City sightseeing hop-on hop-off tour door Dublin

Having been happy with Hop on Hop off in other cities we were looking forward to this. Whereas before we had a real person giving great guides with personal touches and anecdotes, in Dublin it was an automated recording RIDDLED with promotional messages that took away any charm. We'd booked for 2 days and on the second day our ticket wasn't scanned once. Buses were not that frequent and some of them were leaking rain water and had water running up and down the floor. The drivers were nice and polite and the info on the tour was OK (though a bit repetitive from infor inside some of the venues visited).

Absolutely loved this bus tour! it came highly recommended by friends who had done this before. Our tour guide every time was Robbie & he was excellent, very friendly & always happy, even his jokes was ok lol. Would definitely do this again & recommend it to everyone. Had a grand time :-) Thank you Robbie.

This is my home city, and I was interested to see how it is presented to tourists. Sadly I found it very disappointing. We boarded at College Green (stop 1) on Friday 11th April. There was no welcoming introduction or general history overview of Dublin. We travelled past City Hall, Dublin Castle, Fishamble Street and Christchurch Cathedral without any reference to their history, architecture or cultural significance. Very little information was provided about St. Patrick’s Cathedral (no reference to Dean Jonathan Swift or the ‘ oldest’ Marshes Library est . 1707!) Having travelled through The Liberties it was really only on arrival at Teelings Distillery, then the Guinness Brewery and Roe & Co. Distillery that a flow of commentary commenced. There was an improvement in the provision of information in the second half of the tour; however it was at times out of sync with arrival at the specified locations, which unfortunately resulted in missing a view of the point of interest! I mistakenly presumed that references to our many internationally renowned characters of literature, politics and music who originated, lived or worked in Dublin would be integrated into the commentary (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W.B Yeats, Daniel O’Connell, Seamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Bram Stoker, Francis Bacon, U2, Sinéad O’Conner, Phil Lynott, Colin Farrell to name just a few). I feel this would enrich the cultural perspective of the city. The tour has great potential - the weather was beautiful, the upper deck was full of tourists, the staff were friendly, the bus was clean and comfortable, the headphones provided were in good working order, and the city looked well. If the commentary had been welcoming, informative, synchronised, and fun I would give the tour 5 stars, I left feeling that if I was a visitor to Dublin unfortunately my impression of the city would be a diminished version of what it should be! There is a serious need for improvement!!