When we went to NYC, my wife had heard about the City Pass and did some research online. In her investigation she discovered that in addition to the
City Pass, there was a
New York Pass. After comparing the two, we decided that the New York Pass would work best for us. It gave us
"free" admission to more than 80 of New York's top attractions for the duration of the pass. The way it works is, you purchase the number of days that you want to use the pass (
1,2,3,5,7, or 10 days). Since we were going to be in NYC for 3 days, that is all we paid for. Once we activated the card (by using it), it was good for the remainder of that day and the next two calendar days. (Note:
the days must be used consecutively.) Not only did the pass allow us entry to the attraction, it also worked as a
fast pass on some of New York's busiest attractions - allowing us to see more in our limited time. Unfortunately there was no fast pass through the long security line for the Statue of Liberty. In our three days in NYC, we used the pass to visit: The Intrepid Air & Space Museum, The Empire State Building, the New York Skyride, the Top of the Rock (Observation Deck of the Rockefeller Center), Liberty Island & Ellis Island, a Clipper City tour of NY Harbor, Deno's Wonder Wheel (Coney Island), and the American Museum of Natural History. It also gave us
discounts at some of the restaurants we visited: Planet Hollywood and Juniors.
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| View of Central Park from the Top of the Rock |
Of course, you can't come close to seeing all 80 sites in such a limited time, so you have to pick and choose the ones that interest you. Luckily, each pass comes with a free
guidebook with detailed descriptions of all the attractions included on the pass so that you can research which attractions would be most interesting to your family. Other
top attractions include: Madame Tussauds, Food on Foot Tours, MoMA, the 9/11 Memorial, and The Ride. In addition to the full entry attractions, the pass gives you discounts at several of New York's popular stores (Bloomingdale's, Macy's, etc.), on select shows, several tours, and a large selection of restaurants. For a full list of attractions and discounts visit:
New York Pass web page
There is also the option of purchasing the
Hop on Hop off Bus Tour so that you can visit the sites in the book without having to worry about additional transportation costs. We decided against this option because we figured taking the subway would be less expensive, and less time consuming. It worked well since the
New York Pass Guide had fairly
detailed maps of all five boroughs that included all of the attractions that accepted the pass, as well as a handy subway map.
The New York Pass is
expensive, so in order to save money, you have to plan on seeing
multiple sites per day. Obviously, the prices were different five years ago, but we figured that we saved more than $50/person by using the passes.
Here is my
biggest tip regarding the pass: Since we also did some things that weren't covered by the pass (Broadway, most of the rides at Coney Island, Central Park, Wall St.), we could have saved more money if we had only bought 2-day passes, and done all those
other things on the first or last day before activating the pass or after it had expired. In any case, look into it with a calculator in hand. If it works for you, great. If not, there are several other offers out there that can save you money. Choose whichever one works best for you. FYI - there is a
money back guarantee on the New York Pass. If you buy it, and then have to cancel your trip for some reason, you can return it for a full refund.
Have fun, and save some money!
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