Booking a Scooter or Segway Tour: What to Expect

A guided scooter tour is a strange product: part transport, part sightseeing, part driving lesson. Done well it gets you across a city you do not know at a pace that lets you see it. Done badly it is a queue of people following a guide through traffic. The difference is mostly visible before you book.

What is normally included

Most operators include the machine, safety gear, a briefing, a guide and a fixed route. Two to four hours is the usual length. Some include entry fees for stops, most do not. Fuel or charge is essentially always included, because the route is fixed.

The briefing is the part that varies and the part that matters. A good operator will not put you into traffic without ten minutes in a car park learning the throttle and the brakes first. If the description does not mention practice time, ask.

Age, licence and weight limits

Motorised scooter and moped tours generally require a valid driver licence, and some require a motorcycle endorsement depending on the machine and the state. Segway tours generally do not require a licence, because a self-balancing personal transporter is a different vehicle class, but they almost always set a minimum age and both a minimum and a maximum rider weight, since the balancing system needs a rider inside its design range.

Check all of these for every person in your group before booking, not after. The requirement that most often catches groups out is a teenager who is old enough to ride a bicycle tour and not old enough for a moped one.

Segway and scooter tours are not the same experience

A Segway tour is slow, stays largely on paths and promenades, and is comfortable for people who would not get on a motorised two-wheeler. A moped or scooter tour covers real distance on real roads and asks something of you as a rider. Neither is better, but booking one expecting the other is a common disappointment.

Weather and cancellation

Tours run in the open. Ask the cancellation policy for rain specifically, because it ranges from full refund to no refund with only a reschedule offered. Then check the forecast yourself the day before at the National Weather Service rather than relying on the operator to call it, and be aware that heat is as likely as rain to spoil a midsummer tour in the southern half of the country.

How to pick a good one

• Group size. Six to eight riders per guide is manageable. Fifteen is a convoy, and convoys get split at traffic lights.
• Route detail. An operator that publishes the actual route and stops has thought about it. "A tour of the city" has not.
• Practice time. Explicitly mentioned is a good sign.
• Gear. Helmets included and, on Segway tours, that they are required rather than offered.
• Start time. Morning tours in summer are far more pleasant than afternoon ones, and traffic is lighter.

What to bring

Closed shoes, sunglasses, sunscreen, water, and a way to carry a phone that is not your hand. On any motorised tour, dress for a fall rather than for the weather: long sleeves and long trousers cost you very little comfort and save a lot of skin. The general micromobility safety guidance applies on a tour exactly as it does on a commute, and the guide in front of you does not change how the pavement behaves.

Book ahead

Tour slots fill well before walk-up rentals do, particularly at weekends and in coastal towns in season. If a tour is the reason you are going somewhere, book it before you book anything else. Find tour operators by state to see what runs where you are heading.