Golden Tours if it can hang around a couple more years may grow into something comparable or superio

Original London Tour and the Big Bus are the established operators outback rv travel trailer and arguably are near mirror images of each other in term of the product being offered. outback rv travel trailer Anecdotally they seem to have around equal market share. Golden Tours are the new kids on the block. At the moment, again anecdotally, Golden Tours seem to be struggling to attract outback rv travel trailer significant customers anywhere near Big Bus and OLT numbers. Partly as a result one imagines, frequencies are less, geographical coverage is less and the bus fleet is older but crucially cost is less too. If only Golden Tours can hang in there a couple of years
Broadly Big Bus and Original London Tour go head to head on price. If anyone is cheaper of the two its often Original outback rv travel trailer London Tour fractionally. There are occasional coupons and promotions that are worth looking outback rv travel trailer out for and buying on-line in advance should be much cheaper than buying on the day. Big Bus has a 24 48 hour ticket, OLT do not (only 24 hours).
outback rv travel trailer One option that differentiates Golden Tours from the big two is they make available a 3 hour ticket which is not Hop On, Hop Off. Basically you get on their bus and go for an orientation tour of London doing one curcuit of the Golden Tours route with commentary from the guide. This of course is significantly cheaper than the 1 day Hop On, Hop Off ticket.
Which brings you to what HoHo sightseeing buses are good for. What everybody agrees on is that they are an excellent introductory orientation for the first time visitor to London. but at the same time they are not meant to be a replacement for London s excellent outback rv travel trailer public transport. London is a 24 7 city and the Hoho buses run basically 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.. I would suggest outback rv travel trailer you only need 1 initial day of using the HoHo buses to get a feel of London, outback rv travel trailer use the guides on the buses to bounce of ideas then use public transport to get around for the rest of your trip you may disagree?
In the last couple outback rv travel trailer of years both Big Bus and OLT have upgraded their buses to new modern vehicles. Golden Tours buses by comparison do look, well dated. (Anyone rode a Golden outback rv travel trailer Tours Bus and can comment?).
All buses are double deck, open top vehicles. There are differences between outback rv travel trailer individual vehicles on just how open top they are, most have a few rows at the front that are under cover. The English speaking guide (on routes that have a guide) sits on the top deck of the bus. The bottom deck there are seats as well but are only really used when it rains.
London is quite spread out and all services have more than one service to cover the attractions. The core area covers the West End and along the river to the Tower of London, this is where the biggest customer demand is.
To the west of this core area are the Kensington museums, Harrods, Kensington Place and the hotel districts around Gloucester Road, Bayswater and Paddington. outback rv travel trailer To the north of the central core area is the British Museum and Bloomsbury hotel district. Another area outside the core covered is again to the north and its really driven by the location of Madame Tussauds.
In terms of coverage Big Bus and OLT are significantly better than Golden Tours. If you are staying in the Bayswater/Lancaster Gate area you might favour Big Bus for better frequencies there. Golden Tours do not cover Bayswater, Lancaster Gate, Paddington, Bloomsbury and Kings Cross hotel areas that contain the British Museum primarily.
Big Bus have two major routes, red and blue, both of which duplicate each other for most of the route. outback rv travel trailer The red route has the English guide commentating, the blue route has audio commentary in 8 languages.
The blue route is longer, doing a loop around Hyde Park / Kensington Gardens including Harrods, Kensington Museums, Kensington Palace and the hotel districts of Gloucester Road, Bayswater and Paddington. outback rv travel trailer A full lap is typically 2.5 to 3 hours. Big Bus also has a green feeder outback rv travel trailer route which basically breaks out from the blue/red route at the Strand striking out north to cover Bloomsbury, British Museum, British Library and Kings Cross.
Original London Tour has a slightly different slant to Big Bus. OLT too have two main routes red and yellow, red being the one with the 8 language audio guides, yellow the one with an English speaking guide. The OLT routes are overall outback rv travel trailer slightly shorter than the Big Bus routes at around 2.25 hours as they don t go out to the Kensington, Bayswater area. Instead they have a third route, the blue museum route. outback rv travel trailer It is an audio based route at good frequencies that starts at Bloomsbury/British Museum and then goes across London to Kensington, Harrods, Kensington Palace and Gloucester Road hotel district interchanging mid-way with the red and yellow routes at Piccadilly Circus. Further more they have two other feeder services to fill in the gaps of Bayswater, Paddington and Kings Cross.
Golden Tours have two routes. The blue route is essentially the same as the Big Bus blue route but doesn t visit Bayswater and Paddington. Its scheduled time is 3 hours. The red route is just a shorter version of the blue route covering outback rv travel trailer no new ground. Its purpose is to provide better frequencies in the central core area. Golden Tours do not go to Bayswater, Paddington, Bloomsbury or Kings Cross areas. Frequencies are much less than Big Bus/OLT.
outback rv travel trailer In Bob s opinion if you are fluent in English its well worth opting for the guided routes. Guides differ a lot and its pot luck on the individual guide you get but most are very informative, good fun and a big plus.
Of the audio guides all have English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. Big Bus doesn t have Japanse, the other two do. Big Bus OLT have Russian. OLT have a Kids Channel. Big Bus has Portugese and Mandarin.
Big Bus and OLT run at full steam from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with slight variances according to season. At the height of summer outback rv travel trailer on the core sections buses come about every 5/10 minutes. Golden Tours at best have 15 minute frequencies, outback rv travel trailer 30 minutes outback rv travel trailer in some places.
Big Bus and OLT both offer three walking tours. A royalty/changing of the guard walk, a pop music/media walk and a Jack The Ripper/ Gruesome walk. Bob has only joined the OLT walks and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the guiding offered. They will each take 75-90 minutes of your day though.
Golden Tours if it can hang around a couple more years may grow into something comparable or superior to the established pair, In my opinion, at this moment in time, what Golden Tours offers is a cheaper price and the cheaper still 3 hour London orientation tour which the others don t offer (as yet).
Bob,i have been told that i can use my bus pass in london on red buses ( 65yo) is this correct,also is there a concession on the tour buses finally outback rv travel trailer where would i send for a bus route map of central london so as to prepare my routes in advance.
Thanks outback rv travel trailer Bob. So if I were to validate my bus ticket on Tuesday @ 1300 I could catch the Jack the Ripper Walk @ 1530 that day and then Changing of the Guard Walk the following day. Am I understanding it correctly?
What is your suggestion for maximizing our options? We definately want to do the river cruise and Changing of the Guard. I think my husband would enjoy the Jack the Ripper Walk so would like to fit that in too if possible.
I m not sure I see the logic in buying a hop on, hop off bus ticket (which isn t cheap) to focus on the non hop off, hop off bus activities. You certainly wouldn t have time for even a full curcuit of one of the hop-on, hop off circuits outback rv travel trailer plus 2 walks and the river cruise. Buying the 2 walks or similar on their own plus rivercruise is not going to be any more expensive.
Personally I would do an evening Jack The Ripper walk if that is a real must do . The one below is one of the best that runs daily and costs 9 GBP. This would free up 2 hours for your HoHo trip and in the evening be a much more atmospheric walk.
The Changing of the guard walk will take at least 90 minutes of your time and this one you don t actually outback rv travel trailer see the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace, (nearly all the professional guided walking tours of Canging of he Guard do not by the way).
The professional tours like this one focus more on seeing things happening outback rv travel trailer so first you ll go to the barracks about 800 yards from Buckingham Palalce where the guards and band going to the Palace and play a few tunes, are inspected and start marching towards Buckingham Palalce. You follow these to Buckingham Palalce where you also are positioned to see the other set of giards marching in from another barracks. Instead of watching the changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace (where you wouldn t see much) you are taken to Clarence House about 600 yards from Buckingham Palace where you can watch an identical changing of the guard close up and with no crowds.
The river cruise outback rv travel trailer is a scheduled river bus (City Cruises) both Big Bus and OLT use the same cruise at present. Normally a member of staff gives a live commentary at what you are looking at as you travel along the river.
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