Gray Line Seattle — Local services in Seattle

I do my homework and research and after reading all of the negative reviews and against my better judgement and advice my wife decided to try this while we were at the Space Needle. The main reason was because her dad has a bad knee and she thought this would be a great way to get around the city easily right? WRONG! We have been on hop on hop off tour busses in NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, etc. and this one by far was the worst! The bus is run down, dirty, and has trash everywhere especially on the open upper deck. It literally looks and feels like homeless people were living and sleeping up there. The lone single speaker that does the narration is very distorted, hard to understand, and sounds like it's going to pop and blow out at any moment. You can't even hop off at any of the stops unless you walk downstairs (you're supposed to remain seated at all times while the bus is moving) and tell the driver you want to get off. Same thing goes for if you want to hop on apparently. We witnessed an elderly couple at the hop on stop in Chinatown run after our bus and the only reason the driver stopped for them was because we were all screaming for him to stop! For the price you pay you're better off taking an Uber or Lyft and just walk. With so many negative reviews you would think the Grayline company or whoever officially manages it would make improvements but obviously they have not. They will probably give me the same "We will take your advice to make improvements..." response to my review. We got off at Pike Place Market and never got back on. Skip this and SAVE...

Really disappointing tour.

Long story short: They are not picking up every 20-30 minutes as listed on the website. They give a disclaimer ON the bus that because of construction, they will pick up every 45 minutes (or longer). Wish we could've been made aware of this before purchasing our tickets. We waited at our one and only stop for an hour and 15 minutes. As we waited, we were harassed by a drunk person (they were literally drinking two beers). Fortunately, more people came to wait with us and the person went away. The others that waited with us said they also waited for over an hour at the previous stop.

The bus we were on needed updating. It was old and the PA system wasn't working at first and delayed us for 20 minutes from leaving the first stop (at the Needle). The screens that cover the windows need replacing as it was very hard to see out.

I say, you're probably better off getting a day pass and taking the city buses. We saw plenty of those as we waited...

I am a big Fan of hoho tours and whenever I am visiting a city that offers the tour, I am taking it. Seattle has the most expensive tour I think I have ever taken. And it takes you just around the center. You can actually walk it if you bring some time. I still had to walk alot, since e.g. the Jimmy Hendrix Statue is not included. The explanations are only in English over the general PA system of the bus. Sometime it was difficult to understand. It's the first hoho tour I did where you could not chose a language over headphones. I thought that was a standard. The drivers don't want to see your ticket at no point. I had a couple next to me talking about making the tour without ticket. That is not cool. Unfortunately I felt like the tour is a waste of money. Better to explore Seattle by foot and use the money for the entrance to some also very expensive tourist...