Which London open top bus tour?

[goodpos]

We want to take an open top bus tour in London. There are several companies and routes.

Can anyone recommend a particular company to go with or to avoid or are they much of a muchness?

Top of a number 11 bus will bring you most of the sights.

Following

Just been to London yesterday and although we didn’t take the tour bus, we’ve seen one which was serving an afternoon tea to the passengers! It was called The Afternoon Tea bus or something like that 😀

YABU. www.mumsnet.com/talk/UK

Who made you the thread police??

OP clearly posting for traffic, leave them alone

OP- I think they’re all much of a much was to be honest!, they all seem to have red or blue routes etc! Just pick one you can hop on and off if you want to have a break halfway through

Thread police 👮‍♀️ 🤣🤣

I don't deviate too much from the AIBU threads so thought briefly about putting this in holidays but didn't realise there was a UK thread.

Soz

That’s what I was going to say!

I grew up in SW1. DDad always took visitors out on that No.11!

The number 11 bus??

oh come on. It’s about the “open top”

not sitting on a sweaty bus filled with commuters / shoppers, stop, start, stop, start

Do you have children? One of the companies do a separate narration aimed at children. My DC loved it.

Not to mention the the no. 11 doeant have commentary.

We did golden tours because it was the cheapest. Less buses though. Look for code online or see if you can use clubcard vouchers as they are all pretty pricey.

I did a Big Red Bus tour in Paris and also in Rome and they were great so would recommend them as a company

I book mine through wowcher, its much cheaper. With the traffic, roadworks, road closures, demonstrations, a boat trip might be nicer. Our bus tour only managed about half the journey but we didnt get a rebate. I do fancy the pink afternoon tea tour though.

not sitting on a sweaty bus filled with commuters / shoppers stop, start, stop, start

Rude.

And a tour bus will also stop and start.

Any boat trip recommendations please?

I did Toot Bus recently with a big group. It was brilliant. Will do again with my DC next month. Included boat trip too.

You can use Tesco clubcard vouchers to book for a few companies. We used city tours (I think). We bought a 48 hour family pass that also had a boat trip included. My kids loved it and we had the equivalent of 3 full circuits so while it was expensive we got good value for money.

@maybebebey If it is you/ your kids' thing I highly recommend the Horrible Histories boat trip. Has live actors, very informative and great fun!

But true

the idea of suggesting just get on the number 11 bus as being an equivalent of a tour bus is… odd

The duck tour was brilliant but o have a horrible feeling they’ve stopped them?

We were in london last week and bought tickets for Toot bus - never again! One day we waited over an hour for a bus and on other occasions it was at least 40 minutes. During this time the Big Bus was the one that regularly went by - usually every 15/20 minutes.

Top of number 24 fr Victoria Station will take you past Parliament and trafalgar sq. Get off at trafalgar, cross the road to charing Cross St and the number 15 from outside Pizza express will take you to St. Paul's cathedral and the city. Much cheaper than the over priced tourist buses.
Number 9 from charing Cross is a good one too.
tfl.gov.uk/bus/route/9/

londonist.com/london/free-and-cheap/london-s-best-bus-routes

Or the BB afternoon tea bus tour

b-bakery.com/

If you are travelling to London by train, you can get 2 for 1 with BigBus tours. I just googled National rail 2 for 1 London. We are doing it in a couple of weeks, there’s an app to download that tells you when the next bus is coming and shows pictures of the bus stops