Five Reasons to Buy a City Pass

If you haven’t gathered by some of my previous travel posts, I love the planning aspect. I love sitting down and researching where I can go, what I can see and where I can eat. A good itinerary really helps me get the most out of my trip. I know a lot of people just like going with the flow but I’m not one of those people. I like to know what I’m doing and have options for attractions and restaurants so I’m not wasting a lot of time deciding what’s going on.

One thing I always look out for when I’m visiting a place, especially if it’s a city break is if they do City Passes. I find that if you are really going to explore a city and visit a lot of landmarks and attractions that it is certainly worth your while. Vacation Pass offers a variety of different passes, particularly in America for cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago. We used The New York Pass and found it very beneficial to making the most out of our trip. Here are five reasons why I love using them and why you should consider buying one on your next city break.

The first reason is a biggie. A city pass could save you a lot of money on your trip. Like I said, we used The New York Pass which includes over 80 attractions (including sight-seeing buses). Our 5-day pass (also available for 1,2,3,7,10 days) cost around $220 which worked out at around £170. We visited 13 attractions available on the pass including Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, 9/11 Museum, The Met and The MoMa and many more. In total, everywhere that we visited would’ve cost just over $400 (£310) to visit. Between four of us, that’s a massive saving of $720/£560!

The passes usually come with a guidebook to give you an idea of where to visit and what to see. I found knowing what was on offer made it helped with planning the trip. We could see all our options and really get the most of our trip. As we had paid for the passes in advance, we didn’t have to worry about paying for attractions once we got there. Therefore, we only had to budget for food and shopping!

With having a city pass, you can usually jump the long ques. A lot of attractions in New York had separate booking offices which you would show your card and they would give you a regular ticket and you could head straight in. No long ques, especially for big tourist attractions.

Additionally, your pass could sometimes include Public Transport. I used the I Amsterdam Card when I was in Amsterdam and this allowed me on the trams and buses. These passes also usually include sightseeing bus tours, so it’s really easy to hop on hop off at attractions.

Overall, I find that my city breaks are made so much easier by using a pass. If it includes many of the attractions in the city, que jumps and even public transport, Exploring the city is made so simple. You also can save yourself a lot of cash too! Next time you are booking a city trip, I would thoroughly recommend looking into a city pass and working out whether it would be cost-effective for you.

Have you ever used a city pass? Does it appeal to you?

XOXO