Tours or Solo for Colosseum and Pompeii?

We did a walks of italy tour for the VIP Caesar's Palace Tour with Colosseum and Roman Forum. If i could do it again, i would still do the tour but maybe one that includes the colosseum underground or arena floor.

Colosseum was tricky for me since there are so many ticket options, and when we got there the lines are crazy (if you pre-purchase a ticket you dont have to wait in a line, but finding out where to go may be confusing)

The guide was great and helps you understand things better compared to guide books, but i'm more of an auditory learner.

Jason, I was about to post the same comment re the Colosseum. Also for those who reply to Jason: I'm assuming that as long as we purchase a timed ticket through the official website, there is no advantage to being on a tour vs not in terms of the lines to get in. I realize that the line length will vary from day to day, hour to hour, but I'm just asking about if there is generally any advantage to signing up for a tour to get in more quickly. Thanks!

We walked around Pompeii on our own a few years ago. On my bucket list is to go back and take a tour. I think you get a lot more enderstanding of what your seeing from a guide than you do reading a few pages out of a guidebook.

My wife and I used the Rick Steves audioguide for Pompeii - it worked great. We saw another couple doing the same, on speakerphone.
(A person who had rented an audioguide from the attraction booth came to us and asked for help... because that local audioguide had confused him.)

ebonecapone: I plan to pre-purchase everything. In the process of that as we speak.

Overall, thank you for the feedback. I'm leaning towards maybe keeping Pompeii tour and doing Colosseum on my own. I plan to keep my booked tour for the Vatican because that seems the most overwhelming to me. Museums in Florence I also plan to do on my own along with Steves' guides.

To be really frank, I am ultimately looking at saving a few bucks but don't want to do so at the expense of my experience.

I think you could just do the Colloseum on it’s own, with a guidebook or RS audio. I don’t think you’d get the richness that you would with a guide, though. I did the Walks of Italy VIP Colloseum, Forum and Palantine Hill. I felt the guides brought the Forum and Palantine to life and would strongly suggest a tour of you do those.

I’ve not been to Pompeii, but was at Herculaneum. We did the audio guides, but it’s much smaller. I’d definitely do a tour if I went to Pompeii. I think all in all, you are making the right choice if you have to choose.

I've got a similar question. I'm looking at pre-booking the Colosseum, but I'm trying to decide whether to get the guided underground/third ring and be on my own for Palatine Hill and the Forum, or skip the underground and do the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and Forum all guided. The Colossum website doesn't offer the combined for all guided including underground.

cgreb, there are private companies which do include the underground as well as the Palatine and Forum in their tours. You'll just pay a lot more for them than the 3-hour coopculture tour which does not include the underground, and you've mentioned concern about your budget.

Anyway, an example of a private-company tour ( and a respected resource amongst RS posters who've used them):

https://www.walksofitaly.com/rome-tours/colosseum-underground-tours/

And another popular option:
https://theromanguy.com/tours/italy/colosseum-underground-tours/colosseum-dungeons-tour-with-roman-forum-palantine-hill?travelDate=2020-04-09