New York Pass To Buy
Certain attractions will require a reservation. If this is the case, you'll find all booking information listed on our reservations page and the individual attraction pages on our website and app. Some advance reservations will require a pass number or order reference number to secure your booking, so remember to have it handy!
new york pass to buy
The New York Pass is the ultimate sightseeing pass. Get free admission to over 100 attractions, tours, museums and more including the Empire State Building, 9/11 Museum, Top of the Rock and more. Choose the duration that best fits your visit, then put your wallet away and enjoy entry to as many attractions as you wish to visit. Passes are available for one, two, three, five, seven or ten days. Passes are valid for two years from the date of purchase. Every Pass includes a one day Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus tour and our 230-page full-color guidebook available in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, German, French and Dutch. Physical or instantly delivered mobile passes are available.
The New York Sightseeing Pass is definitely the most extensive of all the passes, and with the two pricing schemes, the Day Pass or the Flex Pass, the pass is an interesting option for almost all travelers.
Besides that, these passes are a good choice if the additional offers, such as bike rentals, city tours or boat rides, are important to you. In these cases, you usually get away cheaper with a time based pass.
With all three passes, you can save between 54 and 88 dollars and can use the Hop-on-Hop-off-Bus for two days. You could, for example, ride through Manhattan one day and along the Brooklyn route on another day.
To use the pass, simply present it at the gate of the included attraction and walk right in for free. No cash or tickets are needed. (Please note that some attractions require reservations in advance. Information can be found on the New York Pass website or app.)
One of my favorite things about the New York Pass is that it includes more than 40 guided tours. Although tours are becoming more common on sightseeing passes, it is still pretty unique to offer this many.
Please note that the most popular tours included on the pass do fill up and several guided tours require a reservations. Simply follow the instructions for each attraction on the New York Pass website to book a reservation.
In my opinion, using the subway and bus system is the best way to get around NYC. Sure, taxi rides are faster, but they can cost a fortune. While you can certainly purchase your own MetroCard here, adding a transportation option would be a nice addition to this pass.
Im so glad that I came across this. My husband and I are travelling to NYC for three days on 11th September. If I buy the NYC pass and choose the option to download the app and use my pass from there, should I then not be able to use my phone for some reason (hopefully unlikely!), do you know if I will be able to visit a pass collection office (understand its at Mdme Tassauds?) and collect a printed copy/card there?
To save you the headache of trying to figure out what different New York attraction passes there are, I will help you compare the most popular New York passes and explain how each of them work, what are the differences between these New York passes and help you to decide which New York attraction pass is the best pass for you.
Actually since I have personally used the New York attraction passes before, I can vouch that they are 100% legit! As you walk around New York City, you will also notice there are actually separate lines at attractions that are for pass holders.
That being said, the pass themselves are legit but whether you save money or not is up to you. If you plan the trip well based on the tips in this blog, you will definitely save money. But if you are the type to wing it without calculating cost and benefits, you may or may not save money.
Once you purchase the pass, you have one year from purchase date to use the New York CityPASS before it expires. You can request a refund if you change your travel plan and will no longer need to use it.
What I would consider a con to New York C-All Pass is the fact you cannot choose your attractions (they only offer 10 attractions). If those are not something you want to do, then you will not be maximizing the value of this pass.
For example, if you buy a 3 attractions pass, you go to one attraction on June 1, then you have 90 days including June 1st to go to the other 2 attractions that are left on your Explorer Pass, pretty simple right?
Your pass activates when you use it at your first attraction. You can purchase the pass up to 12 months in advance and if you need to cancel an unused pass, you have 12 months to cancel from purchase date.
You will pre-determine how many attractions you would like to visit before visiting New York. If you plan on visiting only 3 attractions within a 60 period (60 days from the day of activation), you will pay for the 3 attractions pass.
So which New York City attraction pass is the best? Well that depends on what you want to do and how long you plan to stay in New York. But first, let me address the downside of all the New York city attraction passes.
I would also include the price of each attraction, add them up, and see if purchasing a pass makes sense. OR I would plan one or two days of the itinerary to make getting a pass worth it.
The good news is that if you plan on visiting a number of attractions in New York, you can take advantage of one of the various New York city attraction passes that are available. If you take advantage of these passes, you can end up saving a lot of money. However, you will have to decide if each pass is worth it for your visit, based on the attractions you really want to see.
If you are visiting for only a couple of days and want to fit as much in as possible, then a pass that lets you visit a lot of attractions can be a good idea. Many New York attractions are open fairly late, so you really can see a lot if you have the stamina for it.
On the other hand, if you want to go a bit slower and just see a few attractions, or you plan to sightsee over a longer period of time, then a pass that offers fewer attractions over a longer time period might be best.
Of course, all of these attractions come at a price, and the New York Pass is definitely one of the more expensive passes on our list. A 2 day pass, such as you might need for our two day New York itinerary, costs $219 per person as of February 2023.
This pass has you choosing how many attractions you want to visit in New York. You can choose 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 10 attractions, and the pass is priced from $74 to $249 depending on how many attractions you choose.
Obviously, to take full advantage of the pass savings for either pass you will need to visit five attractions on the CityPASS, three attractions on the C3 Pass and all ten attractions on the C-All Pass.
The passes are valid for nine days from first use, so you will have plenty of time do so. If you visit all the attractions, you can definitely make significant savings. This pass does cover many of the most popular paid attractions in the city, but it is obviously limited to just these attractions.
The Sightseeing Pass company offers two types of passes for New York. They have an all-inclusive attraction pass where you choose how many days validity you want, and they have a pass where you can choose from a number of attractions you want to visit. You can compare these two passes here.
For New York, none of the attraction passes we are aware of include any public transport. The good news is that public transport in New York is not expensive. See our guide to getting around New York here for more information.
As you can see, most passes cover the most popular attractions, with the CityPASS having a few exceptions. Note that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was removed from all the passes we are aware of in April 2022. The CityPASS includes the Museum of Modern Art on the 3 and 10 attraction versions.
Finally, I wanted to provide a comparison specifically of the New York Pass and the New York Sightseeing Pass, as these are the two most comparable passes on the list. These both offer a similar set of attractions and work in a similar way, so the main difference comes down to price.
I will also add that this is a very busy itinerary, and whilst achievable, some visitors will likely want to take a slower pace. When considering the value of a pass, you definitely need to weigh the cost against a reasonable list of attractions that you plan to visit.
For the CityPASS, you have to pick and choose between some of the options, in which case I opted to use the pass for the higher priced option if both were on the itinerary. It offers the greatest savings for this specific example.
Finally, if you are planning on visiting a number of cities during your time in the USA, consider the Sightseeing USA pass. This lets you choose from 5 to 30 attractions (from a list of 300) across a number of cities in the USA, so might work out to be a good option for you depending on your overall itinerary.
Generally speaking, the 3, 5 and 7-day passes are better deals. That gives you more time to really take advantage of the offerings. The one and two-day passes are a little pricey considering what you could realistically squeeze into your trip.
While New York Pass includes some walking tours, you can maximize your savings by using the pass for attractions (to which there are no pay-what-you-wish options available!) and then take one of our many walking tours (see our calendar for dates/times.)
Another nice thing about this pass is that it includes admission to attractions and services that aren't always provided by their competitors, such as the RIB New York Speed Boat and the free airport transfer.
Be careful - if the retail price of your choices totals less than the average, then you will lose money. So be sure to read our breakdown of pricing to see if it is worth buying a pass or not. 041b061a72