Is a New York Pass worth the money? Read on and I’ll tell you…
The first time we went to New York we bought a New York pass but we never got around to doing half of the things we’d planned to do so it wasn’t really worth the money for us. I wrote about what we did and why we never really got our money’s worth but it was basically because it was our first time in New York and Miss Frugal was more interested in the shopping and visiting the places she’d seen on TV than doing much else. We had lovely weather on our first visit so being outside was easy – a walk across Brooklyn Bridge, an afternoon in Central Park and a full day shopping meant that the time we had to do the other stuff was a bit limited.
I loved what we did during our first trip but I definitely felt like we’d missed out on some things when I got back home – things that we could have done for free with our passes.
In the weeks leading up to our trip this time around, I toyed with the idea of buying the passes but I held off until I got more of an idea of what the girls would actually want to do when we were there. It turned out that they wanted to do as much as they could so on the morning of day 2, I woke up bright and early and bought us each a 3-day pass which cost $199 per pass.
It wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment purchase as I’d been half planning to buy them and had the money set aside for them, I just hadn’t wanted to actually buy them if we weren’t going to be doing all the things that our pass would allow us to do!
Over the next few days, we managed to cram in quite a lot of activities using our passes and I’m pleased to say that we really did get our money’s worth this time around without feeling like we did too much.
Here’s what we did and how much it would have cost so you can see exactly how brilliant it was having the passes:
Top of the Rock – the best views in NYC – $38
The Ride NYC – an amazingly funny interactive coach tour of New York – $69
Madame Tussauds Times Square – $37
Ice Skating at Bryant Park – $33
9/11 Museum – $26
Open Topped Bus Ride – it’s like a day-long taxi – $59
Circle Line cruise – $44
American Museum of Natural History – $23
This little lot would have cost us $329 so we absolutely saved money by buying the passes.
Also, there’s a couple of things that we *almost* did:
Empire State Building – We set off to go here one night but got distracted by a Christmas market and an ice rink but this would have been $48. We never ended up going back the next night as we had a table booked at Serendipity for some Frozen Hot Chocolates but it was something I really wanted to do at night.
The Met – I really wanted to go to this art gallery and we had plans to do go but then spent longer than we thought at Central Park so ended up not bothering. This would have cost $32.
If we’d managed to do these two things as well, which we could have done easily then we would have saved even more as that would have taken the cost of the attractions visited up to the grand total of $409.
It’s not only just the amount we saved that makes me want to recommend buying a New York Pass, but it’s also the fact that it makes it so easy to budget for the things you’re doing. I would have absolutely said no to the ice skating (maybe) at Bryant Park for $33 but you know what, I didn’t because I knew it was covered on the passes and it was probably one of the best things the girls did while we were there.
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