Hop On Hop Off DC Tours by Old Town Trolley — Local services in Washington

We appreciated the ability to hop on and hop off the trolley bus throughout the City. We would also recommend riding the entire tour from start to finish and then hopping off at various sites once you complete the loop one time. In addition, if you want to see everything in one day, plan on hopping on the trolley right at 9AM since they stop picking up daytime riders at 4 PM.

The tour guides vary between busses. Some are very amusing, some are more stoic, and some are quite bubbly. All of the guides we encountered were friendly. We appreciated that the each guide would provide their own color commentary about various things around the city, but we also found that there were several times where the facts that they provided were contradictory to what the guides and historical information that was provided at the actual locations.

The buses were clean and in good condition, and we were glad we choose the Old Town Trolley instead of the other larger tour company as the other companies equipment looked terrible and in poor condition.

If you hop off at a stop, don't expect the bus to be back at timely intervals, especially as the day goes on. We found several times where there would be two or even three buses that would stop within a couple of minutes of one another, and then there would be large gaps of time before the next bus came. It's also sometimes hard to find the drop-off spots as not all locations are well-marked. It's also important to note that not all the drop-off locations are that close to the monument that they advertise to be the drop off for, such as stop 7 for the Washington Monument, so be aware that there will be a lot of walking to get to some monuments if you hop off.

Overall, we recommend this tour, but temper your expectations especially if you plan to use this as a hop on hop...

I love this company! I have taken their tours in Key West FL, Saint Augustine FL, Savanah GA, and now Washington DC!

Typically they let you hop on and off at multiple sites which it doubles as a great from of transportation but now due to Covid there is only one stop. The trolly takes you through all the points of interest and the only stop is the Lincoln Memorial for about 30 minutes. 30 minutes is plenty of time explore and take photos.

My only negative is that we purchased the Arlington Cemetery tour as well, the Gold Package, and the none of the staff had the address for where we go to catch the Arlington tour and what to do once we got there.

To get into Arlington you need to go through security and need to have your drivers license or some form of government ID. Once we got inside we had no idea where to go. We saw the Arlington tour Trolly but no sight of Old Town Trolly. We also saw the there was a fee to ride the Arlington Trolly. I called the Old Town Trolly number and the girl who was trying to help literally said “I have no idea how the Arlington tour works”, I had to explain the process to her once I found out........we were SO surprised to find out that the trolly tours at the cemetery are done by the folks at Arlington not the Old Town Trolly Tours. Our tickets still worked however but the whole process was so confusing and completely avoidable if the Old Trolly Folks were more information on how the Arlington tour...

I would have given this a full five. The tours and tour guides themselves were excellent. The souvenir shop workers were blatantly rude and dismissive. As with any item purchased from a big city corner store gift shop in any big city, the quality of what you receive is nearly always significantly less than good. Upon purchasing a pair of sunglasses the nose pads simply fell off only an hour after use. Simply asking to replace the item seemed to be a rather big hassle. Two of the workers were significantly less than polite, one of whome appeared to be possibly a manager. The other got borderline hostile as I was not able to keep up with the cadence with which they spoke and had to repeatedly ask my question to understand. After noticing how hostile and agitated this person was getting I simply decided to leave. I feel sorry for any non-English speaker or elderly individuals that might have an issue, as this person and my first language was blatantly American-English. D.C. is an international city. Full of many diverse languages, speaking effectively understandably and politely is highly important in a place such as this. As an American I'm proud to see so many people the world over take interest in our culture and history so visibly displayed on these rather comfortable busses. The tour guides are witty, polite and knowledgeable of the history...