The whole process including sign up, meet up, tour and guide were well planned by city walks. The knowledge these guides have is outstanding. They know their stuff and do a great job in the time frame they have. They know how to navigate the crowds from years of experience. I’d say do the early morning but skip the breakfast. It does the job of giving you food to fill up but it’s not that good.
The tour guide was great, friendly and had some really interesting stories. The headset was essential given the crowds. The breakfast was subpar, kind of chaotic, cold, and generally not very good. The VIP doesn't get you into the Sistine early. We did that about 2-3 hours into the tour and it was about as busy as it can get. We may have gotten into the museums "early", I'm not really sure, but there were definitely crowds the whole time.
Good tour but company needs to update electronic equipment
Beware that if you book this tour on a Wednesday, you will not visit St Peters Basilica, which isn’t clear on the tour description. We paid a lot of money to access skip the line entry to both the Vatican museum and St Peter’s basilica. Unfortunately, as it was a Wednesday, we couldn’t visit St Peters, so we toured more of Vatican art collection. When going past afterwards, the line to get in to St Peter’s was 2-3 hour wait in the hot sun, so we missed it. Feeling disappointed as I had booked this months in advance and would have chosen another day if I had known about Wednesdays not visiting St Peters. The guide was excellent in what he offered, we are just disappointed to not get a ‘skip the line’ entry to St Peters as we expected.
Had to get up early and take a taxi in the dark to an obscure little cafe but it was worth it. Our tour guide prepared us for the experience and the tour lived up to expectations!