We enjoyed our trip, and would recommend taking this tour for sure. Budapest is a must-see! We did have some concerns with the tour, however.
Pros:
- Great overview of all of Budapest. Beware, you will not have time to do all that you want to, as there’s SO much in Budapest, but it’s nice taste of the two sides of the city!
- They pack a fair bit in the schedule. Be aware that it’s a three-hour drive each way. So that takes up half the time of the tour.
- Was a small group, around ten of us. Our tour guides were great, Judith in Budapest was like an encyclopedia of the city.
- The two hours of free time were handy, though given traffic and the poor public transportation system, you can’t get a whole lot done. Don’t plan too much during that time!
Cons:
- The tour advertises accommodation pickup from central Vienna locations. We were in central Vienna, a few metro stops away from the tour start point, but the day before the excursion, they suddenly backed out of doing the hotel pickup. I’m glad I checked my email and saw their flip-flop or we’d have been waiting that morning for nothing! I feel we should have been offered a partial refund. Pickup is right in the excursion title! We had to get up an hour earlier to accommodate their failure to deliver as promised.
- The tour advertised that masks were required on the bus and indoors when visiting places. That gave us assurance. However, BOTH WERE UNTRUE. The tour guides had masks but only wore them perhaps 10% of the time. Only a couple other guests apart from us wore masks on the bus at all. The tour guide told them they didn’t have to. That was EXTREMELY disappointing. We did not feel safe.
- The lunch that was supposed to happen didn’t, as apparently the restaurant was closed. The backup that was arranged – turns out that was closed too. Shouldn’t they check this stuff in advance?
- I told Viator twice that I needed a special meal for the lunch (that we were paying for) due to allergy issues. Still, the guide was unaware. This has happened before with Viator as well. Why do they offer you the space to make special requests with bookings when they ignore them? I had to just get food from McDonalds. No Hungarian food for me. :(
- The tour guide for the walking portion, she was great, but really needed a microphone, and/or with us having the headsets. We had trouble hearing her a lot of the time. There was a lot of traffic, construction, other tour groups, etc. This really shouldn’t have happened; it seems like common sense these days to be mic’d up.
