Main Street Trolleys Movie Tours — Attraction in Covington

Let me start by saying that we’ve done tours with Mainstreet Trolleys before and held similar expectations for the Hello Brother tour. We did the Thursday 9am tour and were truly the guinea pigs. Our bus driver was amazing (we’ve had her before) and our tour guide was funny at times, but the overall experience was lacking.

First, we had to wait 15 minutes for someone the tour guide knew to get there for the tour, even though it was made clear from the beginning that the bus would pull out sharply at 9 and there would be no waiting on stragglers. We literally pulled out and went straight to a rest area for “emergency” bathroom breaks-come on people, we all knew it would be a 4 our tour and should have gone to the restroom ahead of time like good kindergarteners. We wasted quite a bit of time on failure of others to plan, leaving the tour feeling rushed.

We were only able to get out at 4 locations and each time we were made to take a large group photo and had “two minutes” to take our own photos. I have no desire to be in a photo with 70 other people. ALSO, 2 minutes is not enough time for 70 people to take photos in front of a house. I don’t care if you explain it by saying the property owners only gave us a certain amount of time at each location. It felt like we paid $150 to ride around and be part of your marketing project. Some of the drive by locations, we didn’t slow down and you couldn’t even really see Josephine LaRue’s house for all the branches out front. If you’re excited about seeing that one, take your own car because you won’t halfway see it from the bus.

If you were hoping to see the downtown Covington homes of some of the main characters, you won’t see it on this tour, but I will say that the Covington Movie Tour has been great in the past. I feel like there should have at least been a drive by of some of these homes… and we were so close to the gas station where Katherine sabotaged Stefan’s car!

Last, getting food and shirts was a cluster. Lunch was after the tour, but pickup of lunch/shirts was at the same time as the next tour so 160 people were all trying to get in line and had to wait for someone to check the list to see what you ordered. I skipped lunch (so can’t tell you if it was good or not) since the only options were burritos, though you could choose chicken, beef, or vegetarian.

2 ⭐️ ⭐️ . Would not recommend this specific tour. With a four hour tour, I expected to get out and see awesomeness. I expected stories and anecdotes. This isn’t unattainable…I’ve done the Covington Movie Tour with MST and it was amazing! Instead, this time I received a tour with 80 people that felt like a blatant money grab solely because the convention is in town. Take away the shirt and lunch and I would still be unhappy if this was a $30 tour with this many people…10-20 people may have been a different story. Not worth the $150 paid. After this experience, I will not likely buy a “specialty” tour like this again from MST. The price tag should have brought us better locations and more...

We did the Epic Tour on Saturday March 2. I supposed I should have asked before the tour, since it's not indicated on the website, how long the tour would take, but they don't tell you how long the tour is going to be 3 - 3 1/2 hours until the bus is loaded up and ready to go. It started off rocky as they over sold the seats and two people didn't get to go ( they could have fit but wouldn't have been able to sit together, don't blame them). Then we visited the Murder House which was very cool, and asked to join in a group photo ( odd but okay). Then they said the next stop would be approx 25 minute drive to see a house where a scene or two of the Originals was filmed in Jackson, GA. The drive ended up being 40 minutes. Then once we all got off the bus we noticed a wedding was about to take place, and that message wasn't relayed to the tour company. So back on the bus we go. Then we were told the next stop was about 15 minutes ( took 25 minutes) to Starrsville to visit the next stop on the tour which ended up being cool to see, but then again asked to do another group photo (odd). The thing we saw were cool. It's very Originals heavy. The driver was a very good driver. Overall, you spend most of the tour ( 3 hours and 20 minutes for ours) driving and driving really fast past the places you don't actually stop and told approx 10 seconds before to get your cameras ready. And if you were on the wrong side of the bus you were out of luck. Yes, I said bus. We didn't take a trolley. I don't think the website said anything about a bus. Overall, if we would have known it was going to be such a long tour with all the driving we probably would have not taken this tour. As it shortened our day doing other things we had...

Not worth the $90 I spent for two tickets. I took my daughter to more filming locations than they took us on the tour. There are houses super close to the town square so I don’t know why the tour didn’t hit those since they are of popular characters. Instead we drove around to sub character filming locations and barely saw anything good. The tour guide was trying to be friendly but kept taking group photos for her own social media account. So over group photos with people I do not know. We weren’t allowed to walk away from the guides sight to actually snap our own photos until the end of a location and then we felt rushed. She started the tour with a trivia question which I like but she never let us answer the question or verified what the answer was. No candy or good job that’s right. She just played a song on her phone from a scene in Vampire Diaries and asked if this rings any bells. At various locations she would play a scene from an episode on her phone so you could barely see it. Why don’t guides have tablets or something with larger screens if we are going to watch scenes? We got very little history or information other than this is where a scene was filmed and she bragged that she got to meet so-in-so. It should have enticed conversation about the characters but she didn’t elaborate on anything she said so it was just strange. We couldn’t wait for the bus to take us back because this adventure was a major waste. Save your money and do a self guided tour. I wish I could have at least a partial refund because this was not good at all. What an...