Forbidden City&T-Square Small GroupTours w/ ticket(Eng/Esp Guide)

Tour guide was not that informative and we kept getting slowed down by the group. We ended up leaving the group and doing our own thing due to the bad experience. The best part of this offering was getting the tickets to access the city and square and also bypassing most of the line.

Everything leading up to the tour seemed fine. The challenges started from the meeting point. The location that was shared, the description, name (Muji hotel), map, and Didi all gave different locations that were slightly off. On top of which cars are not allowed to stop right in front of the hotel so you get dropped a few blocks away. This is a good meeting point on paper, but practically and logistically an awful place to navigate to. Next was the lack of communication and clarity. We expected to do the Forbidden city first, then Tiananmen square mostly because we were expecting to skip the Square due to time constraints. Once the tour started we were told we were doing the square first. The one good thing about booking this tour is it allows you to skip the ticket and security lines which were literally hours long. We got through all the checkpoints in under half an hour. We could have spent a lot less time at the square than we did. There's not much to see. It's a big square and you take pictures of the buildings on all sides. This didn't require all the time we took there, which was more than half an hour. Moving on to getting into the city, this is when issues really started to show. There were a lot of twists and turns and lines to queue in. A bit minor but I'm used to having more communication from the guide. Instead she mostly just kept walking ahead with the occasional (keep left). Without herding our group, we had a lot of stragglers. And I'm sure there were interesting things to mention about all the structures we passed through and under. Once we made it inside the walls, this is really where the tour fell apart. She was on her phone constantly as we were walking instead of engaging with the group, or pointing things out. To be honest, it looked like she was reading about the buildings and everything in a tour book on her phone in real time, and occasionally would look up to give us a summary of what she read. Very low engagement with the group and the sights themselves. She'd merely point to a building and say this was for the ceremony. Inside is this throne. And kept moving, instead of walking us up to the actual sight and point out the insides to us and let us take pictures. So here you had a choice, break off and go see it yourself and risk losing the group, or stick with the group and basically not see anything. There were points where she just pulled up pictures on her phone when the doors were wide open. Other guides would have walked us up to the door, ushered us to a good vantage point, pointed out structural or decorative details before moving on. We just kept walking. Eventually we just started losing more and more people and we finally split off ourselves. Getting an express pass for entry was worth it. But, at the end of the day we booked an in person live tour, not a walking Wikipedia summary, which would have been more informative anyway. Just getting in and reading the very helpful and informative signs would have been more interesting. I'll likely never book with this company again.

Going with a tour guide allowed us to skip the queue which was humongous but the guide told us this was allowed by the government for the month of august only due to the high number of visitors. The guide was a good person but his english was difficult to understand and the poor quality headset did not help either. The place is fantastic but the guide did not make it very engaging. In my opinion he was knowledgable but could have focused much more on the history than what he did.

Our guide Melony was the best! She give us a lot of practical information before the tour. Douring the tour She explained in a very food english all the story, the details about beijing and the forbidden city. She also give us a lot of suggestion for out stay in the city such as shopping and food.

My tour with Vanessa was excellent. She was knowledgeable and kept the group well informed along the way. Her pleasant personality was well received. I would happily recommend her services for anyone thinking of taking this tour.

I’m really satisfied with the service provided by Snow during our tour of Tiananmen Square and the Palace Museum. She was very friendly, knowledgeable, and explained everything clearly. She patiently answered all of our questions and made the whole experience much more enjoyable. There were huge queues at the entrances, and without Snow’s help and guidance, it would have been very difficult for us to manage everything smoothly. We had a wonderful experience and really appreciated her support throughout the tour. Highly recommended to anyone visiting Beijing!

Amazing place. Listen to the guide. Ours was amazing! The waiting to visit the Square was the worst. The guide warnned us and we did not listen to him. Bad decision from the us.

I would advise booking a tour for T. Square & Forbidden city. They handle booking the tickets for you. Also, the forbidden city is huge. Tour tries to cover the most important parts.

Very good tour. The tour guide Snow was very funny and informative giving us lots of detail in perfect English. Very much recommended!

We had the best time. Our tour guide Vanessa was so friendly and organised. She was so insightful and the full tour was very well paced and informative, we learned a lot and our knowledge was tested in fun quizzes. Cannot recommend enough!