I’ve been to New York City six times since 2019, which has given me ample time to explore, visit new places, and circle back to my favorites (High Line, I’m looking at you). Because these trips were preceded by about five other visits beginning when I was 16 years old, I never considered looking into sightseeing passes that bundle top attractions under one price.
But this year my 31-year-old son joined me, his first-ever trip to the Big Apple. I told him to create a wish list, which unsurprisingly included sights and attractions most first-timers want to see, including the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty. I then added some favorites I wanted to share with him and suggested a few things I’d never done.
Our itinerary ended up gelling with some of the attractions included in sightseeing passes offered by the New York CityPASS®, geared toward visitors wishing to see a destination’s top hits. But does such a pass save money? Finding the answers required some homework. This is what I learned.
What’s a CityPASS?
CityPASS was founded in 1997 by two friends; it was the first company in North America to bundle discounted admission to a set list of attractions. Today, CityPASS is available in 17 destinations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California, Tampa, and Toronto.
Most destinations offer the basic CityPASS, allowing you to choose, say, four or five sights from a set list of 8 or so attractions. Popular destinations like New York and San Francisco, however, also have an additional pass or two that differ in what they offer. In those cases, it pays to investigate which of the sightseeing passes will best suit your interests.
How a CityPASS works
What I like most is that, with a few exceptions, the sightseeing passes are valid for nine days, activated on the date of your first visit. That’s a civilized way to explore a destination, more humane, in my opinion, than other passes that might make you cram everything into a couple of days. After downloading the CityPASS app, you’ll be able to make reservations and keep track of your itinerary.
Advantages of a CityPASS
In addition to its being valid for nine days, the other thing I like about the CityPASS is that it saves you from having to purchase individual tickets for each attraction you wish to visit. That means you can skip the line at the ticket counter and head right in after showing your CityPASS QR code or your reservation for that attraction.
The CityPASS requires you to make reservations for many attractions, which might prove helpful in peak season because the most desired time slots can disappear fast. For that reason, I suggest purchasing a CityPASS well in advance of your trip and then start making reservations as soon as you know your dates. Note that some attractions require advance reservations for all visitors, regardless of whether you have a CityPASS, such as the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City and the Empire State Building. But having a CityPASS is a strong encouragement, nudging procrastinators in the right direction.
Ideally, a CityPASS should save you money. Checking each destination on the CityPASS website lets you see how much it claims you’ll save. The San Francisco CityPASS, for example, claims you’ll save 45% on your choice of four attractions. But the reality depends on which of the four attractions you choose from a list of eight, and, more importantly, whether you will actually get to all the attractions you paid for.
Disadvantages of a CityPASS
You have to make reservations in advance. I know I listed that as an advantage, but if you’re like me, you prefer living day by day and hate making commitments. In fact, zeroing in on a specific date and time was the hardest part for me. Who knew whether low clouds would obscure views from the Empire State Building, or if rain would detract from a cruise?
Luckily, in most cases you can cancel or modify a reservation to an attraction, but there are instances when that might not be possible based on the attraction’s own reservation policies, especially as you get closer to your date (luckily, CityPASS has a customer care center for telephone calls and chats should you run into problems or questions).
If your travel plans change entirely and you are not able to use your CityPASS, refunds are available for entirely unused CityPASS products within 365 days of purchase. However, if you’ve made reservations, you must first cancel those before submitting your refund request. Note that there are no refunds on partially used tickets. There is also no refund for passes that include some theme parks.
But the main disadvantage, in my opinion, is that unless you’ve done your due diligence, the CityPASS might not save you money. Although it’s available at prices for adults and children, it doesn’t, for example, provide discounts you might get at venues themselves, like those for seniors, students, US veterans and military service members. US active military members, retirees and veterans, for example, have free admission to the Intrepid Museum aircraft carrier in NYC, so it wouldn’t make sense to choose that as one of your attractions.
CityPASS in New York
When several sightseeing passes are available for the same city, you’ll need to research which one will take you to the places you want to go. Because I used CityPASS for New York City, I will use that as an example. Three types of passes are available.
Note that prices and offerings can and will change, so keep that in mind. Note, too, that in addition to prices for any city pass listed below, a $2 processing fee is added for each person getting a pass. If you are going with your daughter, for example, you will pay a $4 processing fee. Finally, if you’re researching how much an attraction costs individually so that you can compare it to a CityPASS, keep in mind that that venue might charge be a processing or transaction fee, sometimes for each ticket/person.
Regardless of which city pass you select, after making your purchase you’ll be sent an email with a QR code for each person, which you can then print out for a hard copy or save to your phone. In most cases, you can purchase a CityPASS a year in advance, though I’m not sure why you would.
C3 pass
The C3 is the cheapest at $114 for adults and $92 for children 6-12, valid for nine days. It lets you choose three attractions out of a choice of 10: Empire State Building (86th floor), Top of the Rock Observation Deck, Ferry Access to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Edge at Hudson Yards (the city’s tallest observation deck, with a glass floor to boot), American Museum of Natural History (one of the country’s greatest), Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises (but limited to its Liberty Midtown, Liberty Super Express, or Statue at Sunset cruises), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, one of my favorites), Intrepid Museum (an aircraft carrier with the space shuttle Enterprise, jets, a guided missile submarine and more), and the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
If heights are your thing, you’ll be in heaven and come out ahead. That’s because if you choose the Empire State Building, Top of the Rock at the Rockefeller Plaza, and the Edge at Hudson Yards as the three attractions for your C3 pass, you’ll pay just $114 ($116 with that $2 processing fee). And here’s the great thing about any of these passes, all of which include the Empire State Building–you get to go up to the 86th-floor observation deck twice in one day, once during the day and again at night. They are very different beasts.
Buying those tickets individually, on the other hand, would set you back $136, not including extra fees tacked on by those entities). Even with senior discounts you’d get if buying separately, you’d still come out ahead with a C3.
If, on the other hand, you choose to take the ferry to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and see both the MoMA and Guggenheim museums, individual tickets for those would cost just $93. You’d be better off passing on the C3 if those are the only things you want to see, especially because children are free at both museums. Alternatively, buy tickets individually and choose three other attractions with your C3 Pass.
CityPASS
The CityPASS is the most common ticket sold by the company. Good for nine days, the New York CityPASS comes with five attractions and costs $164 for adults and $136 for children. Unfortunately, it locks in two of the 10 attractions (listed under the C3)–the Empire State Building and the American Museum of Natural History. Unless both of these are on your wish list, you might be better off with one of the other two passes.
Otherwise, the CityPASS can definitely save you money. One of the things I like about this particular city pass is that it gives more options for the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises. My son and I chose the 2.5-hour Best of New York City cruise, which gave us a great view of Manhattan and New Jersey shorelines and the Statue of Liberty. In fact, this turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip and something we might not have thought about if we hadn’t had the pass. We also chose to see the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a first-time for me.
If you paid separately for the Empire State Building, Natural History museum, Best of New York City cruise, 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and the Intrepid, it would come to $200, not including any extra fees charged by each entity. Clearly a deal.
C-All pass
You have to be an active traveler to want to C-All (get it?). It includes all 10 attractions listed above under the C3 Pass for $254 for adults and $189 for children. Adding all those up for individual tickets (not including any extra fees) would cost you $371 for an adult, clearly a bargain. Luckily you have nine days to do it, if you’re blessed with that kind of time.
Don’t neglect the rest of NYC
Needless to say, if you spend all your time racing from one attraction to the next because you purchased one of those sightseeing passes, New York City will literally pass you by. Everyone should stroll the huge breathing space of Central Park, regardless of the season. We walked the High Line (my idea, of course) and Brooklyn Bridge (his). We saw Times Square during the day and night. We ate at a basement restaurant in Chinatown and one of my favorite delis near Times Square. We even saw the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, because that was high on his bucket list. I think he ate a minimum of one slice of pizza every day.
But I also took my son to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (it’s not part of the CityPASS) because it’s one of my favorite museums in the world. Turns out he had his own agenda there, and so we hunted down “Washington Crossing the Delaware” and works by Vincent Van Gogh and Monet, in addition to all the other great things that fight for your attention.
Other sightseeing passes
There are other sightseeing passes to New York, of course, including the New York Pass by Go City, which offers three kinds of passes in various incarnations. That includes a 10-day option that lets you see as many of its 106 attractions as you wish (some are farther afield in Brooklyn or Staten Island), including walking tours, for $429 for adults, but I’m not going to do the homework for you on that one.
Worth considering, however, is the company’s Explorer Pass, which gives the option of choosing two to 10 attractions from its list of 106 attractions and is valid for 30 days. The Explorer Pass with a choice of five attractions costs &179 for adults and $139 for children, slightly more than a CityPASS but definitely worth it if it includes places you most want to see. But again, do your homework to make sure you’re saving money.
Conclusions about sightseeing passes
In the end, I’d say a CityPASS or any of the other many sightseeing passes can be well worth the cost, but only if they include things you really want to see, you have the time to see them without racing around, and you make time to soak in the essence of neighborhoods and simply be in the present. I think it’s being in the present that most of us struggle with in our busy world.
Disclosure: I was provided a complimentary CityPASS for both my son and me, which prompted me to write about this but did not influence what I wrote. In the end, we didn’t see all five attractions I thought we might. My son had only three full days, and though we hoped to include Top of the Rock, we hadn’t made advance reservations and nothing was readily available by the time we reached it from Central Park (again, I hadn’t made reservations because I couldn’t predict what time we’d be there).
And while I thought I would later visit the Guggenheim or MoMA on my own, a forecast of nasty weather both at home and in New York prompted me to depart a few days early to avoid canceled fights. The rest of my pass, therefore, went unused. In today’s world, unpredictability could be a planner’s biggest liability.
For more on New York City, see my blog What the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Tell us about Immigration.
