Vatican Museums & Sistine Chapel Guided Tour with St. Peter’s Basilica Entry

Today's excursion was fine. You can't call it "going through the queue". We queued just like the others. Yes, exactly: the others. The basilica, the cathedral, the dome, the grotto - everything was full of people. In no way can you speak of "exclusivity" or being outside the streams of visitors here. We stood in the grotto for ages because we could neither go forwards nor backwards. In the basilica, we were almost run over. The guided tour with Maria was interesting and balanced. However, due to the crowds of visitors and the fact that it was difficult to get through, she went at quite a pace - you would have struggled to keep up and were constantly getting lost. It was exactly the same in the Vatican Museum. Some people 'got off' because they just couldn't keep up with the pace. We were really stressed and couldn't really take in what we were seeing because we were so busy listening and keeping up. I would book the basilica/dome tour again as we received good information from Maria and found the routes quickly and easily (elevator, dome, Holy Door etc.). I would book the Vatican Museums 1. on another day and 2. with a guide who does not take other guests afterwards. Unfortunately, the latter was not enjoyable at all. I also wouldn't go in the Jubilee year. I have seen so many people, if at all, at concerts and festivals - with the difference that they all look and walk in the same direction and on the cathedral and museum tour they all walk and stand completely differently

The tour overall felt quite rushed from start to finish. If I could rate our guide Rafa separately, she’d easily get 5 stars. She did an amazing job managing a large group and shared an incredible amount of knowledge throughout the tour. That said, the 3-star rating is more reflective of the organizing tour company. It was clear that Rafa was under a lot of pressure trying to keep everyone together, especially given the size of our group—about 20 people, many of whom were elderly and had limited mobility. This made it especially challenging to navigate the Vatican, which was extremely crowded due to Jubilee. In my opinion, tour groups should be capped at around 10 people to make the experience more enjoyable and manageable, especially in such busy environments. For the price I paid, I expected a more thoughtfully organized experience. To be clear—my disappointment lies with the tour company, not Rafa. She handled everything with patience, professionalism, and grace. Honestly, she deserves a raise.

Tour guide was excellent and very patient. Although not something the tour could control, it was disappointing to have to wait 1.5 hours to get into St Peter's within a big crowd and a lot of that time standing in the sun. It's not what I expected at all with a small group tour and skip the line tickets. The Dome climb and view was spectacular.

It is not true that you can visit the Vatican with less people thanks to this early morning tour. It was completely crowded. But fortunately we could skip the loooong queue at the museum to get inside. The guide was very knowledgeable, but had such a strong accent that even native speakers found it hard to understand him.

At all the tour was amazing. It seems many Rome visitors are interested in it, so where are very crowded inside. Why we ordered an early visit. But unfortunately our tour was rescheduled and the dome visit was excluded. So, we could not avoid "traffic jams" and have no possibilities reach the dome.