Washington DC – Driving Tour

The directions don’t give you enough information until it’s too late, especially if you aren’t used to driving in a city. We also found that it repeated itself for each stop. There are so many roads that shouldn’t be used by tourists that are part of this tour. We literally drove in circles for 3 hours before we got halfway through the tour and gave up.

While it is somewhat informative but slightest bit of slow or fast moving traffic you will be completely off course and the narration of directions are spotty at best.

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!).

I thought it was disorganized and overall poorly executed. Not a good use of my money.

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.

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.

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. :(

The recordings sounded good, but I couldn't figure out how to work it to coordinate the driving path. A waste of my money.

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.

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.