My review also relates to the Alcatraz, Open Sky city tour and Chinatown Walking Tour, all booked…read moreas a package for $87. In the city for the weekend, we booked the tour on Saturday and were told to check in at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday. At that time, the gentleman at the desk told us that we would take the ferry to Alcatraz at 11:00 a.m., the city tour at 3:00 p.m. and the walking tour at 5:00 p.m.
The Alcatraz portion went fine. We had a couple hours to kill after that, and then went and took the city tour. As another reviewer mentioned, the bus is a school bus (stickers for school bus rules still attached at the front of the bus) with its top cut off. The seats/benches are not precisely built for comfort! I have re-named this portion the Psychedelic Bus Tour because it was so bizarre. We, too, had Timber as our guide, an aging hippy who was apparently a professional photographer (and insists you let him take your photos if you want them to turn out well), a bit actor and now a tour guide.
The tour was unintentionally hilarious -- and would have remained so throughout the three long hours had one been drunk or perhaps on 'shrooms; however, after two hours everyone on the bus was looking for an escape route. First of all, the only stops we made were at the Palace of Fine Arts and the Golden Gate bridge, both of which occurred within the first 30 mins of the tour. We were then regaled with the driver's stream of consciousness ramblings about anything from a new bike trail ("Oh, wow, I hadn't noticed that before!") to comments about pretty young women on the street (all spoken over the loudspeaker so that the women in question could undoubtedly hear as well) to police activity near the Disney museum ("Look at that -- three police cars! I wonder what's going on there. We definitely don't want to stop here!") We were also subjected to his politically incorrect sociological views, such as the "fact" that there are "10-12 reasons" that people become homeless (this as we were stopped at a light in front of Golden Gate park where said homeless were happily smoking pot) and, while driving through Chinatown, the observation that one thing the Chinese know well is capitalism! Ah, and we were also introduced to a transgender club (with a warning to the gentlemen that pretty ladies might not be ladies at all) and a topless club. And there were children on the bus!!! Lest I forget, in the middle of the Golden Gate bridge, on went the radio to a local 70's/80's station and we were 'treated' to such best-forgotten hits as Janet Jackson's "Nasty Boys" and Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight". I'm telling you, a drunk would have had a blast on this tour; me, being all too sober, not so much!
As for the walking tour, well, how were we supposed to be there at 5:00 p.m. when the bus tour lasted over three hours??? We were dropped off at 6:15 p.m. and had obviously missed it. Since we left San Francisco that same night, there was no way to do it on another day. In fact, we weren't even told that we could do it another day, which strikes me as rather unethical, seeing as how the man we originally checked in with had to have known that the bus tour was 3 hours long and would overlap with the walking tour.
All in all, I'd recommend that others book the tours separately. The bus tour definitely isn't for families, but a group of college age kids or single (drunk) adults might get a kick out of the guide's bizarre ramblings.
