The Hollywood Bus Tour Route, Stop by Stop

A Hollywood bus tour follows the same loop with almost every operator: Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame, up into the Hollywood Hills and along Mulholland Drive for the view of the Hollywood Sign, past celebrity homes, a photo stop at the Beverly Hills Sign, then Rodeo Drive, West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip back to Hollywood. On a two-hour tour most of it is seen from the bus.

Check dates for the small-group bus with a sign stop

Hollywood Boulevard

The loop starts or ends by the Walk of Fame, which had more than 2,800 stars set in the pavement in October 2026, and the TCL Chinese Theatre with its forecourt of handprints. The Dolby Theatre next door hosts the Oscars. Hollywood City Tours’ route also passes the round Capitol Records Building and the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

On most two-hour tours you see all of this from the bus. To walk it, pick a tour with stops: the Best of LA City Tour gives you 45 minutes there, from US$59.

The Hollywood Hills and Mulholland Drive

The bus climbs into the hills and runs along Mulholland Drive, the ridge road with views over the Los Angeles basin on one side and the San Fernando Valley on the other. This is where most tours give you the Hollywood Sign, across the canyon. Only a few stop: Golden Ticket LA’s small-group open-top bus, from US$21, lists ten minutes at a sign viewpoint, and its VIP tour in smaller vans, from US$50, goes further up the hill roads. The sign itself is in a restricted area that no tour enters.

Celebrity homes

This part of the route goes through the Hollywood Hills and Beverly Hills while the guide points out who lives, or lived, behind each gate. The listings name the usual roll call, from Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson to current stars, and Hollywood City Tours’ description mentions homes of Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio.

What you see is the outside: walls, hedges, gates and the occasional roofline. The buses stay on public roads, Starline says the homes it shows vary from day to day to respect the residents’ privacy, and no operator promises you will see anyone famous. Some buses fill the gap with screens: Star Track Tours shows the insides of homes on a 32-inch television, and Golden Ticket LA plays film clips as you pass the locations. For the homes tours on their own, and whether the star maps sold on the street are real, losangelescelebrityhomestour.com covers that side in detail.

The Beverly Hills Sign

This is the one stop on most two-hour loops: ten to fifteen minutes at the Beverly Hills Sign in Beverly Gardens Park for photos and a restroom break. Hollywood Bus Tours’ open-air loop and Access Hollywood Tours both list it, and the Santa Monica departures stop there too.

Rodeo Drive, West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip

The bus drives Rodeo Drive past the designer shops, passes the Beverly Hills Hotel on the longer routes, then heads east along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The guides point out the clubs and hotels with stories attached: the Whisky a Go Go, the Viper Room and the Chateau Marmont. Then it is back to Hollywood.

What the longer tours add

Prices as listed on GetYourGuide in October 2026.

If you have one day in Hollywood, that is the route to cover: the boulevard on foot, the sign from Griffith Observatory or Mulholland Drive, the drive through the hills and Beverly Hills, and the Strip. The best tour guide picks a tour for each kind of trip.