From Naples: Mount Vesuvius & Herculaneum or Pompeii Day Trip

The excursion is very well-organized, with great punctuality and management, making it possible to visit Vesuvius, Herculaneum, and Pompeii in a single day. On the downside, it only includes tickets and audio guides for Herculaneum and Pompeii. You explore the sites on your own, so you miss having a guide to explain the history and the most interesting highlights of each place.

Transportation between the sites worked very well and was well-organized. We had enough time for Vesuvius and Herculaneum, but unfortunately, there was way too little time for Pompeii. We thought we had booked guided tours (the pictures strongly suggest that too), but they were only audio guides, and in my opinion, they were very poor. The audio guide for Herculaneum has to be played on your own smartphone (it didn't say that anywhere—what if I don't have one or my battery is dead?), you get a QR code that opens a website in the browser. You have to rescan this every few minutes because the audio files stop playing and you have to reload everything, which is very annoying. The voices are AI-generated; the German one is disastrous and constantly makes mistakes in pronunciation, sentence structure, and translation. The English one was slightly better. Also, the numbers on the audio guide don't match the ones at the stations; we really struggled to play the right audio in the right place. The audio guide in Pompeii was at least a physical device that worked, but the explanations were very minimalist and boring. We ended up asking the staff on-site for information and learned so many exciting details that the audio guide simply left out. I find the price very excessive for this level of service. If I could choose again, I would take public transport to the sites and use the money to book guides on-site.

The organization was pretty good, but be careful with the first meeting point! The address that shows up when you click “more information” is wrong. You have to scroll down once you have your QR code and find “where to go.” There are two different addresses… for no reason at all. Another major downside… the audio guide for Herculaneum was absolutely terrible. It made no sense, the robotic voice was awful, and it kept cutting out… we ended up not using it at all. Get a ticket without the audio guide—it’s useless.