Top Colorado Bus Tours - page 2

This was an extremely informative and enjoyable tour of some of the key areas of Rocky Mountain National Park. If you’ve never been to this area this is a fantastic way to gain rapid exposure without the hassle of getting a park pass and registering for timed entry and dealing with traffic yourself. Instead you just drive into town check-in at the office and board when your party is called. Both the office staff and the tour guide were friendly and welcoming. Complimentary soft drinks and light snacks were made available in the waiting area of the tour office and on board the vehicle. Our tour guide, Wesley, was really great. He was super chill and very knowledgeable. He shared a ton of great information about the park, the local history of the community, and other points of interest. This was a family vacation to Estes Park with my wife and 16 year-old daughter. Neither of them had ever been to Colorado before and they both had a blast. Some miscellaneous logistics information: Seating is not assigned and you are boarded in order of your check-in to the office so if you want the best choice of seating try to arrive early/first. We did the 815 start and got there about 740 and it was a ghost town so you should be able to get good on street parking during the week at least if you are on the early tour. There isn’t much parking so if you don’t get there early you may build in some time to walk from wherever you have to park. Again if you have never been to this area, follow the warnings of others: it’s always colder here in the morning than you expect so heading up the mountain with the top open was cold. Not unpleasant but definitely cold. Make sure you have a sweatshirt or a softshell jacket. Definitely bring sunglasses as well for both sun and wind protection for your eyes. Be sure to apply sunscreen to your face and don’t be surprised if you end up a little bit wind burned. As you get toward the top it does get suddenly colder and much windier even on a very nice day so be ready for that. If you are afraid of heights there will be parts of this trip that are momentarily nerve wracking. Even though you’re way up high on the mountain most of the time it’s either heavily wooded on both sides so it doesn’t seem scary or you are still layers up not a direct edge with a 10,000 foot drop. With that said there are some points along the trip where it is a pretty big drop on both sides. They are short-lived and not worth skipping all the other awesome parts of the experience. Restroom access is available at each stop along the tour. The tour lasted approximately four hours and there was an opportunity to browse a comprehensive gift shop on one of the stops. If you are a big and tall traveler, this is a Mercedes sprinter van with comfortable but somewhat snug seats compared to the seats in a full-size pickup or SUV for example. Leg room was reasonable but not abundant. You’ll probably wanna board first if you can get there early and snag the first row of seats that way you don’t have to squeeze in between the gaps to get to the additional seats further back. If you find traditional theater seats tight you may want to select a different tour company. There was one that had what looked like big yellow open back trucks with roll cage frames and perpendicular bench seating in the back of a truck bed and it was more accommodating to big big folks. We saw them stopped at one of the points of interest we stopped at as well.