Old Town Trolley Tours — Local services in Boston

Summary: The driver/tour guide makes or breaks your experience Be prepared for long waits at each stop I would only go on this if already included in another tour (seemed like a lot of passengers came from the cruise ships) - not worth paying for standalone tickets in my opinion

So, I convinced my husband to take this tour with me as I had a wonderful time on St Augustine's (FL) Trolley Tour. If it wasn't for Captain Matty, our 3rd driver of the day, I would have rated this 1 star.

We boarded at Prudential Centre around 12:30pm on a Saturday, and our driver clearly was DYING for her lunch break - kept talking about how hungry and tired she was from the moment we got on the trolley until we finally got to the aquarium. I had also just been to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, so I noticed half of her facts about the place were incorrect, as we drove past.

Our entire trolley had to disembark and join a new line at the Aquarium (not just driver switch), for which we waited 20mins in line for 2 more trolleys to go before us. Second driver was not so bad, didn't talk about her stomach the whole time, but was not particularly engaging with her facts either.

Got off at USS Constitution, on finishing the site, we waited more than 40 minutes for a trolley with enough seats. The drivers kept radioing the dispatch with the number of passengers, and kept promising an empty trolley for us (about 20-30 passengers waiting at one point), but 3 full trolleys came and went before we could get on. Captain Matty saved the day with enthusiastic and interesting facts, but we were pretty done with the tour...

We came to Boston on a commuter train and had a hard time finding the trolley stop (18) to catch the trolley. Finally found it after talking to a backup trolley driver a few blocks away. Sure wish Boston would allow them to put up some kind of marker for us tourists. Once on the trolley, we learned there were two lines - the shuttle line we had boarded that stopped at hotels in the port area and the other line that toured Boston with narration. We finally got on that one. We hopped off early to visit Quincy Market for some breakfast and buy some souvenirs. Bagels and sweatshirts in hand we reboarded the trolley. All I can say is "Crafty", the driver, made our day. He had a great sense of humor and kept us all laughing. We stuck with him until the Boston Tea Party where we hopped off again and participated in throwing tea into the harbor. It was odd to hear arguments from the 1775 that sounded oddly familiar to today's political rhetoric. We boarded again and rode back to the first stop. We wanted to take the trolley back to the South Terminal to catch our train, but we wanted to walk over to Little Italy for Mike's Pastry and some dinner. The trolly stops picking up at stop 1 at 5:00 pm ... we realized that pastry and dinner was going to be past that deadline. We did have to make the 6:00 pm train. Dinner finished at 5:15 so I had to go to plan B and call an UBER.

I would definitely recommend Old Town Trolley. Our experience was positive and all the drivers were entertaining ... even though "Crafty" wins our award...

I bought the 2 day pass for our 3 day trip. Glad I did because of the heat wave. Our 2 male tour guides seemed very knowledgeable as we learned a few things that we didn't know from our last trip. We did experience a rude female driver on the seaport loop. We got to the stop that starts that loop, and as soon as the doors opened she rudely pointed to the seaport sign in her window and said , "Can you read" which I replied with "Yeah, that's where we want to go". All in all, we still were happy with the trolley service. On the third morning, we decided that since it was going to be another hot day, we would buy a 1 day pass as we were down in the seaport area and would have to walk almost 2 miles to get into the city. We spent the almost $165 just so we could avoid that walk into the city as we were spending the entire day in North End. We went to the stop where we were picked up the day before and when the trolley came, it never did the loop for our stop. As we didn't want to lose 45-75 minutes of our last day waiting for the next trolley, we walked the almost 2 miles in 91 degree heat. When we got into the city we asked for a refund. I was directed to a website. I immediately filled out the request and after 5 days I have yet to hear anything. I am now wishing that I would have just got an Uber, it would have...