History Geek Tours

Awesome tour! I had a great time on the tour and I thought the guide was great. Super easy to register and I used a Groupon. I would recommend. Not sure what the other reviews are about? I think that for what I paid it was great.

The guide was at least 15m late — there’s no phone number for the office to call, so the group stood around wondering if we were being jacked by History Geek Tours.
When the guide finally arrived, we were informed during the INTRODUCTION that tips were appreciated and important because that’s how the guides get paid. So wait a minute… the company doesn’t pay these guys, so the fee for the tour goes toward what?
Then the guide informed us that this was the first time he’s ever given the tour, and would be reading from his notes. Fine. It was highly annoying when the guide read from notes, then said «that’s awesome» or «so that’s cool» or «fun fact» when none of the above was true.
We basically got a walking tour of the major spots, a few dates, a few «fun facts» but very little history, context or insider information a tour guide/​history geek would know. I might as well have gone to all the sights myself and pulled up wikipedia — which would have more information and would’ve given me «awesome» and «cool» facts.
The only saving grace was that the guide was nice and pleasant. You could tell he was trying. But the tour really sucked.

The New York Central Park Tour was horrible. The guide was not knowledge about Central Park at all and she was a very inept as a guide.
The guide was late and only gave a perfunctory apology. She then took off walking without even determining how many of us were actually in the group.
After passing the Cop Cot, she proceeded to buy a map to help her find the other places that she would guide us. If that wasn’t bad enough, she at times even asked passerbys for directions. She kept promising to give us the history of the park when we got to Belvidere Castle and when we finally got there all she did was read the history from her iPhone. Really??? I kept looking around, certain that I was being PUNKED!!! No such luck however.
Overall it was a horrible tour and if I could rate it, I would give it a ½ out of 5. This was extremely disappointing, I am surprised at the good reviews that history geek has received, if these are the type of guided tours offered. I am certain that no one on my tour will give a good review.
This is my first experience with History Geek and due to that tour it will most likely be my last.

Do not give this company your money and don’t buy the LivingSocial/​Groupon/​etc. vouchers! The tour I went on this weekend was a huge waste of time and money for myself and my poor friend I dragged along with me. The guide lacked any real historical knowledge of DC or any of the sites we visited, mumbled a lot and was clearly there just to make a couple of bucks, not because he had any interest in the topic. For the most part, he read the signs on the buildings and made vague statements like (when in front of the Treasury Department), «In the mornings it is interesting to see the Treasury employees going in and see the hustle and bustle». It became so awkward that we ended up leaving less than a third of the way through the tour. This company does absolutely no quality control on its tour guides (who are in no way «history geeks»). My friend and I drove in from the suburbs — I feel even worse for the other tour participants who were visiting DC from out of town and basically wasted their mornings.