Washington DC – Driving Tour 4+

Washington DC tour

The tour takes you to and tells about lots of significant locations; no problems with the content. However, if and when you get off the rigidly designed route, there is no automatic provision in the tour for getting you back on track. You have to either stumble around until you intersect the track again or guide yourself to one of the tour locations. And then, when you find the tour route again, you have to be going in the right direction on the street - otherwise the audio tour’s directions will send you astray again. Very frustrating! - and it’s very easy to get off track in the labyrinth and confusion of DC streets, lanes, auto, scooter , bicycle and pedestrian traffic. An automatic GPS-based process is needed to get the tour driver back on the tour track when they get off track (which inevitably they will!).

Well worth it!

Two siblings and I just used this app over the past three days and were very happy with it. Yes, there was some user adjustment, and yes, I made u-turns and around-the-block adjustments depending on traffic flow and unfamiliarity with the city streets, but we saw places we would not have ventured by or known what they were even if we had driven by them. We particularly enjoyed the Georgetown and embassy areas - two places we definitely would not have driven to without guidance. D.C. could definitely use more visible street signs and site markers- we were surprised at how poor the signage is overall. On the positive side, D.C. doesn’t have many one-way streets compared to some other cities so it was easy to get back on track. As the driver, by the second day, I realized it was more helpful to use two devices with the app. I used my phone on the dash as my street driving guide as a sibling used my iPad to follow and play the site information through the car’s bluetooth system. I was able to follow the street patterns much more easily that way. We heartily recommend this app if you have someone comfortable with city driving, and we feel it was worth every cent. Kudos!

Good, but needs improvement

Overall we were pleased with the app and how it guided us on a driving tour of the city.
There were some instances of being unable to follow the guidance due to road blockages or being unable to turn left when the app said to due to a “no left turns” arrow.
One suggested improvement is to give the user an ability to choose the stops to have on the tour and then only put those stops on the tour. Therefore making it as short or as long as they want.
There were many stops that we didn’t care for.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your helpful comments. As of October 15, 2921 the tour has been updated with additional prompts for more warnings about upcoming turns. Also there are new locations on the tour. One can customize the tour by simply skipping the sites you don't want to see and taking you own shortcut to the next section you want to see. Once back on the defined route the GPS tour will pick up again and continue on. We hope this tip is helpful and you'll give it another try.