San Francisco Super Saver: Grand City Tour plus Muir Woods & Sausalito Day Trip

I understand the restrictions on the tour by the National Park Service, but thought I was booking one long tour, not 2 short tours. There was quite a bit of overlap.

We were only in San Francisco for a day and a half so this was a great way to see a ton of stuff. Our guides were great and extremely knowledgeable. The buses were super comfy and I was very impressed with the skills of the drivers.

Six of our family members on a cruise were booked for this tour. We were supposed to leave at 9:30 and arranged an Uber to pick us up at the pier. Unfortunately, the port had a problem with the gangway, so we weren't allowed off the ship until nearly 10:00 a.m. Since our tour had already left before us, we went to the Gray Line Office in town and explained our dilemma. The person there, although very friendly and apologetic, booked us on a substitute for the morning, a Hop On Hop Off bus so we could find our way to the sights we wanted to see. Our Muir Woods/Sausalito trip was still booked for the afternoon, so we left the office and went to catch a Hop On Hop Off bus. We waited for an hour and although some came by, no one got off, so there were no seats for us. Then we waited nearly another hour, and finally got on a bus, but there were only four available seats up top, so I sat on the bottom, where I could see nothing because of the window covering down below. This bus took us to the Golden Gate, let us off, and then we had to get another bus going back into town. We got to see very little, where the original Super Saver tour we were booked on included a city tour. It was our first time in San Francisco, and we were very disappointed. At the bus stops, we saw about three times as many Hop On Hop Off buses run by other companies, but our tickets were for Gray Line, which were few and far between. We did go to Muir Woods and Sausalito in the late afternoon, and this was a wonderful excursion with the most knowledgeable driver/guide ever ,but the morning was a waste of our time and money. I will never recommend the Gray Line HopOn HopOff to anyone visiting SanFrancisco. I've been trying to contact Viator to inquire about a refund, but have been unable to do it online, so I will be calling them. I do highly recommend Muir Woods and Sausalito.

Absolutely amazing tour.

The tour itself was good you get to see a lot of the city and Muir Woods is amazing but I found the organization of the tour to be very poor compared to other tours I have taken throughout the USA and Europe. We were told we would be picked up from our hotel at 8 am - the bus was 20 mins late I understand that it happens sometimes but a call or text would have been nice as we waited outside in the cold for 30 mins and were beginning to think we were going to miss our tour and the bus was completely different colours from what we were told to look for green and white vs blue and grey. You're then dropped off at the main office the tour does not start right away after the hotel pick ups. It was absolute chaos at their main office in the morning where all of the tours depart from with people and buses everywhere and nobody tourists or the people working seemed to know where to go. There was no stop at Golden Gate Park as indicated in the description just a drive through it. Also important to note that it says it is an 8 hour tour but the tour started at 9 am and did not end until 7 pm we had expected to have more time to ourselves in the evening. You return to the main office and switch buses and guides between the city tour and Muir Woods tour which we were not expecting. Both of our guides were very good however our guide for Muir Woods had a strong accent and it was difficult to understand him, particularly as he was speaking through a microphone on a moving bus which was unfortunate as he was a very nice man and very knowledgeable. Overall I'm glad we did the tour as it allowed us to see a lot in one day but I would not book this tour again knowing what I know now.