London Hop On Hop Off Tours?

I'm normally a fan of HOHO busses (many on this forum have a different opinion), and have enjoyed the London HOHO busses in the past, but if you are in town for that short a time period I'd skip it and use the Underground instead as it will be far quicker to get wherever you want to go - traffic in London is horrible and the HOHO busses can be slow.

If you want to see something of London by bus, take the regular bus service not the HOHO. With only 2 days, I wouldn’t waste time sat in traffic on a HOHO. Regular buses can use the quicker bus lanes.

I agree with Herronlaw. The HOHO bus is a really bad idea as a mode of transportation. You can end up wasting a LOT of time waiting for a bus to come or stuck in traffic. And being limited to only their routes and stops. Better, IMO, to just get an Oyster card when you arrive and use it for the tube or city buses. Use the tfl.gov site to know which buses and tube stops for any trip.

HOWEVER, if you do want a HOHO tour (and London is a good city for one), I have used https://www.theoriginaltour.com/en. Its a pretty standard HOHO bus tour. What it has going for it is reliability and a certain sense of officialdom in that its stops are marked on the regular London bus stop signs.

The Megabus London Tour gets a lot of good reports on another travel forum:

https://uk.megabus.com/products/london-bus-tour?gclid=CjwKCAiAwZTuBRAYEiwAcr67OWfZrjPF4wpST5-TbK5OuDcklwHerYgErJbE8ddReDX_wlCmZ3rR_RoC6CMQAvD_BwE

It's not HoHo so you stay on for the whole tour, plus its a lot cheaper than the others.

I would expect a bus tour to be a lot more efficient than a HO/HO for the purposes of getting an overview. You won't be sitting at a bunch of stops along the route, waiting for people to get off and on the bus. Those stops will be a total waste of time to you if you are not yourself hopping on and off the bus. I agree that in London a HO/HO would often not be an efficient way of traveling from sight to sight.

If you don't have mobility challenges, walking and the Underground will probably be much better ways to get around, with the possible use of an occasional public bus. With only 2 days in London, it will be very important to plot your sightseeing route carefully to minimize time in transit. Rather than going to your Top 5 sights and burning a lot of time traveling back and forth, it may make more sense to see #1, #2, #3, #6, #8, #9, #10 and #12, choosing based partly on travel time.

Thanks for the advice NOT to do the HOHO tours! I have adjusted my plans accordingly and am happy with what I've come up with for our 2 days there. Thanks for chiming in to help guide us to a better option! I really appreciate this community!

For other cities (Dublin) we have used a HOHO bus for getting around for a day, but London...... no, I wouldn't use them. Traffic is miserably slow and congested through the center of London. Using buses as part of your travels is ok, you get to see things, but the tube is way more efficient from getting to points A and B. My two cents worth after just coming back from there.