I thought maybe it was just an off day for this company until I read the other reviews.
My group decided to start our day at stop 11, the hotel harrington. From 11:15 — 11:45, we saw not a single bus. At 11:45 we called to ask. «one is 15 minutes away,» we were told. At 12:15 or so, we see a DC trails bus coming. We try to get on, but THE BUS DOES NOT STOP. That’s right, it just flat out didn’t stop. We called the place and were told, «oh we’ll try to find out why. The next bus should be there in 10 minutes.» Around 12:45, I called again and asked what the hell was going on. «Oh, we are still trying to get a hold of the driver to find out why he didn’t stop. Next bus should be there in 10 minutes.» Around 1:00, the bus finally shows up.
There are numerous tour bus companies offering the exact same service. DO NOT USE THIS ONE. This is by far the worst one I’ve used and I have no idea how they can stay in business.

Our local elementary school in Virginia chartered this bus for the 45-​minute ride to DC’s Smithsonian. The bus was early, spotlessly clean, a very comfortable (large seats and windows, cup holders, even TV’s). But best of all, the driver was friendly and smiling – he made sure the car following the bus stayed with him and had their EZ Pass for the toll lanes. Excellent experience!

Very underwhelming experience, we might as well have a maps app telling us the name of the building because that’s all we got from them. We left after 5 stops as we felt like our time was completely wasted. The whole point of the tours is to know random pieces of trivia and add a little extra flair to the trip. No wonder why this company doesn’t appear on the ‘bus tour’ search. Our own fault for getting on the first bus we saw without doing the research.

The buses were almost an hour late for our 4am pickup. Nothing on the US175 bus works except for the toilet. The driver took 20 minutes longer at the rest stop while all the riders sat waiting. I hope the rest of the trip gets better.

The drivers we encountered on these buses were friendly and kind. Only two, out of the 5 tour guides we experienced seemed ever remotely interested in being there and we spent most of our one day in DC waiting for these buses to come, while standing in the pouring rain, watching as other buses regularly went past us. They say 20 – 30 minutes between buses, which in itself is impossible to gauge and I can tell you it’s just not true.
To cap it off, we were dropped at a location that was closed, which was confusing to us because they literally skipped stops between where they picked us up (70 minutes later) and where we wanted to go (the White House visitor center). Didn’t they know it was closed? We were dropped there and after a frustrating day of guesstimating when busses would arrive, we were done. We missed half of the city and wouldn’t use this company again.
Don’t buy the groupon, it’s not worth the frustration.

Was only able to ‘hop’ on twice. They say buses come every 30 – 40 minutes. That’s a lie it’s 1 — 1.5 hour wait. We were only able to make half the route and had to take a taxi back after two of their buses came and we were in the designated area and they just went right past us never stopping. Very frustrating and not worth the price.

Listen. This is not good for a hop on hop off tour. It’s just not. They say buses come every 30 – 40 minutes, but we waited over an hour. The entire day, we managed to hop on and off ONCE. We got tired of wasting hours waiting and ended up walking 8 miles. Luckily, groupon refunded my money because it really ruined our experience. We legitimately rode the city bus around faster than this. ALSO: Some of the «bus stops» have no sign. You’re just standing there forever, hoping it’s the right place.
That being said, if you buy the groupon for $ 20, it’s an excellent opportunity to hop on once and ride the entire loop. Just don’t expect to hop off and get back on easily. I called when I was waiting and complained, and they explained they only have 5 busses. You should know that before you buy. The trolly company, and City Sights dc bus company passed us multiple times while we waited for this company. Go with them if you want to hop on and off.

Vincent was a great tour guide for the DC at night tour. I liked that we had time to stop and look around at several memorials. We also learned a lot about the history of our country and we had a good customer service experience overall.

I recommend this to someone that wants to tour dc. It was more enjoyable than I thought.

Pros:
— Air conditioned buses
— Live tour guide
— Clean buses
Cons:
— They tell you the buses come every 30 minutes. That’s a lie. The buses come every 1 hour — 1.5 hours. We got stranded at the Jefferson Memorial in 95* weather for over an hour.
Recommendations:
— If you want to take a hop on and off bus tour I recommend Big Bus Washington DC or CitySights because approximately 8 of them passed us in the one hour we were waiting for the DC Trails bus. Too bad we couldn’t hop on the other buses…

Out of every bus company out there this company has about 2 buses. I see every other company every 5 minutes. I would choose a company with more «hop on & hop off» choices for my money.

We were picked up at our hotel (Marriott Metro Center) by one bus that wasn’t clearly marked. The valet guys knew so that helped, otherwise we might have missed it. This bus didn’t feel air conditioned at all so thankfully we were only on long enough to meet up with the actual tour bus.
The double decker bus we had for the tour was nice and cool. DeeDee was our tour guide. She was lovely! Her information was knowledgeable, interesting, and often funny. We had the twilight tour and specifically chose this one because of the number of sights and stops compared to other night tours. It was worth it.
After the MLK and Roosevelt stop we got back on the original bus to go back to the hotel. Again it was ridiculously hot. That would be my only complaint and the reason I didn’t give 5 stars.

Worst experience ever on a hop on/​off bus. I have purchased these in several cities and found them interesting and a reliable way of getting around new areas. Having out of town company, I figured I would purchase this Groupon to show them DC. The company said that each bus would be by within a 30 minute window to pick you up. This could not have been farther from the truth. Waited 45 minutes at a few stops today. Also, tour operator wanted to crack more jokes than educate us on the city. Waste of money– instead should have gone with Big bus or Old Trolley co– since both companies ran very frequently. If you want reliability, do not go with this company!

This was a good tour to see the city sites. That being said, the buses were few and far between even for a summer day. Also, we used a Groupon that they had no way to redeem. We had to mark it as redeemed in front of them and show the drivers as we got off and on. The drivers seemed to be okay on their knowledge. Next time I’ll take one of the other tours when more family comes to town. Just glad we didn’t pay full price. Wish I had read the Unilocal reviews first!

This is the worst tour experience ever. Sure it’s no one’s fault that it’s hot and humid in July in DC but to not have air conditioning in a bus that has no windows is unacceptable. It’s in fact not safe. It was entirely irresponsible to only replace the bus 3.5 hours into the tour and then take us back to the hotel in another bus that had no AC. We selected this tour because of the fact that it was entirely inside the bus to avoid the open sun and humid heat. How wrong we were. It was worse. No apology from the manager and no compensation. We will never recommend this tour.

My main objective was to do a night time tour, and that was a success.
This company has a pick up point at our hotel, so that made them the winner.
We were picked up in one bus, not the same logo, so that confused us and the other pick ups he did, be he was helpful and funny and brought us to our meet up point with the double decker bus.
We all rallied downtown and merged onto a double decker bus. It was early may, so it wasn’t super crowded. Our tour guide DeDe was fabulous. She humorous and helpful and super informational.
We started by driving by the capital building, then down pensylvania, first stop was the white house, currently they only allow you to stop at the back, so we had about 15 minutes to go over there. After that we continued back down past the mall, we got to see some of the monuments from the front as well as the whitehouse far away. Next we continued on and saw some additional sites on the way to the next stop which was the Lincoln memorial, korean and vietnam and we got to spend a bit of time there as the sun went down, it was great to see them all in all the different lighting.
After that we moved onto the MLK monument, which was pretty amazing, and absolutely stunning at night. The words were well selected and looked great lit up.
The other side of that stop was the FDR monument, which was very large and not wel lit at all, but pretty at night.
The final stop of the evening was the Iwo Jima monument and that was a stunning monument and the one that is actually in Virginia vs DC itself.
The tour itself last a long time — we were picked up at 6pm and dropped off at 10/10:30 pm
Pro tip: sit on the right side of the bus, most all the things to see are on that side of the bus.

I’m from the «other Washington» as one might say so when I came to DC for the first time I wanted to get my monies worth and see as much as I could before having to fly home. I am SO, SO happy I went with the DC Trails tour! Seriously, I LOVED my tour.
My mom and I signed up for the all-​day tour which picked us up right on time at our hotel (a smaller bus picked us up and took us to the larger double-​decker bus). Once on the big bus our tour got started. Our tour guide (Demi) was super nice and had a ton of interesting and fun facts about DC and the surrounding areas.
We saw everything we wanted to see; The White House, Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, MLK Memorial, FDR Memorial, Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, just to name a few.
My only complaint (& it’s a small one) is the break for lunch was 90 minutes at the Pentagon Mall. Seriously — do you know how hard it is to waste time for 90 mins? We didn’t want to shop because we didn’t want to have to lug a bunch of bags with us & lunch really only took 30 mins. I feel this break could be shortened to allow more time at other destinations. Some of the other breaks to explore are only around 15 mins which made me feel a tad rushed at times but I digress.
This tour was TOTALLY worth what we paid for and I would take another DC Trails tour in a heartbeat. You should too!