City Sightseeing Lisbon Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour & Bookable Extras

Completely exactly what we wanted. With this tour, no place get leave behind. Easy access and buses wel equipped. Definitely, a must do in Lisbon.

Absolute disaster, especially the waiting times. There wasn't really anything to see either. We then switched to a taxi to still be able to keep to our schedule. Never again this company

Don't bother using this service. This is the worst City Sight Seeing service I have used in years. The routes are a complete waste of time and money. The Red Line just go to Belem and the Blue Line just goes around a selection of apartments blocks and show you a poor view of the Vaso De Gamme bridge. The only interesting line is the Yellow line but we weren't sold this on our ticket. You are far better off hiring a tuk tuk for the same money or better still use Tram 28 to tour both side of the city.

If you want value for money, chance to explore the city and to learn of its history then dont book with this company. Very disappointed considering ive used this company in other cities worldwide without issues! The commentary was lacking, the amount of buses even more so.....having to wait over 45mins for a bus which was crowded and practically standing room only leaves alot to be desired. At the height of the tourist season you would expect a better service but it felt like one they would provide in the middle of winter. The numbered stops on the blue line were wrong meaning that we missed our stop and because they are so far in between we couldn't get off at the next one and walk back. The company seem quick to take your money but not to provide a service. Has certainly put me off using this company in future when doing other city breaks.

On July 26, we used our prepurchased City Sightseeing Lisbon vouchers so that we could explore the city of Lisbon. We have enjoyed other hop on, hop off bus experiences with City Sightseeing in cities like Paris, Rome, San Diego, and New Orleans in the past. I want to preface my dissatisfaction with our situation in Lisbon by acknowledging it is extremely rare for me to write a negative review of my experiences with any company. However, I feel the need to leave this review in the hopes that City Sightseeing Lisbon will do better by future patrons. We were staying at the Sheraton Lisboa located just down the street from Marques de Pombal Stop #1 on the Red and Blue Lines in Lisbon. I thought this would provide a great opportunity for my family of 4 to see a lot of the city and stop at a few points of interest along the way on our first full day in the city. We arrived the previous day around midday by plane. I had scheduled a private Tuk Tuk tour our first evening in town that took us to many of the stops along City Sightseeing’s Red Line stops. So, my original plan was to take the Blue Line to the parts of Lisbon we hadn’t yet seen and to also stop at the Aquarium on Stop #4 of the Blue Line since my son and daughter wanted to go to the Oceanario / Aquarium. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Marques de Pombal Stop #1 around 11:30am, we were informed that the Blue Line bus had recently departed. I had read on their website that the Blue Line had buses that came every 45 minutes. However, the attendant told me that there is now only a bus every 90 minutes. I mentioned that I didn’t think that amount of time in between buses was accommodating for the customer, and the attendant whole-heartedly agreed with me. She said the company had cut back on a driver so there was one less bus operating the Blue Line loop. We didn’t want to wait for nearly 90 minutes since the Blue Line bus had recently departed from Stop 1. A Red Line bus had arrived, so I told my family we should just do the red line around for the 1 hour, 45 minutes so we could listen to the headsets about the areas we didn’t do on the Tuk Tuk tour on our previous day’s excursion. So, we hopped on the roof and sat down. The weather was about 85 degrees and they proceeded to load the bus to max capacity. As we were about to take off, my 14-year old son put his headphones in to listen to the prerecorded announcements and music, but no sound would work on the audio system servicing his seat. We tried various headphones in the jack, but none of them would produce sound. Unfortunately, they had filled the bus to capacity, so switching to another seat where an audio system would work was not possible. I told him I would listen on my earphones and repeat what I was hearing so he could follow along. After a couple of stops, it was too hot on the upper level, so my wife and daughter moved downstairs and inside the bus. For whatever reason, there wasn't sufficient air conditioning inside the bus, so it didn’t provide any relief from the heat. We decided to get off on Stop 8 so we could visit Pasteis de Belem and since we were hot on the rooftop and the girls were too warm inside the coach. While we enjoyed Belem, we waited for about 15 minutes when we were ready to hop back on the bus. When the next one showed, only a couple or two in front of us were able to load on, and the driver told us the next one would be about 30 minutes away. In short, the bus was full and we just had to grin and bear it for another half hour exposed in the sun with no shade or cover from the sun. We didn’t want to lose another half hour and our 14 and 11-year old kids were getting hot and frustrated, so we bit the bullet and caught a cab to the Oceanario. That cost us about €55. We had originally planned to ride the entire red line route and the entire blue line route back to Stop 1. When we were at the Oceanario (Stop 4 of the 9 stops on the blue line), we tried to hop back on the Blue Line to get back to our hotel and at least enjoy the last half route on that line. We waited for approximately 30 minutes from 4:45-5:15pm. Their brochure stated that a bus would be arriving at 4:55pm to that stop, but nothing showed. We surmised that the 4:55pm bus must have been the one that got cut off due to one less bus operating and that we would need to wait until 5:40pm for the next one. At one point, we got very excited because we saw a red double-decker bus approach our stop. However, when we tried to board it, the driver informed us that his company did not work with yours. I believe it was an Explore Lisboa hop on / hop off and not a CitySeeing Lisbon hop on / hop off even though they looked almost like duplicates. So, we got off the bus with our tails between our legs and continued our wait for the next CitySeeing Blue Line bus. In the end, we ended up getting an Uber to the Sheraton Lisboa because we simply couldn’t wait any longer and our children needed to find a restroom. That was another €15 or so. So, in review, for the price of 4 tickets to ride on two lines, after a 20 minute wait for the red line to depart stop 1, we ended up riding from Stops 1-8 of the Red Line which was basically a review of a Tuk Tuk tour we had done the day before. My son was unable to listen to the audio in his seat due to an audio system that wasn’t working. The inside of the bus wasn’t air conditioned, and the outdoor heat was too much to do a full loop, so we got off on Stop 8. We were unable to hop back on near the Belem Tower because the subsequent bus was too full, we waited for a half hour there before getting a €55 taxi to the aquarium. After visiting the aquarium, we waited 30+ minutes for a blue line bus to show up. It didn’t arrive according to the times posted on their website, there was one less bus servicing your blue line which created a ridiculous 1 hour and 30 minute wait for the bus to finally make the loop for pick ups (I see they have updated their website to reflect this 1hour 30 minute wait, but it stated 45 minutes between each bus when we booked and used our vouchers), and we spent about €15 more on an Uber to get from the aquarium to our hotel. This is after spending $134.54 for 3 adults and a child to use the 24-hour hop on, hop off services. The worst part is the waste of a precious vacation day that we had planned to utilize City Sightseeing Lisbon's services to ride the red and blue lines. While we were waiting for a bus to arrive, we tried calling the number online. It never connected us to a live person we could speak with on the phone. We tried the online chat that was obviously serviced by a poor AI version of a chatbot. It was completely unhelpful. We hoped to find a bus tracker or anything on their site that would let us know when the next bus was coming, but there was nothing like that on their site. This leaves the customer completely in the dark on when the next bus will come, or if they’ll even be able to get on it due to capacity once it does arrive. While it would have been super helpful to know where their buses are on their routes, they should have updated their site to let people know that there is only one bus servicing the blue line, and that they are subject to an hour and a half wait if they happen to just miss the bus at a particular stop. It would have been helpful if their buses could provide occupancy or capacity figures so that customers would know how many seats are available on the next bus. It’s a bummer when you see a bus arrive and it is full so you can’t get on and you have to wait for at least another half hour (or hour and a half) for the next one. I tried contacting their customer service following our horrible experience, and they simply don't care. So I let them know I would leave an extensive and negative review on as many forums as possible. So, here we are! I have only been more disappointed in a service one other time in my nearly half-century of living. Their company really needs to do better and be more transparent about their services. Had I known that in advance, I would have saved $134.54, but, most importantly, I would have saved a precious vacation day in Lisbon with my family by doing something much more efficient with our time.

From the Cruise Terminal it was not clear that the bus we were boarding was taking us TO the Hop on Hop off bus and it would be 30 min to get there.

Terrible experience, buses that do not overlap with each other, very very long waiting times and buses that stand empty with out of service, competing companies that just run their routes it is frustrating that do not come after a reasonable time.

It was a nice way to see the city but the narration (in English) is quite bad. Also, stops were not marked correctly on some lines. Not up to the same standard I’ve experienced on this bus in other cities. Drivers were not that friendly…even though everyone in Lisbon is! We enjoyed seeing the city and I’d still do it again as the city is spread out and it did its job.

Good (not amazing) if you want to avoid too much walking and public transport. The staff are amazing. The narration, though, is implausibly uninformative. Imagine ChatGPT writing up a tour for you and then taking any hard facts away from it. Everything "captures the essence of Lisbon", "is where modernity and tradition coexist", you can "immerse" into lots of things and "you can feel how" many other things happen as you are recommended to stare at shops that are deemed "bohemian". I found the Easyjet meal deal recommendations in their magazine much more inspired. Zero research behind it. I swear if a human did write that script, this is a feat in itself, a serious ode to the blandest blandness of the age

Long wait until it started, then the red tour bus was stuck in traffic more than it was driving. The connections to the blue tour were missed, and in order not to wait another 1.25 hours at the unpleasant starting point, we booked the green route as well - on the small bus through the old town, the audio system failed - no explanations, and it required so much time again that the blue route could only be taken with over an hour of waiting time. Conclusion: no wonder many tourists now take the tuk-tuks - because the bus is also expensive and you wait more than you drive.