Tales & Tours - travel guides and offline maps

Downloaded to use in Porto, GPS doesn’t locate, map doesn’t update, and there’s no audio.

App seems to be retired.

I downloaded this app since I wanted to take an audio tour of Coyoacán in Mexico City. Right off the bat, I encountered some difficulty. I made an account, but logging in wouldn’t do anything. It would just bring me back to the sign-on main page and say nothing else. After 4 attempts, things got worse. All of a sudden, it logged me in 4 times at once, giving me an onslaught of repeating pop-ups that it took me a solid 3 minutes to trudge my way through. After I finally accepted the terms and conditions for the fourth time, the tour I wanted to listen to was “under revision” and didn’t work, telling me to check back later. Maybe I was just unlucky, but honestly I’m too frustrated to continue using this app after all that. It has a lot of potential, but is severely held back by flawed programming.

I downloaded Mt. St. Helens guide and was looking forward for a great guided trip. But the app didn’t automatically run no matter what I’ve done. The whole point of such guide app it’s to find the user’s location and to run the audio automatically. Instead we had to start the audio manually, hopefully it is the right time. Obviously we had no idea if what was playing in the app is what we see. Very disappointing experience. Paid money for nothing.

It was great to see the variety of tours - and we were delighted to see a Chichen Itza guide but it has many issues. (1) Too Long: It is 90 degrees outside in Cancun. Standing and listening to the paragraphs of rambling text is an exercise in endurance. If there were actual stories - it would be bearable - but these are filled with generalizations rather than stories peppered with facts. (2) Slow Speakers: Humans can listen at 300 words per minutes. People speak at 100 wpm. That means we are continually bored listening to people. The speakers take their time talking. Get faster speakers or let us increase the speed. (3) Missing Text: Where's the text for Chichen Itza? The app store pictures show text. We would prefer to just read it aloud ourselves instead of listening to your pictures - that way we can skip to the stories and facts and remove all the fluff. (4) Unlabeled/Unsynchonized Pictures: The pictures aren't labeled. They talk about different trees - there are pictures of trees - but none of them are labeled so you still don't know what tree they are discussing. The pictures should synchonize with the spoken text. (5) This is a WALKING guide, not a STANDING guide. Why isn't this designed to talk to you while you walk? Never once does it say, "Now walk to the temple"...and then give you audio to teach you something while you walk. That would be value added. Instead, you walk with no idea what to play until you get there. That means they have created a STANDING guide. You walk and then stand - often longer than you normally would. (1) MIssing Text: There's audio but where is the text? We would prefer to read these aloud ourselves rather than listen

We bought the Brooklyn Heights tour and the commentary was decent, not great. We did leave knowing more than we did when we came, so it was worth the $3.99 for us. One annoying feature is requiring location services to be turned on. There is something with this setting (and the camera?) that drained the battery. I'm talking stopping for lunch so I could plug in my phone drainage. Why I need this setting on is beyond me. I can find my way a couple of blocks without it.

To get access to any of the "tours" an in-app purchase is required. This would be fine if you actually received a tour as a result of your payment. I paid $3.99 for the Angkor Wat "tour" and all I received was a few 60-120 clips of someone reciting from a guidebook about the site - not a tour. A tour is something that guides you through a site, city, etc and tells you where to go and what to do. This did not do that - it just told me the same things that I could have read in my guidebook.

I did the free tour in LeS NYC and also 1 paid tour in Brooklyn. Really nice. Interface is wonderful too. Recommended

Can't download any tours. Everyone says "this product is under revision." Been trying for a few days now.

I love traveling and backpacking. I don't think I would've survived without Tales and Tours. It pointed me to the best and right places without spending a lot! Love this app.