I’ve been to Gettysburg many times. My dad moved close a few years ago. It’s always been his favorite place to visit and he was always a Civil War buff. He would be our unofficial tour guide whenever we visited. He now has dementia and when I came to visit from out of state we took the 25 minute drive north to drive around. This allowed us to see all the places and my dad got so excited whenever he would hear something on the audio that would spark a memory. We had a great day and I would recommend this to anyone wanting to learn more about Gettysburg while going at your own pace.

The app itself is a stroke of genius. A driving tour that triggers audio stories at certain markers and sends you all over the town. Loved that aspect. The information is extremely simplistic and political and lacks any nuance. It’s a perfect example of, while facts can lead us to explore truths, they can also be used to press us into misleading narratives. The intro for example sets the tone that the south was morally impaired and was fighting for slavery rather than their independence, while framing the north as a free place that simply couldn’t let the south go because .”...the states would no longer be United.” Yikes. It then sets off to demonize men like Robert E Lee, first by framing him as “ the son of a prominent plantation owner, ( Henry Lighthorse Lee who was also a patriot and a war hero, but that is not mentioned) then goes on to say he had hundreds of slaves( his wife’s) and that he treated them so poorly that they wished to revolt; ( the only sources for this are based on a female modern historian who is a radical leftest, modern feminist, and surmises her history on a few of anecdotes that no way reflect the overall character of the man.) After this I pretty much understood what I was getting into. I wanted to hear an objective version of the battle; get a feel for the characters involved and feel it for the glory and horror and intensity that is war. Instead I got a cherry picking of facts that support a narrative that makes literally no one look good, and find myself wondering why they bother giving a tour at all.

February 2021: We did the Ghost Tour, it did take about 3 hours as it said. We found it very interesting and enjoyable. Definitely worth the download. The GPS functionality was spot on, and the stories were riveting. I don’t know if it’s possible to actually note on the map where some of the locations in the audio are, so you know where exactly to look. That’s the only suggestion I had, since I don’t know which compass direction I’m looking, or if there’s more than 1 building you’re near/viewing.Update: the last few months (since late summer 2021) I can’t even get the app to open. It flashes the Lincoln pic, then crashes. Yes, I update my apps so please don’t tell me to update and it’ll be ok. It is updated. Running iOS 15 now I think, but the app stopped working before with the iOS 14. Please fix as I have paid for some of the included tours and now I can’t use them.

We toured the battlefields Sunday September 13th, 2020 and this app worked great for our driving tour! The map route was very helpful and it was simple to follow what stop we were supposed to get to next! We were able to play it through our car speakers so everyone could hear, the audio was very well done! One of the downsides to this app was each time I would close out of the app to use my phone to take pictures, after opening the app again it wouldn’t track our location until I restarted the app, opened the tour, skipped ahead to where we left off, and I had to do that every time I went to take pictures (which was a lot). We only got mixed up in the tour twice. At point 3F, the guide tells you to turn left into Seminary Ridge Museum parking lot which is now not an entry point. The parking lot is to the right so we pulled in there to play the informative spot 3G. It seems like a quick update to the app can fix that slight confusion. The only other mix up we had was on our way from point 15 to 16, we crossed through 12B again which interrupted the audio for point 15. We had to pause the audio for 12B and skip ahead using the arrow buttons to get back to audio 15. This was just a bit frustrating since I was the one driving and operating the app. Other than the few glitches, most of the tour was hands free audio. While we were approaching the marked areas on the map, automatic audio would begin to play stories and information as well as tell us directions; which was a very helpful feature! I’ll definitely use this app again! I hope the next time I go to use this app there are alternate routes on roads that we weren’t guided to. There’s so much more to explore and I would love another guided tour from this app.