Naples Shore Excursion: Mt Vesuvius and Pompeii Day Trip from Naples

Enjoyed the tour. Our tour guide was quite cheerful and funny when she was explaining the history. We really enjoyed the Pompeii trip. Mt Vesuvius was a bit disappointing when looking inside the volcano, but the view was beautiful at the top. The walk was tough at times and my worry was about time. I rushed down as I thought I would have missed my bus.

absolutely fabulous. so worth it. very educated English speaking tour guide. other travelers with other tour companies complained that their tours were to big. all of our tours through Viator were small and very personable. I would book all these tours 100 times over again. these tours made our trip as fabulous as it was. thank you Viator

LOVED this tour! It was a full day -- essentially half at Pompeii and half at Mt Vesuvius with a fabulous Italian lunch in between at a nice restaurant. Super happy we booked through Viator vs. the cruise line and the excursion was very well organized and comfortable. Lot's of walking in Pompeii and climbing at Mt Vesuvius, but both are MUST sees. I really recommend, tour guide was fantastic.

Great tour with a great guide. Will use Viator again.

We booked the Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius tour expecting the same small group experience we have had in the past. Unfortunately this one turned out to be the opposite. We felt herded around from one guide to another. First, the tour began in the late morning which resulted in a late arrival in Pompeii with hundreds of other large tours. Second, a large bus was used to collect people from all over Naples. The one high light was our Pompeii guide who was most knowledgeable. Next we were herded to lunch in a large restaurant, then switched over to a new guide for the tour to Mt. Vesuvius. The organization of finding the correct guides was chaotic.

This tour crams a lot into the time allotted. Eric was a knowledge guide. If you only have the day from your cruise, this is the tour to take.

Don't take this tour from the ship. We spent the 1st hour picking up and waiting at hotels around Naples, illegally parked on busy streets. We reached Pompeii more than an hour late. It was packed and I can only describe chaos as the tour guides tried to separate us into groups depending on language. We had another long wait as the line for the ladies room was unbelievably long. The tour of Pompeii itself was fine. Then came lunch and more separation into groups going to either Vesuvius or Sorrento. The tour guides were quite rude when we did not immediately understand which group we should be in. We had different guides for each part of the tour. When I told one guide I was concerned that we would not make it back to our ship on time he blew me off with of course you will but when I approached another guide an hour later as we were leaving for Vesuvius she looked shocked and got on her cell phone. We had to race up to the top of the volcano and then they arranged for another vehicle to take us back to the ship so we would get back on time. We were glad to see both Vesuvius and Pompeii but it was a fairly stressful day.

We booked this shore excursion about a week before the excursion date giving all the necessary information about our boat and the departure time. We were picked up at the boat and transferred to a large bus which proceeded to pick up a large number of other people from their accommodation. We eventually got to Pompei and had a one and quarter hour tour which was interesting, bit felt very rushed. We then proceeded to go to the restaurant for the included pizza lunch before continuing on to Mt Vesuvius for the remainder of the tour. As we made our way into the restaurant we were told by one of the guides that we needed to leave at once with the people who were only doing the half day tour as we didn't have time to do the full tour before our boat left, and they wouldn't get us back to the boat in time. We were herded back onto a stifling hot boat and taken back to the boat, not having had the included lunch or the rest of our tour. We were told that they thought our boat was leaving an hour later than it was, despite us providing all this information when we booked. Also they said there was a road closure on Mt Vesuvius due to a bike race, which I am sure they were aware of when making the booking. We asked for a refund of the money we paid for the tour. Viator has refunded us 92 on the full amount of 284 , which is disgusting as we got only the Tour of Pompei and not lunch or the tour of Mt Vesuvius. We complained to Viator about the refund amount, but they seem to think this is reasonable. We had used Viator for 5 tours previously on this trip. Unfortunately we will not use Viator again, which cost them a lot of business seeing we were in Europe for 3 months!

We were not quite sure where to go once we got off the ship, but found our guide and boarded a small 15-ish person bus. Then we stopped at two more hotels to pick up more people. We got to Pompeii and we were handed off to the Pompeii guide, but she was about 15 minutes late. No backpacks are allowed in the site, and no one knew this, but lockers were available. Restroom line was very long. There was quite a bit of disorganization getting started and some grumbling amongst the group about not knowing where to be or what to do. We collected headsets so we could hear our guide and she was wonderful. We had our pizza lunch and that was fine. Our group had to split up due to some people going to Mt. Vesuvius and some going other places. By the time everyone got on the bus we had one hour to get to the top of Mt. Vesuvius and back. Another half hour would have been beneficial for that segment. It was great to see people of all ages and abilities walking up that mountain. I had to stop to catch my breath a few times but the view was amazing. We cut it close getting back to the ship but our driver wasted no time getting us there.

The tour achieved what it said in the itinerary though it could have been a bit more timely allowing for more time at the sites. We had to pickup several people from various hotels which added to the wait time given an already late start time. The time spent in Pompeii was fine and the guide was great. We got a good sampling of the site in case we want to return in the future. The included lunch was a great inclusion, but the only negatives were that nothing was gluten and dairy free so my wife ended up eating a protein bar instead. The pizza was good though and we enjoyed meeting two couples that sat at our table. Sadly we spent quite a long time at lunch which slowed us down even further. The time spent at Mt. Vesuvius was good though if we had more time we could have reached the peak. Also the guided portion was only the time spent on the bus and was split between English and Spanish. Overall I thought the tour was good, but it just wasn't as timely as we would have hoped for in order to see more things.