Vatican Museums No-Wait Access Tour with Raphael Rooms, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peters Basilica

Really impressed by all of the things I didn't know about Vatican. It has changed a lot in the 55 years it has taken me to revisit. The world's 3rd largest museum, with seemingly more steps than the Amalfi Coast, our tour guide was very well informed, and even arranged for a 10 minute coffee break so my wife could rest her foot, which was swollen badly from a previous injury. The tour is 4 hours long, with a whole lot of steps up and down, so you need to be prepared to be on your feet for a long time. But the tour and our tour guide were great. She really tried to synthesis down the big picture of what and why we were seeing this and that, which was very important as there was just too much to see and remember if we looked and discussed everything there. The Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basillica were absolutely gorgeous, and the stories behind their construction even more fascinating. I was exhausted afterwards, but very grateful for having an excellent tour guide helping us to make sense of everything. I really do believe that the true value of this tour was not in "skipping the lines", but was in understanding and appreciating what you were seeing and witnessing.

Fabulous, not to be missed. Elizabeth was smart, quick on her feet and delivered information with humor

This tour was great! I'm not sure about the name of the lady that guided us but she was great. She explained the history and really made it enjoyable. I took my mom here for her birthday May 8th and it was the same week as mother's day. She loved it. Oh and the art!. It's amazing what can happen when we allow creative people to do what they love. Genius!

Knowledgeable guide although we lost her after coming out of the Sistine Chapel. She did not go through it with us and we came out the wrong exit and did not catch up with her for a while. We had taken a Taxi down to the meeting point 2 hours before to have a look around the area Not a good idea considering it was a 3 hours tour

Although a very good tour I think too much was concentrated on the art and not much on the history With that said a very good tour and stunning architecture

Visiting the Vatican Museums was grueling in the crowd, but our guide was very patient and informative. We do not usually book guided tours, but we are very glad we did for this visit.

Well some of this was our fault coming at such a busy time, but this tour was way TOO long. There were so many people and it seemed sort of disorganized. We arrived on time but didn't leave for 30 minutes, then once in we waited another 30+ minutes for the guide to find the tickets and then one person didn't have them and then we had to get the headset and half didn't work. In fact I couldn't understand half of what the guide said the entire time. I just took it off and listened as best I could. There was so much waiting and so much heat it really took away from the experience. We loved St. Peters and in fact that was really our favorite of the 5+ hours this tour took. Way too long for old people and half of our group dropped out. Little kids too long, elderly too long. Guide tried but overall not one of our favorite experiences.

Our tour was very disorganized from the beginning. We arrived at the meeting location and the guide was a little late. Then everyone was crowding around her trying to “check in” but there was no system to this. Then we were guided over to the entrance and not given much instruction on what to do, but I was told my backpack might not be able to go inside because it was too big with no solution for me. Luckily they did allow me to take it because our hotel was 45 minutes away. Once we got inside and got our radios the tour went pretty well to start. The radios had a lot of background noise but it was a very busy day so I’m not sure they have much control over this. The guide was very knowledgeable about the art and the history of most pieces and she did a great job on education. My only critique is that she didn’t stop for us to take pictures and she didn’t seem to mind if everyone was keeping up with her. Which lead to the biggest problem and the reason I only give 2 stars. About halfway through our tour someone in our group announced that one of their adult members of their group was lost. At first the guide suggested calling them and mostly moved on, which I agreed with because it was an adult. Later the Vatican police came and interrupted our tour and they were speaking in Italian so I’m not sure what was said by it looked like they were yelling at our guide! She then seemed to rush us through to the Sistine Chapel. Once we got there she was talking to the police again. After a while we went back to her to turn in our radios because she was not even paying attention to anyone but the family members who lost this man in our group. When we turned them in she apologized and said she had to find this guy because “he had problems.” We did the rest of the tour on our own, but we aren’t history buffs so we were disappointed to not get the full educational part of the tour. Also we still don’t know why the police and the family couldn’t have found the man and let the tour guide continue with her job. Side note; we saw later that they had in fact found the man. He was safe.

We had a wonderful guide - he made it very informative and memorable.He covered so much in 3 hours and spoke continuously.

Frederica was engaging and tried her best to be thorough. But I find the trip to the museum to be short. Wish we could look at more galleries

The tour is by far the best way to visit these sights. The guide takes you past the long lines and into the museum, Raphael Rooms, Sistine Chapel and St. Peters. Our guide was excellent.

Surely the freezing cold and wind of that day could have been adjusted. We stood outside for about half an hour looking at a picture of the sistine chapel. Surely we could have been moved to a better place. I am a senior and was horribly cold. Looking at a poster in the wind was not very helpful. Also, although the guide knew her material, her method of delivery was pretty glib and annoying . Maybe the wind made it even worse. I was rarely ever so physically uncomfortable.

Not sure we made it to the Raphael rooms? Jeanette was great though! She was very knowledgeable and the time flew by.

The guide was very knowledgeable. The group was not too big. We were able to see a lot. The scarf on the pole was an intrusion for photographing frequently. The headsets from the museum were horrible poor quality junk!

Our guide was terrible. The headsets were not good and he would be too far away from us to hear what he was saying, too much static. He would leave us behind and move to the next room. It was hard to keep up. We turned in our headsets after a 1/2 hour and did out own. There was no skip the line, we waited outside for 20 minutes to get inside. This was a waste of money.

We were able to visit with no queuing and a small group tour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and was able to tell us all the facts about each part of the tour. As it was a small group we were able to get detailed information and plenty of chances to ask questions. Our guide was able to tell us the rules about where we could take pictures with and without flash, and where we had to be silent. Other visitors who were not there were not sticking with these rules and it was quite disappointing.

It was a good trip, the guide was able to show and share the details which was quite knowledgeable. Th e tour covered all the main points and was quite good.