Great day. Best tour we’ve ever had - In San Diego for decommissioning of the USS Cowpens CG-63. We drove up to tour the USS Iowa. We did the guided tour. The volunteers and staff were great. Battleship Larry gave us the tour, exceptional! Fantastic day

President's Tour - Worth it! - Our Family has now been on all 4 Iowa class battleships (Wisconsin, New Jersey, Missouri, Iowa). Each experience is unique, as each ship is unique. One thing is consistent, though, these battleships are impressive. The volunteers make the experience, and we appreciated the information and thoughtful commentary from our guide on the President's tour. We got a chance to go behind the ropes in a few sections, and it was great. If you are in the LA area, I highly recommend you take the time to visit this grand old ship. As a bonus, you get to drive through the harbor and see a modern, active seaport in operation. Also, there are plenty of restaurants within an easy drive for lunch or dinner.

Even if you dont care about naval stuff, this is fascinating! - I agreed to go along because my husband wanted to go very much. Took a tour with a terrific guide (Adam), which made it a really interesting and memorable visit.

Highly Recommended - Very good experience. I took the 'Gun Tour' and our guide Donald was entertaining and extremely knowledgeable. I really enjoyed the fact that he got into the specifics of how the ship's systems operated. I asked a few extremely specific questions and Donald's answers were excellent. That being said, I felt like he kept things moving to the point where others in the group, who were probably not as interested in the details, seemed to be entertained throughout as well.

Amazing details and great fun - We had the engineering tour down into the belly of the ship. It was really amazing , how many details we got to see. We got so deep into it, that we all lost our sense of time and way exceeded the intended time frame. We had so much fun with our enthusiastic guides, we definitely need to spend more time.

Lovely Tour! - Such an excellent tour! I’m not a big military history buff and I loved it. Our guide, Philip, was so knowledgeable and his respect and excitement for the history and craft was evident and contagious. I recommend taking the earlier tour or bringing a water bottle you can attach to your body since you’ll need your hands for the steep stairs and it was getting hot on the ship by 11:30am. Grateful for this eye opening experience. I’d go again.

If you are fascinated by how stuff works, you gotta do the Engineers tour! - I'm an engineer, so I bought a ticket to the engineers tour... and I totally geeked out on that one. From thinking about my dad's time in the Navy to what they had to do to power, steer, repair, and operate the ship. A totally fascinating tour by two awesome experienced sailors who had great insight as to what it was like.

Fascinating and Awesome Ship - This was our second battleship tour as we had toured the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor so I shall compare the two. Both are part of the four vessels which compose the class of ships built late in the war. They are very large full of nooks and crannies on many decks. Be prepared to climb and descend ships ladders, walk very carefully and slowly so that you can look around. For the Iowa, one follows the yellow arrows. This ship also includes a special display about Robert Ballard locating the Titanic. The sites and sounds are interesting and help one understand life on such a very large ship. But do be prepared to climb ladders!

Good time, BUT we didn't get to see the ship's "bathtub", used by FDR ?! - Seeing battleship's crew quarters and mess hall, and Captains quarters. Our own father was a 'Signalman" on the USS Iowa 1942 - 1945...he is no longer with us, but his memories of the battles, coming to shore and general overall experience was always very very entertaining.

Not the best - In terms of preserved warships I have seen this was at the bottom. Very little of ship is open to visitors on the general pass compared to what I have seen onboard other ships.