Tour Musei Vaticani, Cappella Sistina e Basilica di San Pietro: Salta la Coda

Rigid policies and zero customer support turned an 11-minute delay into a 5-hour ordeal I accept full responsibility for arriving late. I showed up at 8:41 AM for an 8:30 AM tour, so I wasn't expecting a refund. However, the complete lack of communication and inflexible handling of the situation made a bad start exponentially worse. Not a single call or message was made to check if I was still coming. Instead of coordinating a simple solution, like letting me pick up my ticket from the shop since the ticket is valid for 30 minutes, which would have given me enough time to still make it inside, they immediately took my ticket inside and locked me out. Because of this rigid process and lack of basic communication, I was forced to stand in line for 5 hours just to secure another ticket. Paying for my tardiness is fair, but punishing customers with a 5-hour penalty due to a complete refusal to offer a practical, communicative alternative is poor customer service.

I was so disappointed. The guide held her microphone instead of pinning it to her shirt and therefore the sound was not consistent and was very annoying. For the price of this tour, I was very disappointed. I asked her if she could pin it ( like all the other tour guides I encountered there ) and she said her microphone did not allow it. She was constantly moving it while she held her flag and water bottle while pointing to various sites.

Gabby was our tour guide. she was amazing. we had a full 3hr tour of the Museums, Sisteen Chapel, Basilica and St. Peter's Square. She was extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of what we saw. Guided us through this massive complex with ease and it wasn't hard to follow her, she wore a bright pink dress and held a flag with her name on it. We learnt so much about the history, explanations of how to interpret the many statues and different things to look for in the tapestries. She answered many questions our group asked and she made our experience memorable. It was such a pleasure to meet her and we would definitely recommend this tour to anyone. The price was reasonable and we certainly got more than our monies worth in value on this tour. We all wish Gabby every success for the future and send a heartfelt thank you to her.

We did this tour with Stefania on a VERY busy day at St Peter’s. However, Stefania was very experienced at taking these tours and provided calm and reassuring guidance about how our tour would work. Despite beginning our tour outside the Vatican Museums in a long queue, we did enter after a short wait, just as she had told us, as entry is timed for guided groups. She made sure we had comfort breaks and she managed to find relatively quiet corners for our smallish group (11) along the route, so that she could explain properly what we were about to see. She was very knowledgeable; I don’t know how she remembers so much! The Sistine Chapel wasn’t as crowded as I expected and we were allowed to stop in the middle if we wanted to spend more time there. Then on to the Basilica, which had us gasping in wonderment! We wouldn’t have attempted this tour on our own and would have spent hours queuing. Also, we would never have learned so much. Excellent thank you!