Big Bus Tours

EDIT:
3 stars! One for each of the things that do it for me: Ambience, product, and price. Zero stars for service and «Will I come back?»
==========
I bought the ticket online for the «hop on, hop off» style bus tour. If you buy online, you get a 15% off AND you can hop onto a bus from any stop. All you need is a print out (a small pain).
When you get to a major drop off, you can get all the other tickets included in your package printed by the Big Bus Staff. These include the tram ride up to the peak, ferry ride over to Kowloon, sampan ride over at Aberdeen. The ticket I bought is US$ 64, for unlimited rides on the big bus, on all three routes (red, blue, green), valid for 48 hours.
The problem with this, if you are unfamiliar with the hop-​on, hop-​off points, is that there are NO signs or signage telling you where they are!
So, at the mercy of random strangers in HK (mostly surly and unresponsive), you’d have to stand by the side of a road and wait with crossed fingers that the bus will stop near by. Once you are on the bus, you’d be fine.
When you get onto a big bus, grab a pair of earphones and a rain poncho as you walk past the driver. These are free, and the ponchos are important in HK weather!
Climb to the upper deck and enjoy the view, sun and wind in your hair! The first time I was on the upper deck, I fancied myself as Elizabeth Taylor, big sun glasses and a scarf to keep my perfectly coiffed hair in place.
Then it started to rain. Tiny droplets of rain became a full blown tropical storm in minutes! That’s when the plastic poncho came in use. Not very glamorous, but it works!
There are three routes, red blue and green. The red and green routes start and end at the ferry terminal on HK island. There 2 routes also intersect at the tram stop at The Peak.
The red line covers the main HK commercial and business district. If you like gazing up and skyscrapers and getting stuck in HK traffic, this is the route for you.
The green line takes you over to the south side of the island. This is the best route for me. The south side of the island is a hidden side of HK, 30 minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the city to a beach side boardwalk! Food, beach, tourists!
The blue route is on the Kowloon side of HK, you will need to take a 10minute ferry ride to get there. The hop on point for the big bus is stupidly difficult to find. Here, do not rely on the kindness of spurned touts. I learned this the hard way. They will point you to the opposite direction. Bastards.
For the weekend, I took the big buses about 8 to 9 times. Stopped at many points to eat and hopped back on. Took all three routes for the full experience. No need to look for nonexistent taxis and or pay extra just because.
If the Big bus company would just look at improving signage or instructions for the hopping on and off, I’d change this review to 5 stars.

Like most big cities, Hong Kong is not short of sightseeing bus providers, but every time friends and family come to visit i tell them to hop on the Big Bus. There are three routes around Hong Kong. The City tour, the Kowloon tour and the South Side tour. If you only have a short amount of time, I say go for the city tour, and maybe tack on the south side trip if you have time — the contrast between the two is actually quiet incredible and if you don’t know much about Hong Kong, other than its a major city, you will probably be pleasantly surprised (as I was) to discover the beaches and jungle-​like vistas which dominate that side of the island.
The ‘start’ point, if you can call it that for a hop-​on-​hop-​off service is near the star ferry pier.
Take a couple of bits of advice from an old hand.
Firstly, if you can’t get a seat on the roof — don’t bother, wait for another bus. While this snippet of wisdom may seem like folly in a city where monsoonal rain is common at certain times of the year, take my word for it. Hong Kong is a city of sky scrapers and you will miss most of the views if you are under a roof.
Second, use the headphones. The audio tours are full of really good stuff, they give you all the particulars about the buildings and sights you are going past, but it’s the fillers where the true trivia lays. For example, one in every ten dollars spent in Hong Kong is in one of the companies owned by the SAR’s richest man. And, while property on the peak is very popular with expats, many affluent Asians eschew the area as it has bad feng shui. I’ve done this types of tours in a number of cities (London, Sydney, Dublin, New York and Munich at last count) and the audio in Hong Kong is the best I’ve come across.
Of course like any hop-​on-​hop off bus you can get on and off as many times as you like. I tend to do a complete circuit and then decide what’s worth going into. Too many times I’ve had preconceived notions and been disappointed whereas this way I find things that I never thought to add to my to-​do list that I really enjoy.
There are a number of ‘extras’ included in the tickets — peak tram tickets (make sure you redeem BEFORE you get in the queue at the peak tram terminus), star ferry tickets and a sampan ride in Aberdeen to name a couple, so it pays to do the bus tour early in your trip so you don’t double up! Like Alanis says, a free ride when you’ve already paid is ironic. It’s also highly annoying!