Alcatraz Experience-Audio Tour 4+

The concept of the app is great but the app itself is rather raw. It’s great that you can avoid using the audio device they provide, especially during the Covid times, but I’d suggest still getting the device if you want good experience. One issue with the app is it seems to download the audio files as you go from point to point so if the connection isn’t there, you’ll have issues with the app working. And there are plenty of spots where the connection - both WiFi they provide and cell, is very poor. Another issue is you can’t seem to change from one chapter to another without being next to the needed place. Why? I hope the devs continue to improve the app and it becomes something that can replace the audio device!

We visited Alcatraz on the tail end of the COVID pandemic, when they were still limiting use of the usual audio devices. The phone app really is a nice solution. I made sure everyone in my group brought headphones and downloaded the app ahead of time. The audio quality sounded great and the tour was very immersive.

My one complaint? It was a little tricky figuring out where to start the tour. There was a very specific area to start it where there were staff and signage to tell you, but that could have been made clearer. We got into the cell house and just assumed the staff was missing, not realizing we were in a queue for where the tour actually starts. And if you start it early the app actually goes out of its way to prevent you from restarting it or going backwards. Why? What is this trying to prevent?

Fortunately it’s pretty easy to get around this just by deleting and re-installing the app which wipes out the data it stores on your device to enforce this. But as those of us in the industry like to say, that’s just a bad UX (“user experience”).

Each person in our party had downloaded the app in advance and brought our own headphones/earbuds, but we ended up having to go back through the line to get the provided audio devices.

I can tell that the app was thoughtfully designed, but it seemed that each audio segment needed to download on site, and connectivity was not reliable. In any case, it may be simpler to just use the provided device.