Big Bus Tour in Las Vegas, NV

With a long weekend in Las Vegas and my only set plan being the Aerosmith concert, I decided to spend a day doing the Big Bus Tour. Based on the information on their website, I believed the daytime hop-on/hop-off tour had two options—the Strip (red) and Old Vegas (blue). (There’s also a night tour, but I didn’t consider that one.) I decided to do the Old Vegas tour and start with the first stop at the Hawaiian Marketplace on the Strip. Right away there was confusion. I had purchased a Go Las Vegas pass and two of the Big Bus Tour staff members passed me off to someone else before I was able to use my pass to get a ticket. I also discovered that although the website makes it look like the red and blue are two different tours, the tour actually runs as one long loop meaning it takes over three hours to complete even without hopping off.

Big Bus runs with a guide using a microphone on the upper deck of the bus. The upper deck is open, so wind is definitely a factor. The first guide (I hopped off a few times) was fantastic. Not only was he engaging, he used a wind screen on the microphone so he could actually be understood. Unfortunately, not all the guides were as a great as the first one. Two of the other guides were adequate, but frequently more concerned about what other drivers and pedestrians were doing. At times they made snide remarks (usually about the driving skills of tourists) and also lamented their low wages. The other guide I had during my tour was so awful that I got off well before I planned at the second stop. In the short time I was on his tour, he made numerous wisecracks about American politicians including nasty comments about a former presidential candidate. It was highly inappropriate and had absolutely nothing to do with the tour.

Although things in Las Vegas change quickly, at least one of the tour guides was giving outdated information. For example, she referenced the Game of Thrones themed fountain show at the Bellagio as being current even though it had ended the previous week. The guides also gave very little history which is what I had hoped to learn.

The tour does hit some good stops—the iconic Las Vegas sign and the Mob Museum which has a speakeasy in the basement (and it’s just a short walk from the Mob Museum over to the Neon Boneyard where the Brilliant! show is fantastic)—but I didn’t find it to be worth the cost or the time. Another issue I had was the app not showing accurate times. The app was helpful for locating some of the stops, but showed a bus was less than three minutes away every time I checked even though wait times were actually more than 20 minutes.