With branches in some two-dozen cities on four different continents, Big Bus Tours is widely considered the world’s largest open-top sightseeing bus tour company. Big Bus Tours London lives up to this billing, letting visitors hop-on and hop-off at over 36 distinctive stops along three unique bus routes in the midst of the city’s most popular neighborhoods, attractions, and historic sites.
Money Saving Tip! Big Bus Tours London is included on the London Pass and London Explorer Pass. If you are sightseeing in London, then you can save a lot of money with the pass.
Big Bus London Tour Details
The classic Big Bus Tours experience is called the Discover Ticket, and it consists of a pass that lets you hop-on and hop-off any one of the company’s numerous London buses at designated attractions as many times as you want during a 24-hour period. Thus, if you want to use your Big Bus ticket simply as a guided tour of London by staying onboard the bus for its entire route, you can do that; you can also choose to use your Big Bus ticket as a means of transportation, hopping off the bus at whatever attractions suit your sightseeing fancy. Do keep in mind that their predetermined routes make them inflexible in traffic, so using the Big Bus to get around can have periodic drawbacks.
Two other Big Bus Tours ticket packages are available in London. The Essential Ticket offers the same perks as the Discover Ticket, except it’s also good for 48 hours, comes with a one-way river cruise ticket, and includes three guided walking tours of London; you can even change the date of your booking without incurring any kind of financial penalty. The Explore Ticket is identical to the Essential Ticket with the added bonus of a London Evening Tour.
No matter which Big Bus Tours product you select, your hop-on, hop-off bus tour will feature three carefully designed routes. The Red Route has 22 stops and includes such popular attractions as St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace; if you were to ride it from start to finish it would take about two-and-a-half hours. The Blue Route has 36 stops and features notable destinations like Kensington Palace, Horse Guards, and the London Eye; it makes for a three-and-a-half trip, beginning to end. The Green Link runs a bit less frequently and takes only 70 minutes total; it covers stops near the London Canal Museum, the Foundling Museum, and the London Transport Museum.
Getting the Most Out of Your Big Bus Tours Experience
Continue reading below for several tips that’ll enable you to maximize your upcoming Big Bus Tours experience.
*Big Bus Tours has created their own mobile app designed to enhance your sightseeing experience; you can download it for free straight to your smartphone. This app features a host of helpful resources like real-time bus tracking, detailed maps, walking directions, bus routes, information on nearby restaurants, and more.
*Your Big Bus tour experience comes with a pre-recorded commentary sharing informative facts and entertaining stories about the many sights you’ll be passing during your journey. A pair of new headphones should be provided for you when you board the bus; when in doubt, you can always bring along your own earbuds. This pre-recorded commentary is available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German.
*If you’re brainstorming ways to organize your dream London vacation, take a moment to visit the official Big Bus Tours London website. There you’ll find suggested itineraries and numerous articles containing travel tips, best restaurant lists, things to do, and a whole lot more.
*There are two ways to access your Big Bus Tours ticket. If you prefer, you can download your ticket and print it at home; this document will contain a code that your Big Bus Tours staff member will check before you board your bus—they should then give you a receipt that you’ll use every time you hop-on or hop-off moving forward. Or you can simply request your tickets be sent to your smartphone via a text message; that text message will contain a link where you can access your e-ticket.
Why Choose Big Bus Tours?
While they may not deliver some of the personalized touches you’ll encounter from less-famous local tour companies that run more idiosyncratic tours in smaller groups, there are still a number of reasons to choose Big Bus Tours as your London tour company. Their worldwide reputation as a bus tour company with franchises in approximately two-dozen major cities across the planet goes a long way toward ensuring the quality of their product. Meanwhile, that product gives you tremendous sightseeing flexibility, as you can utilize it both as a guided tour and means of transportation all for the price of a single ticket.