Big Bus Tours Chicago — Local services in West Chicago Township

Let me say I would I give 5 stars for the lovely Bianca who assisted us as 2 separate stops. She is a gem and tried her best to help fix the other drivers mess. The tour , in and of itself , was fun and informative. Tho in the past it seems there was more live tour guide engagement. This was mostly recordings. Rain was forecasted and it did indeed rain. Not an issue as we were inside the bus. Then the driver pulled into Adler Planetarium after describing how great it was. It was now lightning and hailing. All the people from the top came down and the bus was packed. Too packed for covid safety so we and a few others decided we’d go to the planetarium since it sounded very cool via the guides descriptions. Bus took off , we ran to the door , and it’s closed. And has been for over a year. So much wrong here! This tour guide who said he’s been there 11 years didn’t know this? Or if he DID it then why did he send a group off in a lightning storm only to be stranded. Which we were. No phone number to call, app was useless Finally Bianca came and picked us all up. It was then we were offered ponchos , out of a huge tub of them. 1st driver never offered even when he dropped us off in a storm Contacted customer service who emailed me that they were very concerned and would Get back with me. Not a word so far. To make matters worse , after our stop at Navy Pier, we approached our bus, to be told it wasn’t the right bus. I asked for an actual phone number to call. He gave me a pamphlet . Then asked what had happened. As we began to explain he interrupts us and turns his back to us and begins talking to his co worker. Finally it was Bianca again who picked us up. Great job Bianca. Nice tour of the sites . Clean bus. Terrible customer service from all...

My girlfriend and I took this tour on the first available bus in the morning. The driver was Alicia (sorry if the spelling is incorrect), and she was AMAZING. She was the driver and had so much great knowledge about Chicago and we greatly enjoyed the first leg of the tour. We then hopped out at Millennium Park to look around, rejoining the tour bus afterwards.

The tour went a bit downhill from there. The prerecorded audio and music was not enjoyable at all. It relied on factoid games and fake conversations instead of giving prompt interesting facts about the area of the city we were in (as Alicia was doing excellently).

In the hour and ten minute remainder of the journey, we got maybe (or at least what felt like) 13 minutes of decent information from the tour with anything else being fluff, or music. The audio didn't need characters, the city should be the character.

We switched buses towards the end and managed to get onto Alicia's bus again! The remaining fifteen minutes of the tour was literally night and day, with her narration and pointing out interesting landmarks being the absolute greatest part of the tour. We wish we had stayed on the bus with her as our guide for the entire tour.

Please rerecord the prerecorded audio segments with Alicia, and make the prerecorded sections play much much more often.i can't get over how empty the tour felt without an in-person guide.

The route did show a lot of the city we wanted to see, but we are very letdown by the content of the tour. The only reason I am giving such a decent rating is due to the route, the frequency of the buses and Alicia's...

We booked our bus tour for July 22, 2025 and arrived at the Willis Tower stop before 11:00 AM. The app showed the next bus would arrived in 10-15 minutes. However, we waited 45 minutes for the next bus. We then rode the bus to Millennium Park and got off for some pictures and to walk around. We walked to Grant Park too and then got back on the bus at the Grant Park stop. We rode the bus to Navy Pier and got off around 2:00 PM. We knew the last bus was scheduled for pickup at Navy Pier around 6:12 that day, but we needed to get on an earlier bus due to having a river tour scheduled for 7:30 that evening. We walked out to the Navy Pier bus stop at 5:00 PM and waited until nearly 6:00 and still no bus. I checked the app and it didn't even show a bus coming to Navy Pier and just said "arrives every 30-45 minutes" and we had already been out there over 45 minutes. So we decided to just walk to our River Tour which was a 30 minute walk from Navy Pier. I continued to monitor the bus app just to see when the bus actually arrived and it wasn't until after 6:30, so an hour and a half after we went out to wait on the bus. We did this tour back in 2018 and it was prompt and the commentary on the bus was from a live person and was great! Now the commentary is recorded and you listen to headphones. It's very basic and not entertaining at all. We would not do this tour again as it was a waste of our time and money! We had 6 people with us and paid nearly $400 and weren't even able to finish the tour due to the bus not...