Vienna Underground Guided Walking Tour

German language only

Unless you speak German it is not very fun at all. Also the audio was not well guided and totally misssed the last/room/part of the tour.

via Tripadvisor

Massive Rip-Off: Paid Full Price to read in the Dark

THIS TOUR IS ONLY FOR GERMAN SPEAKING CLIENTS, do not be fooled by the description that includes English speaking experience as well. The English portion of this tour is just a 2 min AI audio app. The company promotes and sells to English speaking guests BUT upon arrival, English speaking tourists are given a QR code to scan and download the audio tour on your personal device. If you don’t bring earbuds or listening devices, you’re left to reading your phone in the dark. If you don’t download the tour, you can’t get the information underground in the tour spaces. If your phone is low on battery, and your phone dies…your tour is just a bunch of photos on the wall and attempts to decipher German. The audio guide is read by AI, the tour guide doesn’t tell you which room or audio number you should be listening too, we were hardly acknowledged and when you do match the audio to the room you are viewing, the AI read audio information finishes in less than 2 minutes while the guide continues to describe and tell stories to the German speaking tourists for 7-15 minutes, so you are left looking at posted photos and props and interpreting the room for yourself. You are paying $200 plus for access to a few underground rooms ONLY. Our group consisted of 9 German speaking and 7 English tourists. We requested half of our fee back because the tour was not worth full admission. We were declined this request and are left to leave our honest opinion of this tour based on our experience. I DO NOT RECOMMEND this tour for the price they charge and the experience they provide.

via Viator

There is a whole world below your feet in vienna

The vienna you never see. A whole host of underground network tunnels with an array of stories. The guide was very good. We were British on a German speaking tour but used the Internet to follow the guide and the guide did speak English as required. Very friendly and informative.

via Tripadvisor

A niech topic about how Vienna's people used to use their basements

The tour is held completely in German, but they provide an english audio option that you can hear on your own during the tour. You just open a web site that has different audios that you should play them inside of each room. The audio was monotonic and boring and it seemed like it was generated by AI. Luckily for me I know a little bit of German, so I just ignored the audio and started listening to the tour guide. She was a nice person with a good sense of humor. So the experience between a german audience and an English audience is way way different. As in german it's more interactive and you can discuss stuff with the tour guide and even other people on the tour. Unlike listening to boring english audio and feeling isolated/excluded from the whole group as if you are just watching a boring YouTube video that you don't really interact with the people in it. Content wise, I would say it's a little bit of a niech topic. As it's not so historic/old sites (like roman ruins), rather it's something "recent" in the 20th century. Maybe I'm a little biased about it, as I have been before to an underground tour in italy where they had actual roman ruins that shows you how they lived. So, I kinda had high expectations from the beginning. Also the description of the tour is very vaguely generated with AI as well, that you really can't imagine much, what the tour is about. At the end I was a little bored, maybe because my German skills are not good enough and a lot of words got dropped hence a lot of the context was missing for me. Over all I would prefer to watch it in a 15 minute video than a 2 hour walking tour.

Response from the operator: Thank you for taking the time to share your detailed feedback. We are sorry to hear that the experience did not fully meet your expectations. We understand that following a guided tour in a language that is not your native language can significantly influence the overall experience. The English audio guide is an additional service and a considerable investment on our side to make the tour accessible to international visitors. Without this option, non-German speakers would unfortunately not be able to participate in the tour at all. While the tour guide conducts the live tour in German, the audio guide is intended to provide English-speaking guests with the same factual information and historical background throughout the tour. We appreciate your comments regarding the narration style of the audio guide and the feeling of reduced interaction compared to German-speaking participants. The interactive nature of a live guided tour is indeed difficult to replicate through an audio format, and your feedback helps us identify areas where we can further improve the experience for international guests. We are pleased to hear that you found our tour guide friendly and engaging. We will be sure to pass on your kind words. Regarding the content itself, the tour focuses on a specific chapter of 20th-century history rather than ancient archaeological sites. We understand that visitors arrive with different interests and expectations, and we regret that the topic was not as engaging for you as you had hoped. Thank you again for your honest feedback. We continuously work on improving both our tour descriptions and our multilingual offerings, and your comments are valuable in that process.

via Tripadvisor

The 57-Euro scam

1. There is no meeting point, not even a painted X on the ground or on one of the graffiti-covered walls. 2. You visit the cellars at five different locations that are connected above ground. 3. In these five cellars, you are told for two hours what people have done there throughout history. You are shown a brick wall that supposedly dates back to the 12th century, along with other empty words. 4. When you read "underground," you expect tunnels that connect the cellars, but the tunnels have collapsed, and the cellars remain. Let's take a look at them ourselves instead. Highly recommended

Response from the operator: Vielen Dank für Ihr Feedback. Es tut uns leid zu hören, dass die Führung nicht Ihren Erwartungen entsprochen hat. Gerne möchten wir auf einige Ihrer Anmerkungen eingehen. Der Treffpunkt wird in unseren Buchungsunterlagen sowie in der Bestätigungs-E-Mail beschrieben. Wir nehmen Ihren Hinweis dennoch ernst und prüfen, wie wir die Beschilderung vor Ort noch deutlicher gestalten können. Bei der Führung handelt es sich um eine historische Untergrundtour, die mehrere originale Kelleranlagen umfasst, die sich unter verschiedenen Gebäuden befinden. Besonders hervorzuheben ist, dass es sich dabei um private, normalerweise nicht öffentlich zugängliche Keller handelt, die im Rahmen dieser Führung exklusiv besichtigt werden können. Der Zugang zu diesen Räumen stellt für viele Besucher einen besonderen Mehrwert dar, da sie außerhalb unserer Führungen der Öffentlichkeit nicht offenstehen. Diese Anlagen waren historisch Teil eines größeren unterirdischen Systems. Leider sind die einst vorhandenen Verbindungsgänge heute nicht mehr begehbar oder existieren teilweise nicht mehr, weshalb die einzelnen Stationen oberirdisch miteinander verbunden werden. Gerade die erhaltenen Keller selbst sind jedoch authentische Zeugnisse der Stadtgeschichte und vermitteln einen seltenen Einblick in Bereiche, die den meisten Menschen verborgen bleiben. Der Schwerpunkt der Führung liegt auf der Geschichte und Nutzung dieser unterirdischen Räume über verschiedene Epochen hinweg. Die erhaltenen Baustrukturen, darunter auch historische Mauerwerke, werden anhand historischer und archäologischer Erkenntnisse erläutert. Uns ist bewusst, dass Besucher unterschiedliche Erwartungen an den Begriff „Untergrund“ haben. Daher werden wir prüfen, wie wir die Beschreibung der Tour noch präziser formulieren können, um Missverständnisse zu vermeiden. Wir danken Ihnen für Ihre offenen Worte und nehmen Ihre Anmerkungen als wertvolle Anregung zur weiteren Verbesserung unseres Angebots mit.

via Tripadvisor (translated)