Vatican Tour for Kids with the Sistine Chapel and Skip-the-Line Tickets

Dony was wonderful! Our whole family enjoyed the visit. Dony was personable, approachable and connected well with the adults since we had experience with both Spanish and Portuguese. I would definitely recommend Dony as a guide for Spanish and Portuguese speaking audiences. We were lucky enough to be able to switch languages from time to time, and there was a noticeable difference in the increased content that we received in Spanish than in English. Dony's English was very strong, but we felt that we were able to benefit more from the experience when he spoke Spanish. Unfortunately, my daughters' level of Spanish wasn't strong enough to be able to listen to complex topics in another language. This is no fault of Dony's at all. I believe that since I had specifically noted on our form that we love languages and that my father was a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, that we were assigned to Dony. I had also indicated that my mother was from Peru. I did think that we were going to be assigned one of the tour guides who had been trained in the Family Program methods mentioned in the guide (Visual Thinking Strategies and Inquiry Based Learning) as we had signed up for a walk for the girls who are 6 and 15. So I'm not sure if there was a mix-up in scheduling assignments for us. I give no fault to Dony in this as he was wonderful, informative and was kind to the girls by allowing bathroom stops as needed. I was just wondering if Dony was assigned to us based on my comments about my parents more than the fact that there were children in the group. Would you please let me know? I would also really prefer that you pass on the positive comments that we have about Dony. The scheduling question is mine only and more for the administrative and web advertising group. Again, we LOVED Dony and thought his knowledge and tour was helpful and fantastic, but I do wonder about the "Family Program' aspect that I thought we had purchased. If I were to return to Rome, I would ask for Dony again. I would just make sure that if I were bringing children into the tour part, that I would reconfirm with Context regarding the Interactive portion Mille grazie!

We all got so much out of this tour. Alessandra led us thru beautifully without a lot of waiting to get into the museum, St. Peters and of course the Sistine Chapel. She asked the kids good questions.

We came into this tour with high expectations after our tour with Valentina. While Margherita was pleasant and nothing was overtly wrong, we did not experience the same feeling with this tour at all. In contrast to our Roma Antica tour, we were left wondering why we paid so much for a tour that didn't seem to add much to the experience. She was nice and knew where to walk, but the signs would have pointed us there. She told us information that was on the signs or in the guidebooks we could have brought with us. We did not feel that any real value was added to our trip. We are experienced travelers and could have navigated the museums on our own, we wanted the "context" of the art. She did not give us much information at all about the different periods of art, techniques, philosophy, etc. We spent an hour outside looking at pictures while she read out of the book to us about the Sistine Chapel, while we had been under the impression that this would be done in the cafe midway through the tour. She had to keep checking her phone for information. She did not ascertain the knowledge level of the group....my father is a retired history and humanities teacher and has a working knowledge of art. His level of knowledge does not approach an art historian, but I feel like I learned more from him as we walked. I asked her a few questions about why one of the Raphael paintings was so famous (the one with the portraits of famous contemporaries painted into it I'm sorry I don't remember the name). I asked if it was because of the famous faces, or the technique, or the subject? She told me it was use of perspective. She hardly engaged the 11 and 14 yr old at all, except for asking if they liked mythology. She posed questions but answered them herself. She did not seem interested in us at all, never asked what we already knew, what we wanted to learn, etc. We felt like just another group she had to bring through. She was pleasant, not offensive at all, but there was no real value added and we felt like we wasted a lot of money. We came away very disappointed. We are easy to please and very interested in learning (please ask Valentina, we are not unreasonable tourists) but could not recommend this tour or this docent.