Reviews & Ratings for Bill Speidel's Underground Tour

11/01/10

Underground weird photo.

by whajira at Citysearch

I was this past weekend with my boyfriend in Seattle taking the underground tour and I capture this photo.

03/08/10

Skip it !

by boomer52 at Citysearch

An opportunity for the guides to practice their canned stand-up routines.

• Pros: ?
• Cons: Overrated and Overpriced

03/08/10

Skip it !

by boomer52 at Citysearch

Opportunity for guides to practice their canned stand-up routines.

• Pros: ?
• Cons: Overrated and Overpriced

11/15/09

boringggg

by Sarafina86 at Citysearch

It was soo boring, It was like being in someones gross basement. It was a waste of money. Yah you may learn a bit but its not enjoyable one bit...Sorry seattle!

• Pros: excitment
• Cons: dissappointment

10/26/08

Encounter in the Underground

by eathompson at Citysearch

I live in Kentucky and I went to Seattle and to the underground tour on 9/30/2008 and what an experience! It was one of the best tours I have ever been on at any city! I am origanly from Savannah, GA and being from there I have been on many the tour of city history. I have to say though, never experiencing what I did in Seattle. Being underground at the door way into the area where the "seamtresses" were said to work, I was felt like and thought my husband had grabbed me on the arm by my elbow and when I looked down he was not touching me, he wasn't even where he should have been to have touched me there. No one was. I heard stories of many places being haunted or whatever being from an old city myself but that I have to say was my first time ever something of that nature happening to me. I can't wait to go to seattle again and doing the tour again to next time bring a camera and see if i can get a picture of proof of my experience of the Seattle underground. I recommend this tour to everyone!!

• Pros: Best tour guides
• Cons: Hard to find if you dont know the city well

06/05/08

Fun for tourists, interesting facts...can be smelly

by furayar at Citysearch

So what the people who rated the tour with low stars said is actually true...it seems like a bunch of smelly basements, not so much physical history. However, if you are into looking at really old stuff and hearing about the past, it is cool. The tour guides make the tour because they recreate the past as you walk through the passages by telling stories, usually funny. I feel like the tour should be priced in the $7-10 range though...Oh, and don't plan on using a cell phone or talking to your friends while the guide talks. They are SUPER proactive about that and they'll stop everything to tell you to knock it off. We had 'public cell phone talking guy' on our tour and I was so nervous about getting stuck by him but it turned out to not matter. They shut him up after the second time of asking him to stop. One last thing...we got the mini burgers as a snack before the tour. I would definitely skip the food at that place. The burgers honestly tasted like plastic. Save your appetite for some of the cooler places that are right around there.

• Pros: Makes you laugh, interesting and fun, cool gift shop
• Cons: Food not so good, you need to have a great imagination (not necessarily a con...)

05/27/08

Huge waste of 90 minutes, not worth $14

by jackies12 at Citysearch

This tour was terrible, I wouldn't bring any guests or friends through this if I wanted to keep in touch after their trip. The humor was crude and certainly not appropriate for children under 12, but everyone on the tour seemed to get bored within the first 10-15 minutes. It felt like I was walking through an unfinished construction site with a few random photos hanging up, I kept waiting for the tour to really get started and something interesting to happen, but the next thing I knew the tour guide was requesting a tip and left us in a gift shop. After the second dip underground, most of the people around me were commenting that they were ready to leave, and I can't help but assume that the majority of tourists walked away feeling like they'd been ripped off. The $14 price tag is a huge ripoff and there are much better ways to spend 90 minutes in Seattle.

• Pros: It does eventually end.
• Cons: Inappropriate for children, crude humor, repetitive, boring.

11/21/06

It's a good tour to learn Seattle history

by kee22 at Citysearch

I went with my family when my grandfather was in town. I thought the tour was good...it wasn't all that expected...it's kind of redundant in the sites that you see. But it is strill really a good opportunity to learn about Seattle's past...like the great fire...and see some of the remains of old buildings and other relics. The tour guides are very nice and the tour is very informative.

• Pros: Good tour, learn about Seattle history

04/07/06

A tour beneath Seattle's streets reveals the real dirt on the city's often unclean past.

by Contributor at Citysearch

The Experience
In the mid-'60s, Bill Speidel wrote about the possible existence of "passageways beneath the city." The idea proved so popular that Speidel decided to provide tours of this mysterious underground. Wind through long-abandoned storefronts under Seattle's streets while getting a slice of history.

The Appeal
Though the tour itself requires a great deal of imagination to "see" the stores of the early 1900s as they might have been, the history lesson comes painlessly--the guides possess a good, if slapstick, sense of humor. You'll hear about the exploding-toilet-syndrome that forced the city and residents to raise the Pioneer Square area by as much as 14 feet, as well as the scandals and indecencies that gave Pioneer Square a reputation that eventually gave rise to the expression "skid row."

08/10/04

Educational AND fun

by lord_humongous at Citysearch

The Seattle Underground tour was very interesting. We learned a lot about Seattle's bizarre history and it was a lot of fun. If you live in Seattle or are visiting I would suggest taking this tour. You'll be amazed at the strange things you'll learn about Seattle.

Warning, you do climb up and down stairs and walk through underground tunnels and end up in smelly alleys so wear appropriate shoes.

• Pros: Friendly staff