The COLOSSEUM in a 1-hour guided Tour

Everyone, including me, asked for their money back. But Viator never responded to my email. It turns out that on the day that we booked our tour of the Colosseum admission was FREE for everyone. We arrived at the tour office at 11:45 for a 12:30 tour. The office was quite full of people who said they were waiting for the 11 am tour. The person at the reception desk (who at first told me he did not work there) said it would be 10 minutes until our tour. After a lot of waiting and people complaining we left for our 1 hour tour at 1 pm. We were then told we would have to stand in line to get our tickets, but because it was free it would not take long. It took 10 minutes to walk to the ticket booth (their front of the line “trick” was to go to Palatine Hill and get the tickets because the line is shorter). We waited 5 minutes to get the tickets then walked over to the Colosseum (a 2 minute walk). The line was quick so we were inside in about 10 minutes (including security check). So the real tour started at 1:25. At around 1:50 the guide said we could have 10 minutes to explore the Colosseum and then we would meet outside for the balance of the 3 hour tour (some people had paid for a tour of the Colosseum and The Forum). Effectively our tour was 20 to 25 minutes. Not a great deal for the price we paid! The tour guide appeared to be knowledgeable but there were a lot of people (they combined multiple reservations into one tour) so he could not effectively communicate and you had no time for questions.

We ended up booking this short tour of the Colosseum because all of the skip the line tickets were sold out for the duration of our stay in Rome. Not being huge fans of guided tours we still found it informative and the guide made a good effort to include the whole group even though it was large (more than 20 people) and included a wide range of ages. The radios providing by the tour company were helpful and we could clearly hear the guide's presentation throughout. It did however feel a bit rushed and I would have liked more time to wander around soaking up the atmosphere. You need to make it clear to the company if you'd like to take the rest of your ticket to the Forum and Palatine independently so that you have the option to visit these sites the following day rather than straight away. Overall I thought that this tour offered fairly good value and I'd recommend it to visitors who want a quick overview.