New York Explorer Pass Sale Ends Today!

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

Pretty much a no-brainer if you are going to see any of these attractions, and becomes a bigger deal with 5+ attractions. Most of the attractions this pass gets you into are at least 30$ after tax, etc. Went to the Top of the Rock which is the best view in the city, better than the Empire State and way less crowded. Has an express line for pass holders, but keep in mind tickets are staggered so you will probably have 45+ minutes to kill after getting tickets. The MoMA is of course awesome. Get tickets at the help desk rather than usual ticketing desk. Spend time working your way down from the top floor or follow along with the free audio tour offered at the entrance. It is also definitely worth visiting the gift shop across the street. You will probably leave with stacking mugs or unbreakable wine glasses. The fine dining restaurant is also excellent with views of the garden if it is a special occasion. The American Museum of Natural History is a must. Take some time to wander around and definitely get tickets to whatever the rotating exhibit is. Frogs is excellent with hundreds of rare live frogs, and the new exhibit on Poison sounds like it will be great. Walk down the street for a burger at Shake Shack before heading to the New York Historical Society. The MET is also a must, but keep in mind that it is a recommended admission price and you can pay what you want if on a budget. The city subsidizes the MET so that every New Yorker and visitor can go despite ability to pay.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

We ordered these passes before instant delivery was available. There are only 3 in-city pick-up locations, and none of them are open in the evening, which meant a special trip just to get the passes on our first full day in NYC. It was a nuisance and wasted a lot of time. I liked the passes because our costs were fixed and I knew before we left home how much to budget for sightseeing. There's a good variety of sight-seeing options and you may save money (depending on the options you choose). The biggest problem with the passes was that so much of the information is inaccurate. For instance, we wanted to see the United Nations, but they only sell tickets on-line now and we couldn't use the passes. We also choose the Central Park Zoo / 2 hour bike rental option. The booklet said that the zoo passes are valid for a year, but when we got there in late afternoon, the shop said they only had daily passes and none left for that day. They offered us passes for the next day, but we would have had to come back again between 10:00 and 10:30 in the morning. We hadn't budgeted enough time for that so simply didn't use that part of the pass. To get the Statue of Liberty ferry tickets, we had to pick up vouchers in Time Square (no where near the Statue of Liberty), then, at Battery Park, find to correct tour operator and trade the vouchers in for tickets. All this takes time we could have spent sightseeing instead. I was very disappointed when we got to Liberty Island to find that we couldn't access to crown itself. The tickets to the crown have to be ordered online, ahead of time, and I really think this should be made plain in the guide or mentioned when the vouchers are issued. My final complaint was that the printable PDF guidebook is in three languages. I ended up with an enormous stack of paper that was too big to carry around and use for planning. Why can they not give the option of printing in your preferred language so that the guide book is a little more manageable? This pass might save you money, but not necessarily. The best thing to do is to select what you want to see, then check the websites of each individual attraction and add up the cost (remember that at many attractions there are discount coupons available on the street). If the savings are only modest, I don't think the pass is worth it. It's probably best to pay a little more and spend more time on sightseeing.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

this is the second time I have bought a smart destination card.. Boston and NYC... both were well worth it... convienent easy to use... nice variety of attractions...

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

we went on 7 attractions with the explorer pass; we found the NBC Studio Tour very dis-organized and nothing to see except empty rooms and a lot of room to room shuffling. Save your money on this one.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

We purchased 2 adult and 3 child passes for NYC. Although you do not get to cut in any lines and don't save any time with them, they are absolutely worth it. We saved a lot of money using the pass for our family trip. We even experienced a problem with one attraction that double dipped two of our cards and SmartDestinations handled it promptly and efficiently. I would buy this again and will look for other cities to use the Explorer Pass in also.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

After using a Go Card in San Fransisco, I've looked to use them in every city I travel to that has this product. In NYC, I used this pass to do a Hop On/Hop Off tour to get a quick overview of the city and cover a lot of ground. We paid the $14 upgrade for a 2 day pass. Great things about this were 1. It came with a free cruise, which offered great photos of the city and amazing Statue of Liberty shots 2. We were able to use the bus for transportation the rest of the weekend to get to the other sights we wanted to see. Doing that actually canceled out our need to do a separate Statue of Liberty tour. I would have liked to have gone to the Ellis Island museum but lines were really long and we only had two days. Next time.... We also used the pass to visit Madame Toussade's which was really fun! A lot of the studio/movie tours were booked up so I wish I had planned better ahead of time. Overall, I really liked that the pass gave me access to so many choices but also helped me narrow down what I wanted to prioritize. I would definitely use the pass the next time I go to NYC.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

We used the pass during the week of 21st august. We did 7 attractions, and with most of them the pass was really a advantage. Intrepid, Hudson-Cruise, Top of the Rock, Museum of Natural history, Guggenheim: no waiting at all. For Bike and Roll hiring and the Circle Line Harlem bus tour we had to go to the main office to get tickets with the pass, while the start of the tours was somewhere else, that was a disadvantage! But it was nice to have it anyway.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

Each member of my family of four bought the ten-attraction, NY Explorer Pass for our nine-day trip to Manhattan. We could easily have used a fifteen event pass, as there were so many choices. There were absolutely no problems. Plan ahead, but keep a flexible schedule. Learn to use the subway system to get from one attraction to the next faster. Try the Hop on-Hop off Tour early in your stay. We hopped off at the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, and Chinatown/Little Italy.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

My boyfriend and I bought the explorer pass before our 5 day trip to NYC in December. It saved us a great deal of money as the destinations that are available with this pass are ones that we had already planned on visiting. Most activities range from about $25-30 a piece if you were to visit them without using the explorer pass. We bought the 7 destination pass, but only ended up using 5. Even though we missed out on 2 destinations I still feel we got our money's worth or at least broke even. Make sure you are going to be able to hit all of your destinations before purchasing. There was only one destination that I felt was inconvenient and that was the tour of the statue of liberty museum. We first had to go to Madame Tussaud's to pick up our vouchers, then had to take the Subway down to South Ferry, get off the subway and find the man selling City Tour tickets, exchange our vouchers for hard copy tickets and then make our way to where the ferry was departing but first waiting in security for about an hour before we boarded. I definitely recommend visiting the Ground Zero Museum Workshop, it's within the meatpacking district which we didn't enjoy very much, but the museum itself is definitely a must see. Overall, very happy with our purchased of the explorer pass.

Comments about Smart Destinations New York Explorer Pass:

I bought two 5-Attraction New York Explorer Cards for me and my wife when we visited NYC from Oct 3-6. Spent [$] per card. (By the way, pick up of card in Times Square Area is now at the Ripley's Museum, not at Madame Tussauds.)We used the card for the following attractions:King Tut Exhibition ($29.50)City Sights All Around Tour ($42)Top of the Rock ($20)Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum ($35.50)NY Waterway Twilight Tour ($26)That comes to $153 per person. Therefore we saved more than $50 each using this card!