Tour Guide is Mandatory
This was the second Liv family tour we did, other was Colosseum, and I don't think it was worth booking it special for families. From the get go she looked at our kids and basically said, welp we won't get to much and kind of went through the motions. The crowds and process to get in don't really lend itself to a kid friendly tour. There is a lot of crowding around and waiting in line, even with passes, to be able to do the kid activities to keep them engaged. The kids also couldn't use the adult headsets, which are necessary to hear the guide since it's very echoey and there's a million other guides talking. Our guide was also just not very engaging and had a thicker accent making it hard to understand compared to the very animated kid friendly UK guide we had for the Colosseum who made it all about them. The tour says 2.5hours, but it was more like 1.5 of actual tour since it takes a lot of waiting to get in, get headsets multiple times, and then left 15min early. She seemed to not have a plan once inside St. Peters and I could feel she was ready to be done. She left us early so we could do what we wanted, but I expected to get more options or suggestions since we could always do our own thing after the tour ended. She also only prompted us for one picture the whole time next to a garbage can that I thought was odd and found later it was clearly a check mark for the company since they sent it to us afterward. Our other guide was constantly finding the best spots and took amazing family pics, managing tourists out of the way on our behalf, since that is a big part of why we are there. I would definitely recommend a private tour with kids to get into everywhere swiftly, just don't bother with the family tour upsell for the Vatican or hope for a more family friendly guide.
- Josh