The ghost bus tour Edinburgh: what it is, who it is for, and what it costs

Every other tour on this site is a person walking you somewhere and explaining it. The ghost bus is not that. It is a scripted comedy performance on a moving vehicle, delivered by an actor in costume, with the city going past the windows as scenery.

Understanding that in advance is the whole difference between a good evening and a disappointed review. People who book it expecting the underground vaults with wheels are unhappy. People who book it knowing it is a seventy-five-minute comedy horror show with sightseeing attached have a very good time, and 4,546 of them have said so at an average of 4.5.

The bus itself is part of the act: a refurbished vintage double-decker, kitted out to look like something a funeral director would arrive in. You sit upstairs or down, the host works the aisle, and the route takes in ground that the walking tours simply cannot cover in the time — the Old Town, the Grassmarket, and a swing through the New Town that most visitors never see at night.

You want the history. The bus is not trying to teach you anything and does not pretend to be. If what you want is an hour of documented Edinburgh — the closes, the Reformation, the Covenanters, the body-snatching years — the Old Town History and Tales walk at $23 does that and is rated 4.8 across 2,796 reviews.

You want access. The single strongest argument for the paid tours in this city is that they open locked doors: the chambers under the South Bridge, the buried close under the City Chambers, the gate at the far end of Greyfriars. The bus opens nothing. You see the city from a window.

You want to be frightened. It is comedy horror and the comedy comes first. The late-night vaults terror tour at $27 is the one that takes fright seriously.

The loop covers more ground than any walking tour on this site, which is the practical compensation for not getting out. You get the Royal Mile and the Old Town closes from the outside, the Grassmarket under the castle rock, and — the part that surprises people — a run through the New Town.

That New Town section is worth more than it sounds. Almost everything sold as "Edinburgh after dark" happens in the Old Town, on about a square kilometre of medieval ridge. The Georgian city to the north, laid out from 1767 on a grid, is a completely different place at night: wide, lit, and empty in a way the Royal Mile never is. Most visitors never see it after dark at all.

The commentary is comedy throughout, but the route is a real route, and if it is your first night in the city it doubles as an orientation. A lot of people who take the bus on night one take a walking tour on night two and say the geography finally made sense.

Almost everything sold as Edinburgh after dark happens on about a square kilometre of medieval ridge. The bus is the only tour on this site that regularly leaves it.

The New Town was laid out from 1767 to a competition-winning grid plan, and it is one of the largest and most complete Georgian townscapes anywhere. At night it is the opposite of the Old Town in every respect: wide, straight, evenly lit, and largely empty of people after nine. Nothing about it is claustrophobic and nothing about it is medieval.

Seeing both in one seventy-five-minute loop does something no walking tour can. The Old Town is dense and vertical because it had nowhere to expand; the New Town is spacious and horizontal because the city finally solved that problem — by draining a loch and throwing a bridge across it. The two halves are the same story told twice, and from a top-deck window the contrast is immediate.