I'm going to tell you what you need to know if you're visiting Washington DC during school field trip season.
Hello! Welcome to Trip Hacks DC, my name is Rob
I'm a tour guide here in the nation's capital.
If you're coming to Washington DC and you're looking for the best tips, tricks and hacks for exploring the city
make sure to subscribe to this channel
and hit the bell
notification icon so that you don't miss any new videos. And if you're interested in signing up for a Trip Hacks DC tour
head on over to www.triphacksdc.com
afterwards, to see the tours that we offer. If you're planning a trip to
Washington DC you might want to be aware of what we tour guides call "field trip season".
I'm going to tell you what it is
when it is, and what you should expect if your visit overlaps. And if you have ever visited DC during field trip season before
leave a comment on this video and let everyone know how you thought it went. Otherwise, let's get started... So first
what is school field trip season? For many schools in the eastern half of the country
making a trip to Washington DC is sort of a rite of passage.
Field trips are a huge part of the DC tourism industry
and even though I am not one of them, there are many tour guides who make a living
primarily giving tours to school groups. Most schools send eighth grade class trips
which is why you will also occasionally hear referred to as "eighth grade field trip season".
Eighth grade is usually the class that gets to come to DC because it's kind of a last hurrah before the kids get sent off
to high school.
But I have personally led school groups with kids from fifth grade all the way up to 12th grade and
every grade in between. I've even done a handful of college class trips over the years. For small schools
there might only be about a dozen or so students in the group and for big schools
there could be well over a hundred students in the group. OK
so now you know what it is
the next important thing to know is when it is. There are actually two field trip seasons.
The big one is in the spring roughly from mid-March through mid-June
and then there's a secondary one in the fall roughly from early October through Thanksgiving.
So if you're trying to avoid field trip season the months you want to consider for your trip are:
December, January, and February in the winter, and
July, August, and September in the summer. Most schools choose to come in the spring because it's sort of an end-of-the-school-year
reward, plus the students get to spend all school year learning about social studies and history and then they get to come to DC and
see things up close.
The fall field trip season is much less busy since most schools don't want to do the trip at the beginning of the school year.
And of course the last thing you want to know is
what to expect. The most important thing to know is that they travel together as large groups
so if you're visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and four groups of 50 students arrives at once
which is not an uncommon thing in the spring - that's over
200 people at the Memorial all at the same time. And to be a hundred percent honest, this is the kind of place
that's just so much better to experience when there's not a huge crowd there with you.
Now the way that these groups plan their itineraries is pretty straight forward.
School groups are only in DC for a limited amount of time, so they need to maximize that time as best as possible.
That means
that during the day they're going to be at the sites that are only open from 10:00 to 5:00 like the museums and the other
indoor sites. Then after dinner
they're going to head out and tour the monuments and memorials
since there really aren't a lot of evening activities you can do with big groups of teenagers. In some of my previous videos I have
recommended seeing the monuments in the evening and my most popular tour is an evening monuments tour.
But you have to know that if you're visiting during spring field trip season
you're going to be sharing those monuments with a lot of other people. As far as restaurants go, field trip groups tend to stick to
a limited number of places. For lunch they go to food courts. The food courts at Union Station,
L'Enfant Plaza,
the Reagan Building, and Pentagon City Mall are all
popular choices. Food courts are ideal for these type of groups because they're cheap and they give the students a lot of different choices. For
dinner, they go to the inexpensive-ish restaurants that can accommodate groups. This is the Hard Rock Cafe, Buca di Beppo,
Carmine's, and similar chain places.
School groups usually stay at suburban hotels because they travel on charter buses and don't need to be near Metro and also because
suburban hotels usually give better group rates. Although you will occasionally see school groups that are staying downtown
especially if they're a small group who doesn't have a charter bus and wants to be within walking distance of the sites.
So if you plan to stay at a downtown hotel, which I recommend, and eat it mostly local restaurants
you're probably not gonna bump into too many of these groups at those places. And that's it!
Thank you for watching this video.
If you found it helpful, you can subscribe to this channel by clicking on the Trip Hacks DC logo
which is popping up right now at the bottom of the screen. And if you're coming to DC and want to sign up for a
Trip Hacks DC tour
you can click on the Capitol dome on the left side of my head, that'll send you over to www.triphacksdc.com where you
can see all of the tours that we offer. Enjoy your trip!