Big Bus Company

I was a little worried about choosing any bus tour given the completely mixed reviews on both this and the original bus tour. I chose the Big bus tour as it was clear that I could pay at most stops using a credit card or debit card.

I chose the green park stop as it was only a few stops from st pancreas station on the victoria line. Buying a ticket from the conductor was very easy, she had a variety of automated card readers on her person and was very pleasant. You end up with a small yellow/white receipt, prebooked customers exchange a brownish ticket for the same receipt.

We went the day after the tube strike so they made it clear that the roads were still busy and it would take 2hrs 40 on the red route. We got back to victoria the last stop at just under that time. Very early in the tour there were longish waits at some stops and the bus was full and only room for singles at some places.

The tour guide was very professional and took time to talk to everyone on the tour, pointing out special photo ops and including history that I didn't know. We saw all we wanted to see in london and for that reason I would recommend the tour. We had a 3 and 5 year old who would have been exhausted if we did the same by tube or walk/regular bus.

The only disappoint for all tours like this is you will not drive in front of buckingham palace but will only park to the side

If you want to do london in half a day this is the way to do it.

The good: lots of stops, you can buy a ticket at most stops, you see a lot, the staff is nice, and the audio is pretty good.

The bad: buses spend long amounts of time sitting at certain stops with no explanation; it takes way longer than the suggested two hours; and they don't make it clear that even though the brochure says the buses stop running at 6:30, you need to be on the last bus way before that at most of the stops.

I went on this tour with my husband and 10yr old daughter. The cost was L60 altogether for the three of us. We joined the bus right outside of our hotel at 8.40am and arrived back at 6pm. The tour was easy to access - using the different coloured lines of each tour which took you in different directions to view various sights. You are given free headphones to listen to the commentry - this was very useful and pointed out lots of interesting places and history that we wouldn't have known about. The commentry is in several different langauges. The staff were brilliant and very helpful - we always found staff at the bus stops. We enjoyed the free cruise on the Thames (part of the ticket) - again with great staff/commentry. We could get off at various points of interest and spend as much or as little time there - then jump on the next bus as they ran every 15/20mins. We managed to see most of the points of interest on the map and even got a visit to Harrods (worth a look). We felt it was good value as we wouldn't have got round to all these points on our own.