2 Hours Tour Of The Vatican And Sistine Chapel With Official Guide

Better off doing this as a skip the line ticket without the tour guide. If I knew this was an option I would have booked that option and gotten myself in through the checkpoints needed and once inside I would not have wasted as much time as the tour guide did. Our guide was okay. You could tell he knew his stuff but he was not engaging. He also lacked logical and reasonable assessments of what his audience wanted and was there for. First off the tour started at 11:20 instead of 11 AM and I expected the tour to last from 11 AM to 1 pm (2 hours as stated). However, that was not the case. It started late and on top of it the guide kept stopping at locations within the Vatican and kept droning on and on. The first stop he had us out in the heat and sun pointing to images of the Creation that he could have been talking about inside if he wanted to where it was cool and in the shade. It was unbearable. The tour guide and the company have to realize that people pay for a good service that is quick, efficient and to the point. We want to see the highlights. We don't need to be bombarded by facts and figures thrown at us and waste our time. We came here to see the highlights. When it was 12:43 AM and we were still nowhere near the Sistine Chapel and I asked the guide what time we would see it he said about 1:15 pm which was unacceptable. We had somewhere else to be and we also didn't believe the guide. At the rate he was going it was going to be another hour. We cut out of there and quickly made our way through the crowds of people and only by the nick of time and by begging a guard to let us go through a rope to cut across some rooms to get toward the Sistine Chapel were we able to make it out. The Vatican is a maze. We kept trying to find the street exit and it was a maze that we could not get out of easily. Even by walking quickly on our own we were out by 1:10 so I doubt that the tour ended until well after 2. A two hour tour turning into a three hour tour is unacceptable because had the tour guide been cognizant and respectful of people's time, he would have kept going and not standing and talking about things that were not the highlight of the museum or the tour. Overall, I would say that this is one tour and experience that you only need the guide for getting you into the museum and the Vatican and if you don't" want to stay there all day, and get out at a decent time, you should not do the tour but just get the skip the line tickets through the company.

It is nice tour and with the fast pass it is worth it as lines was extremely long and orders at sites entrance are not chaotic. The instructions is to come 30 min earlier but in fact, they ask you to come 15 after the official start time, so we had to spend 45 doing nothing. Other, it is not bad.

Although we bypassed lines, not as informative as a tour I would've liked. English was a struggle by guide and he did not have command of group dynamics as people kept getting lost during tour.

Our guide Pablo was so great! He was knowledgeable and shared details with passion and humor. I would recommend more than 2 hrs if you have the time. We had only a few hrs cruise disembarkation to our flight home so this was perfect.

Maria was fantastic, she shared a lot of details especially on the Sistine Chapel as well as the museums. Great insights and a wonderful tour guide.