Washington DC Driving Tour
reviews and complaints

This is a great alternative for persons not wanting to get on a crowded bus or who want to spread out the tour over a couple of days.

Pros:

Price - Saved $300 on a family of 6!
Own Pace - Stop & Go
Cheesy Jokes!

Cons:

DC traffic patterns
No rerouting option
No historical deep dives.

The pros way outweigh the cons, but I wanted to provide my true experience. Our family is looking forward to doing this tour again on our next DC visit.

We took full advantage of this app when my son was exhausted and wanted to nap in the car. It was amazing and full of history and detail. Washington DC‘s road plan is incredibly confusing and the app did a great job of telling you which way to go. It's best to use if you have a co- navigator to read the GPS map. However even if you're on your own, it's a great way to find all kinds of secret hidden places amongst the city full of history. Well done!

I was hesitant to spend the money after reading the reviews, but I'm so glad we did! We are new to the area, having been stationed here in August.

My parents came to visit for Christmas and in the midst of pretty crappy weather and Covid closures, we didn't have much to offer them. We knew we were going to at least drive around DC and in my search for things to see on a driving tour I found this app.

We started at number 1, driving down Pennsylvania away from the Capitol. We followed it all the way through number 110ish (Georgetown area) when it got too dark to really enjoy the sights.

We started on a Wednesday around 2pm the week after Christmas. I'm sure the traffic was lighter than normal, although there's never NOT traffic in DC.

We encountered a couple blocked roads, cause you know, DC ‍♀️We simply went up a block or two and turned around to rejoin the route on the other side of the block. One reviewer complained that the app didn't know about blocked roads, and I'm not sure how they expect the app to know this...they randomly block roads in DC all the time for various reasons. Even Google doesn't know which ones. It's basic navigation skills to go around them.

We found the narration to be interesting and funny-ish. There were some corny ones, but they seemed intentional - like they were laughing at themselves too. The info was good and well timed. I kept shaking my head at what must have gone into timing all those at the right spot on the road and getting them the right length.

There were a few that didn't have time to finish before the next one started, but nothing crazy and it was like twice out of the hundred plus points we did.

We did find that the notification of turns came too late a few times, but I was the passenger running the app so I would swipe out of the pop up pictures that went with the points and watch for turns. You definitely need someone other than the driver actually watching the phone because trying to listen to directions and watch for turns and everything would have been too much. It could be done, but it would have to be by someone really familiar with DC I would think.

One thing that did annoy me repeatedly was the fact that, if we were moving, the map constantly popped back to our “car dot". I was unable to zoom out or scroll around the map outside of the default car dot view. So sometimes it was hard for me to look ahead for those turns. If we were stopped I could scroll around the map, but if we were moving it followed the car only. So if there was a way to explore the map and then a button to make it go back to my location (like Google maps) I would have found that very helpful as the navigator.

We adapted and it was a very smooth and fun tour! My parents enjoyed it a lot. The narrators' voices didn't annoy me (this is huge for me as I'm someone who just gets annoyed by certain voices ), the information was thorough and interesting, and over all the app was easy to use.

I hate that it got such crappy reviews from other people. A lot of those kind of screamed “user error" to me. If you want to have your hand held as you tour DC, go on a guided tour. If you're grown up enough to find your way around and adapt when things come up, do this!

We were in DC for a few days during the COVID-19 pandemic and wanted to learn about the city. I was a bit hesitant to try this app tour because of the bad reviews, but we decided to give it a shot and it was super helpful!

It is a bit tricky to learn how to use and absolutely will cause frustration at first. Using this app meant that I needed to navigate a new city with unfamiliar streets and traffic patterns, avoid people that are actually trying to go somewhere, follow verbal driving directions, look at a map, listen to the tour information, and look at the various buildings I was trying to learn about. This is a lot of multi-tasking. It actually took about 40 stages of this tour to get comfortable with using the app. I also expected this tour to take about 1 ½ hours, but this tour has a ton of information and highlights around 150 locations. It took us about 4-5 hours over 3 days to finish this tour.

As far as the actual content of the tour, I felt like they shared the right amount of information, just enough to be interesting but not too much to make it boring. I also like that they used three voices, two for the actual tour and another voice for the directions.

One tech thing that was frustrating, was that when driving from location to location, the app would suddenly switch from the map view to show the image(s) for that location. This is understandable, but it was also super unhelpful from time to time, as I often needed to view the map right when the app would switch to a picture. This was especially pointless when it would switch to the “no image for this location" screen during the navigation prompts, exactly when I needed to figure out where to go by looking at the map! I ended up missing a turn more than once when this happened and at one point when I was still figuring out the app, I ended up in across the Potomac in Virginia driving down the George Washington Memorial Parkway toward the Ronald Reagan National Airport. Eventually, I got turned around in the airport, but it literally took 45 minutes to get back to the spot in the tour where we left off. After this, I learned to switch back to the map view pretty quickly whenever it switched to a picture.

So the long and the short of it is that this is a great tour, but you will likely need to be a bit techy and it will take time to learn how to navigate and use it while you are driving. I honestly think that this tour would be most helpful the second time through after you have learned the route and become a bit more familiar with the city. Frustrations aside, thanks to everyone who helped make this tour. It was super awesome to be able to learn so much about DC in the limited about of time we had this week.

The tour takes you to and tells about lots of significant locations; no problems with the content. However, if and when you get off the rigidly designed route, there is no automatic provision in the tour for getting you back on track. You have to either stumble around until you intersect the track again or guide yourself to one of the tour locations. And then, when you find the tour route again, you have to be going in the right direction on the street - otherwise the audio tour's directions will send you astray again. Very frustrating! - and it's very easy to get off track in the labyrinth and confusion of DC streets, lanes, auto, scooter , bicycle and pedestrian traffic. An automatic GPS-based process is needed to get the tour driver back on the tour track when they get off track (which inevitably they will!).

During this time of COVID, this was a great alternative for our family to get a chance to see DC. The directions given throughout the tour were fantastic and easy to follow. I loved all the historical information and also how we were taken to areas that were off the beaten path. Yes hank you for sharing this with everyone! I highly recommend

During a pandemic, we thought this would be better than a crowded tour bus - and it was! A couple of new traffic patterns where left turns aren't allowed anyone, and sometimes it repeats the previous waypoint, but we got to see and hear about DC in a unique way.

I am glad we paid the money as we had about 2.5 hours in DC and this was a great app with my kids (7 & 4) in the backseat. A couple of hints:

I would recommend pre-listening to some of the sites ahead of time and familiarizing yourself with the routes.

The app doesn't do a great job of helping you get back on track and doesn't integrate with Apple Maps or show up on your car's dashboard (with CarPlay). Therefore make sure you have a passenger that can be staring at the map and helping you navigate.

More integration with Apple and Google Maps would be the suggestion to make this a 5 rather than a 4 star app. But totally worth it and better for our schedule!

This app was the highlight of our trip to DC! We loved all the interesting tidbits and sites we saw. As far as navigating goes, it is not Google Maps quality, but does a great job of visual and audio instructions. It worked best with me holding the phone and navigating, and my husband driving. Do yourself a favor and do not try to navigate DC streets and manage the app at the same time.

We were able to do segments of the tour whenever we wanted. Want to skip a part? That's easy to do. Just look for the number where you want to pick up again and the app will start the tour there.

We started at DuPont Circle and ended at Arlington. The next day, we did the Smithsonian through DuPont Circle! The third day, we went from after the bridge to Arlington all the way through where we started. Easy Peasy.

No bus tour is going to give you the flexibility like this! So much cheaper this way too.

Two siblings and I just used this app over the past three days and were very happy with it. Yes, there was some user adjustment, and yes, I made u-turns and around-the-block adjustments depending on traffic flow and unfamiliarity with the city streets, but we saw places we would not have ventured by or known what they were even if we had driven by them. We particularly enjoyed the Georgetown and embassy areas - two places we definitely would not have driven to without guidance. D.C. could definitely use more visible street signs and site markers- we were surprised at how poor the signage is overall. On the positive side, D.C. doesn't have many one-way streets compared to some other cities so it was easy to get back on track. As the driver, by the second day, I realized it was more helpful to use two devices with the app. I used my phone on the dash as my street driving guide as a sibling used my iPad to follow and play the site information through the car's bluetooth system. I was able to follow the street patterns much more easily that way. We heartily recommend this app if you have someone comfortable with city driving, and we feel it was worth every cent. Kudos!

Overall we were pleased with the app and how it guided us on a driving tour of the city.
There were some instances of being unable to follow the guidance due to road blockages or being unable to turn left when the app said to due to a “no left turns" arrow.
One suggested improvement is to give the user an ability to choose the stops to have on the tour and then only put those stops on the tour. Therefore making it as short or as long as they want.
There were many stops that we didn't care for.

While the app functioned as advertised, there were a number of issues that made it frustrating to use:

1. As the driver, every time the map was hidden/replaced because the building image was displayed instead caused me to miss a number of turns. It's also disconcerting when it happens and I'm coming up to an intersection then lose the map.

2. There really should be an option to turn off/select satellite imagery versus the vector street map. The photo map being overlaid by a dark blue/purple 2px thick line that blends easily into the image makes following it frustrating.

3. I'm very used to driving with Apple Maps app showing the turns in an isometric view and not top down. Additionally the map does not reorient based on the direction I'm facing, so it was difficult to try and navigate off of that if I got off the planned course.

4. The app really needs a filter to allow the user to select what they want to see. Being forced to go through 171 POIs where many were not the focus of our interest/trip, nor what we had allocated time for, was frustrating. It would be great if there were multiple pre-mapped tour routes based on interests, or level of fame that the user could filter the list to. The most desirable option would be being able to choose multiple POIs you're interested in, and have a tour route generated from the selection. Being able to focus on only 30-40 POIs instead of 171 is way more digestible.

Overall it's decent, while my family got more out of the app, as the driver it wasn't great to use.

App will not locate me on a map & tells me to update my privacy settings. I've done this, & it continues to tell me to update. There's no method for override—by, for example, letting me input my current location & begin directions from there, so it's useless.

We were excited to use the app despite mixed reviews. Really loved the history facts with the sites and sprinkles of humor.
It can be a little confusing getting started but once you get close to a site and click the site in the app, the story telling starts.

However, I wish there was a refund policy but since there isn't here's a few tips for anyone considering downloading. It would be best to drive the city late at night when there's hardly any traffic. That way you can enjoy the sites and stories better without worrying about delaying or navigating through traffic. If you get thrown off course at night it would be easier to course correct.

At certain sites the app and/or GPS kept messing up and throwing us off course. We were driving 10-15 mph and there were multiple times when the app gave the history lesson AFTER the site had been passed. There were times we were driving in the correct direction and the app said the location was on the opposite side of the street. There were times when the app would say stay or get in the right lane and then immediately after that say get in the left lane and turn left. Crossing several lanes of DC traffic makes this difficult, and then you get thrown off course.

You definitely cannot use this app as a solo traveler. You need someone to look at the map and help the driver navigate, it is a necessity. A couple of times the map re-oriented itself in the app throwing us off too. Sometimes the narration was way too fast and you couldn't understand what they were saying, or gave late narration. Sometimes the narration repeated the history lesson on its own after it had already told the story.

We tried to make the app work for the trip because when it worked it was good but eventually gave up and stopped using it out of frustration from how it kept messing up.

The app cannot orient to your direction, making it very difficult to know where or when to turn. In between wonderful information it would give directions mere seconds before you were expected to make a turn. You also cannot easily move around on the map to see what turns are coming ahead! With the number of stop lights and pedestrians we had to stop using it because it wasn't safe. Great concept and information, total fail on navigation and usability.

My family and I was looking forward to this app especially because of the holidays and with COVID we could drive around and still learn DC and it's history. After getting it started it would not connect directly to our vehicle like it said and we got off the tour several times because of the directions being late or not being clear. We missed over half of DC because of this. This was my daughters first time to DC and she was very excited and after everything started going rough we lost complete interest and just returned to our families home. Very unhappy and wish I could get a refund.

I loved the information about the stops, but there are no actual directions. You just have a blue line that you have to guess at. This would be absolutely perfect if it was more like an ordinary GPS that gave you better direction. In DC, there is so much traffic that it's almost impossible to have the time to read street signs while looking at the map on the phone. :(

Extremely discouraged that the map wouldn't allow you to zoom out…it would automatically zoom back in…making it difficult to plan for sites ahead. The dialogue kept getting interrupted by driving directions. Felt very disjointed. Would not recommend to others.

5/22/22
Horrible! Not worth it AT ALL! I wish I could get my money back. Not updated, doesn't recognize your location well. I don't know DC well and their traffic patterns. The directions would just start playing and you would do what was told and you end up way off coarse and couldn't get back.

I live in DC and wanted a hands off tour and info for out of town guests. CONFUSING! Last minute directions so turning left was impossible, as they always said to be in the slow lane. DC traffic is anything but slow, and if you are going to fast or there is no place to pull over (all of DC) the info on the building stops and you miss out. LOTS of bad turns and no arrows on the map to know which direction to go. Gave up on tour about 1/4 of the way thru. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!