Have you done the Pompeii Mondo "Shared Tours for Rick Steves?"

We signed up for this tour years ago. There was some confusion meeting up with our guide, but we finally found each other.

Unfortunately, not enough people who had signed up, showed up - I think there were only three people - but our guide sat us all down just outside the entry, and spent a long time explaining what we would be seeing. We were surprised at how much time he spent with us, and very pleased.

I don't think we bought our tickets ahead of time, so we would have bought them at the gate.

Another option - I wonder if there's a significant difference in price with a small group tour you meet at Pompeii entrance? We much preferred getting in EARLY, our Askos group tour started at 9:30AM before a lot more people came into the ruins. (I think it's E30 now, 2.5 hours, run by an archaeologist, who was great.) https://askostours.com/

And we were able to use the Compania Arte Lite 365 Card, good for one time entrance into a lot of places, including other ruins, Paestum & MANN. (I checked your Pompeii Plus tickets, all those sites & more are included.) I think ours were E30 per person. Good luck, we loved Pompeii so much, we went inside 3 days in a row!

Details here - https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/experiences-using-the-campania-arte-card-or-365-lite-card-in-naples-pompeii.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/campania-arte-card-1fcfd7b3-5d9f-468c-865c-199fc0f0dde.

What about emailing your question to the company?

E-mail: [email protected]

We did this tour in 2019- so it's been while.
From what I remember we knew well in advance that the tour was filled and would proceed. You can check that online to see how many have signed up- (at least that's how it was then)

The guide bought all our tickets once we gathered at entrance.

I would email them and ask if you have the option of getting your own tickets- all they can do is say yes or no!

I did this tour in 2022. My tour guide was excellent and it was a great value!

Thanks everyone! That first suggestion from Sandancisco made sense, as do so many of the practical solutions RS travelers supply.

Try to watch PBS "The New Dig' before you go, it will give you an added level of insight into the ruins and make your trip more memorable! (Then again, if it bores you to tears, you know you don't need to spend more than a few hours at the dig! hahaha.) Given you'd like to buy the Pompeii Plus tickets, I'm guessing you're very interested. Hope you have a GREAT trip!!

To save time I've copied and pasted this from a report I did in 2023:

I’d been bouncing around since 5am, waiting to go to Pompeii. We
originally booked a tour for 9am via Mondo Tours which is touted in
the RS guidebooks as a way to save some money by booking a shared
tour. Mondo has a subsidiary https://www.sharedtours.com/ which has an
agreement with RS and once 6 people sign-up, then the tour is official
and will go ahead. But Mondo also has its own site
https://mondoguide.it/ which offers other shared tours under the
heading NEW Shared Trips ENDORSED by Rick Steves. The official RS
tours on the site are Shared Tours FOR Rick Steves. They’re supposed
to email you 3 days before with notice if your tour is going ahead or
not. But as became a pattern through this trip, if not enough were
signed up they would wait, and I needed to be proactive and ready to
make alternate plans.

Nobody else signed, so the night before I emailed Dario at Mondo and
suggested we’d take the 11am tour and within minutes we were
confirmed. I then asked Dario if I could go to the park earlier and
then come out at 11:00 and meet up with the tour. But he explained
that there is no in/out privilege at Pompeii which is frustrating
because there are limited services inside, such as places to eat and
sit inside the park. The confirmation said we’d pay our guide the tour
fee of €20 plus we’d be responsible for the ticket into Pompeii, but
it stated there was no need to buy the entry ticket in advance. I
interpreted that as we’d give our money to the guide, and she’d
bulk-buy our entry tickets, however as our group met up with the
guide, she’d send us to the ticket window to buy our tickets which
wasted quite a bit of time.

Despite the difficulties I’ve explained, we ended up using
Shared/Mondo 3 times and were extremely happy. This tour was 2-hours
and followed a similar route to what the RS guidebooks suggest. I’m
willing to bet most guides take a similar route and it’s a good
introduction to the site, but Pompeii has so much more that’s not
included. For those people that ask if 2 hours is enough, I’m going to
tell them it’s a good start, but you need a day or two if you want to
immerse yourself.