TopView Sightseeing 4+

I like the idea of this TopView bus. The people were nice and drivers were good. However, for what you pay, our night bus left an hour late because they waited for it to fill up, and I wish it stopped at the One World Tower (911 Memorial), and our tour guide could have been more knowledgeable. Otherwise all was good.

Have always loved a hop on hop off bus in cities, ridden them in Paris, Capetown, etc and it’s a fun informative way to get around the various sites. But this app and the NYC tour was terrible. First it’s a bait and switch, I paid for a 48 hour pass that said it “includes Central Park bike rental”. Then after you’ve purchased they send you an email that gives an asterisk saying it’s only with purchase. At that point you can’t refund the pass! So we get to the bike rental and they tell us it’s only 2 extra hours free after you pay for an hour. Obviously they get a lot of scammed people from this bait and switch bc she was very rude about it.
The app had no idea where we were and directed us to take two subway rides to get to stop 1 when we could see the Empire State Building and that stop was only a couple blocks away.
The bus ride itself was frustrating as traffic does not really move so you’re just roasting at the top of the bus while it plays music bc they can’t think of any additional info about this city to fill the time while the bus is stopped?

Hop-on hop-off would seem to indicate something faster than waiting in line 45 minutes to just get on the bottom level, which had sun shaded windows that did not allow a good view. Finally got on top when several people exited the bus. Received head phones that supposedly directed you to the various sites. However the recording did not match with the position of the bus causing confusion. Since the lines were so long, we opted to just ride the full circuit. The bus driver stopped at the last stop, and since we expected it to return to where we boarded the bus, we waited for the bus to resume. An employee came to the top and announced to everyone that we had to leave as the bus driver had departed for her break, and he had to clean. He pointed in some vague direction to the stop we expected to be returned to. We complained to the company, and they gave us two more tickets ….like we would ever ride that bus again!