I booked a tour as a way of occupying bored teenagers on a Saturday afternoon.
I've lived in Manchester for 25 years and was curious what such tours offered.
I'll be honest here and say that booking in a rush I didn't read the full web-site so may have missed some warnings, but booked a tour starting mid afternoon, 3.15 at Albert Square. For ease of parking we decided to park in Salford Quays and start out tour there. It is afterall a hop on hop off tour.
The tour for us started ok, through the Quays with scant information over the tannoy. This place is full of history!!!!
Then headed off to Old Trafford past the new hotels etc. How exciting. Old Trafford. Mention of greatness, a nod to City, then past derelict Trafford Park. I can cope with the grot on view, but again this place is full of industrial history. No mention.
We pass the Imperial War Museum with info on the architect and concept (interesting but bit of a fable) then past OT again. No mention of Hotel Football.
Then into town down the "beautiful " Bridgewater Way. No mention of buildings beyond or the canal. Onto Beetham Tower, past the Midland Hotel (key fact:David Beckham dated Posh Spice here -FFS!) then Albert Square for the end of the tour.
We stayed on to complete our tour with a few others, but we're told to disembark as the tours had finished for the day. 4PM!!!! What an international city we are!!
Stranded with our car at Salford Quays we were going to get a tram back, but after complaining to the driver we were offered a lift back, hence the two 2/5.
Basically this is a poor tour, that aims to get punters around a few key sights as quickly as possible.
If you are not from Manchester, I can assure you that you will not experience Manchester from this tour. There is great world changing history here. Genuinely world changing on a huge scale. There are great neighbourhoods, life, parks, people, characters, attitude ..... I could go on.
The half of this tour that I saw gives you nothing of this.
On behalf of the people of Manchester and Salford I can only apologise. Embarrassed!
Yes the ticket lasts 24 hours so I could have continued on Sunday. It wasn't worth another £3 parking fee to continue.