Washington DC – Driving Tour

The app is extremely hard to navigate and not user friendly at all. Directions are inaccurate — it often tells you to turn left or right at the wrong time or after you’ve already passed the intersection. The map doesn’t accurately depict locations, which makes it confusing and frustrating to follow. In addition, while there’s a long list of attractions, they aren’t alphabetized and there’s no way to search through them. This makes it tedious to find specific sites, which completely defeats the purpose of a “self-guided” tour. Overall, I was very disappointed. The concept is good, but the execution is terrible. I did not find it worth the time or money.

We found this app to be useless. If you are in an unfamiliar city and purchase an app with GPS, it seems like it would be telling you what you are seeing where you are… but it doesn’t. The map has sights numbered, but the index is just a list of sights (not alphabetical and not numbered). It was heard to match up the monument you could see out your window with what number it was on the map, or what it was called in the index. Trying to get to a location going the same direction as the tour was dangerous while driving. Once heading the right direction, staying at the speed of the app was also difficult and if you hit a wrong spot on the screen while trying to pause the app, good luck getting back to where you were. This app needs a lot of updates and technology upgrades that are just commonplace in most travel apps. We were so frustrated and disappointed, we just shut it off.

The directions don’t give you enough information until it’s too late, especially if you aren’t used to driving in a city. We also found that it repeated itself for each stop. There are so many roads that shouldn’t be used by tourists that are part of this tour. We literally drove in circles for 3 hours before we got halfway through the tour and gave up.

While it is somewhat informative but slightest bit of slow or fast moving traffic you will be completely off course and the narration of directions are spotty at best.

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!).

I thought it was disorganized and overall poorly executed. Not a good use of my money.

The app cannot orient to your direction, making it very difficult to know where or when to turn. In between wonderful information it would give directions mere seconds before you were expected to make a turn. You also cannot easily move around on the map to see what turns are coming ahead! With the number of stop lights and pedestrians we had to stop using it because it wasn’t safe. Great concept and information, total fail on navigation and usability.

This app was the highlight of our trip to DC! We loved all the interesting tidbits and sites we saw. As far as navigating goes, it is not Google Maps quality, but does a great job of visual and audio instructions. It worked best with me holding the phone and navigating, and my husband driving. Do yourself a favor and do not try to navigate DC streets and manage the app at the same time. We were able to do segments of the tour whenever we wanted. Want to skip a part? That’s easy to do. Just look for the number where you want to pick up again and the app will start the tour there. We started at DuPont Circle and ended at Arlington. The next day, we did the Smithsonian through DuPont Circle! The third day, we went from after the bridge to Arlington all the way through where we started. Easy Peasy. No bus tour is going to give you the flexibility like this!!!! So much cheaper this way too.

I loved the information about the stops, but there are no actual directions. You just have a blue line that you have to guess at. This would be absolutely perfect if it was more like an ordinary GPS that gave you better direction. In DC, there is so much traffic that it’s almost impossible to have the time to read street signs while looking at the map on the phone. :(

The recordings sounded good, but I couldn't figure out how to work it to coordinate the driving path. A waste of my money.