21 Sep 2025
When I booked this tour, I was looking for more of a group experience with a real guide, which is what I purchased. Because of not having enough people sign up for the tour, we were told to do the hop-on hop-off bus tour and then meet up at the Alcatraz departure pier, to go on that tour at 2;15pm. Well, it's very hard to plan that out when you have no idea how long the hop-on hop-off bus is going to take. When could we get off the bus to eat lunch and still have time to get to the pier. Plus I couldn't get much information before I left for San Francisco. So once we were here, I had to contact the company the day before our tour to even get the information I needed before going on the tour. We were on three different hop-on- hop-off buses, one of them we were stuck in the bottom of the bus due to the number of people on there and it was sweltering hot over eighty degrees. For some reason, the heat was on, let's just say I was not impressed with the hop on hop off bus experience. I didn't want that to begin with. I wanted a traditional tour bus with a live guide that could answer questions and give me recommendations. The Alcatraz portion of the tour was fine. As we had to go pick up our tickets at the will call booth.That was no problem. The bus portion was very disappointing.I will never use this company again. The real kicker was, they would not give me a refund. They changed the tour. I either had to do the hop on hop off bus as replacement or try to schedule the tour another day that they would have the full tour that they advertised. I did not have an other available day. That's the most discouraging part. I would have been fine with taking my money back and getting it different tour. But that was not an option. I paid almost $300 for two people on this tour. The Alcatraz tickets were only $30 at the pier, and the hop-on hop-off tickets were only $40 for the day pwe day. So basically, I could have spent $70 per person instead, I spent a $150 a person. That sucks.