New York City Bus Tour With Kids

Every time we visit a new place one our favourite ways to get a quick lay of the land is by taking a bus or boat tour through the city on our first day. Why? Simply because we get to see all the main landmarks and then decide which ones we want to visit and learn more about. You may recall our Starline tour in Los Angeles where we had a great drive through various LA neighbourhoods. With that memory in mind we decided to do a New York City bus tour with the kids during our visit to the big apple a couple weeks ago.

CitySights NY offers a variety of tours and so you can pick and choose the ones that make sense to you and your family. Some of them include access to select attractions and all of them offer discounts at restaurants, theaters and tourist sites– which I thought was a fab deal! You can buy your tickets online prior to your travels and we chose to pick ours up from their booth at Madame Tussaud. On arrival we were greeted with a smile and the concierge took her time explaining the various routes, pointing out where each of the bus stops were and then offered her own recommendations on which tour we might want to start with, given that we had a jam packed schedule. Most tickets come with a 24 or 48 hour expiry and the time starts from the moment you pick the tickets up (not when you purchase it online).

We had our double stroller with us and had no issues at all on the double decker bus. The bus driver pointed out the fact that we could park it by the back door and handed us our headsets for the two hour tour. Baby Boy had just woken up from a nap so he was eager to watch the city whiz by him and Little Monkey was fast asleep. Unfortunately when the tour guide hopped on he pointed out the fact that for safety reasons we couldn’t have Little Monkey strapped in the stroller and so she had to be seated next to the hubs – she was so exhausted that she still slept through most of the tour!

I had plenty of snacks to entertain Baby Boy and reveled in the chance to learn all about the Uptown Treasures and Harlem. You have two options when it comes to learning about the history of the various places, you could listed to pre-taped recording which is available in a couple of different languages OR you could listen to the licsenced guide on the bus. Our guy was funny, charming and a resident of Harlem which made his narration quite entertaining as he pointed out the Time Warner Center, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dakota apartment building (former home of Beatles star John Lennon), the Apollo Theater (where greats like Ella Fitzgerald made their debuts), and the Harlem Market, among many other treasures. I got some pretty cool shots from my seat (one side of the bus had some sort of speckled sticker on the window, but the other didn’t!)

We did this on the coldest day ever and so was looking forward to the warmth of the bus but our bus was actually quite cold on the bottom level. Most people were on the upper deck and I’m guessing they were warm as no one dared ventured down below! Baby Boy did cry towards the end (out of boredom and not the cold) and our guide took it upon himself to make us feel welcomed and incorporated the cries into his self depreciating humour (which was fabulous!). One mom who was on board with her teenage daughter told us that one of their first trips was actually on a CitySights bus tour where the two month old girl cried the whole time and the mom felt compelled to hop off. That’s the joy with the hop on and off pass- you can hop off and explore an attraction (or take a rest and let the crying child have a change of scenery) and then hop back on as the bus comes by every twenty minutes. We didn’t even get stuck in traffic all that much, which was quite surprising!

Our All Around Tour came with access to the night tour and a cruise to Ellis Island which I was really hoping to do but unfortunately that never did happen. CitySights NY also offers helicopter tours and I think it would be so fab to do that. We loved our helicopter tour over Niagara Falls and the private jet over Toronto, so I know we’d have loved the New York one as well! Even if you like to wander away from organized tours, I think being chauffeured around for a couple hours during the start of your vacation, is a smart way to explore a city. If you combine a Hop on Hop Off CitySights tour with your CityPass you’re sure to get around to all the key attractions, that’s for sure!