Washington DC..which would you choose?
 

Our family will be in Washington this weekend (saturday-Monday),please help me pick a tour. Night time monuments tour (Zohery tours), or daytime tour on tourmobile. This is our first DC trip and kids range from 5-14. I keep going back and forth. Budget says pick one...the winner is...

If you want to go inside any monument, you are better off taking the tourmobile, which you can hop on and off as you like. You can also stop at places like the National Archives. I dont' belive the Washington Monument is open at night, neither is the Captiol. I would buy a one or two day pass and use the tourmobile to go everywhere you want, it even goes out to Arlington National Cemetary. The night tour will be pretty, but you will only get to look, not stop off and actually SEE the monuments.

I agree with Cicerone about seeing all the sights via Tourmobile, but if you also want to see the monuments at night, perhaps a 30-minute cab ride around 9pm would do the job at a lower cost. You should be able to negotiate the price in advance with the driver, since DC cabs aren't metered.

kayd, great minds think alike, ha ha! I second your suggestion, and Cicerone is right, too, IMO. Take the Tourmobile, get off as often as you like, spend as much time at each stop as you like, and if you're still hungry for the romance of the monuments at night, take a cab ride around. Have a great trip!

Definitely the tourmobile. It will save you from endless walking. You may want to secure admission tickets to the various museums and monuments in advance. In order to go up in the Washington monument you must have a ticket. Go to their website for further info. Also, I know the holocaust and spy museum require an admission ticket. Understand, you can secure a ticket if you get to the ticket office for each venue early, stand in line, and hope to get admission tickets. Securing in advance will help you to plan your day.

Our family was recently in DC and did the nighttime tour because we only had four full days and were trying to fit a lot of sightseeing in. We were able to see the Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln, Korean War, Vietnam and Iwo Jima Memorials. We were able to stop and go in or get a close look at them all. We also stopped for night time views of the Capitol, the White House and the Washington Monument. We did reserve tickets ahead of time to go back and go inside the Washington Monument and the Capitol. (Couldn't get tickets from our state rep's to the White House.)

One day we attempted to do the tourmobile but after a couple full trolleyscame by our stop we gave up and took a cab. You might want to check ahead about guarantees that you'll be able to board without waiting too long.

A few years ago went to DC w/ a friend and got "day and a half" Tourmobile tickets (they don't sell them anymore) and we had a couple of stops we tried to board but the bus was full. But the worse was when we waited, first in line and right AT the "Board TM Here" sign, when a bunch of people (they were Seniors; I'm gonna catch hell about this) came out of the station much later & waited further down, and wouldn't you guess - the bus didn't pull up to the sign, but stopped where the crowd was, and AGAIN we got left behind!

I don't think there's ANY guarantee of anything except that there will be final sweeps at the end of the day to pick up the last ones out ... but during the day you are on your own.

It's still a decent way to get the "big picture" of the town, dispite occasional waits.