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Posted: 27/07/2023

Things to do in New York – CITYPASS

Jenna Carr

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Top things to do in New York City – CITYPASS

New York City is jam packed with iconic landmarks, whether you want to climb the Empire State Building, admire the Manhattan skyline from a river cruise or Explore the world famous Natural History Museum – entry to these attractions is going to cost you! With admission prices in New York being shockingly high ($66 for the Empire State Building observation deck?!) we started exploring different attraction passes to see if we could save some money.

Choosing our pass

We wanted a pass that would be flexible to use over the week that we were in New York. We obviously wanted it to include attractions that we were interested in but most importantly we wanted it to be affordable. After investigating a lot of different passes, we decided the CityPass (not an affiliate link) would be the best option for us. It gives you admission to five main attractions for £120 for adults (18+) and £102 for children (age 6-17). Children under six are free.

There are other passes for a similar price which offer more attractions but are only valid for a single day. GoCity is a great option if you want to have a crazy day visiting as much as possible. Travelling with a Toddler left our trip very unpredictable. We didn’t want to pack too much into one day incase he was tired or grumpy. The CityPass gives you nine consecutive days to use the pass. This meant we were able to book one attraction per day, then fill the rest of the day with more spontaneous and free activities. This way if our son became tired, it didn’t matter too much that we had to go back to the hotel for a rest. Happy that this was the pass for us, we contacted the company who kindly gifted us two passes (and we bought two additional passes for my parents).

Key facts about the CityPass NYC

Refundable if you aren’t able to travel
Visit five iconic attractions (see below)
£120 per adult £102 per child – under six free
Can be used over nine consecutive days

Purchasing the pass

When you buy the pass they advise you to book your reservations as soon as possible. Due to us being eternally unorganised, we only got our passes a few days before travelling. Reserving tickets this last minute meant some of the more popular times were already fully booked (for example we couldn’t get an Empire State Building reservation for sunset). So I would advise booking as far ahead as possible (this also goes for popular restaurants which you may want to visit).

Attractions included in our CityPass were:

Empire State Building
American Museum of Natural History

Then a choice between:

Top of the Rock observation tower
Guggenheim Museum.
Ferry access to statue of Liberty and Ellis island
Circle line sight seeing cruise
9/11 Memorial and Museum
intrepid sea, air and space museum.

(We visited the attractions in bold.)

With hindsight, we probably didn’t need to visit two observation towers, we booked the two as we are big fans of great views and wanted to compare these iconic landmarks. We were able to get a sunset reservation at Top of the Rock which was amazing.

The Attractions

Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is in a very central location on 34th street. We made our reservation for 11am on our first day. We were blown away by every little detail of the city – I haven’t felt so star struck by a city in a long time. We got an amazing Bagel breakfast (‘Best bagel and coffee’ on 35th street – highly recommend) then walked to Times Square. You could walk around all day and not get bored. After Times Square we spent some time by the Rockefeller tree, you can ice skate there for around £15. We then went to Bryant Park and finally on to the Empire State Building. We didn’t have to queue and got straight in at our reserved time. There’s a nice build-up to the observation tower where you get to learn a lot about the history of the building. There’s a few lifts you need to take to get up to the top but the view is well worth it. There are outdoor heaters on the observation deck so it was lovely and warm. We spent a long time walking around and taking in the 360 views. Our Son Leo was in a great mood and enjoyed running up and down the ramps and climbing on the binoculars! We did a bit of shopping in the gift shop and were back out on the street by 12:30. You can get a free ticket to return the night of your visit, but we didn’t bother because of our little one.

The American Museum of Natural History

The next day we had booked The Natural History Museum for 10:30am. NYC is 5 hours behind U.K. time, so we were waking up really early for the first few days. The Natural History Museum is right by Central Park. We decided to walk there from our hotel and see some of the park on the way. It was a 50 minute walk from our hotel but we didn’t mind as we were still enjoying mooching around and experiencing every bit of the city. We had tons of time given we left the hotel at 07:30!

If you choose to take the subway, you will need to get off at 81st street. The main museum entrance had a huge queue, luckily someone told us to walk around and try the entrance on 81st street, the queue there was a lot shorter and we got straight in. There are four floors of exhibits and you could honestly stay there all day if you didn’t have an impatient toddler with you. Leo was excited to see the animal exhibits, he loved the dinosaurs, he sort of enjoyed the space show, but after that he enjoyed running off into crowds and giving us a few scares! A slightly older child would absolutely love it.

We had lunch in the canteen which is on the bottom floor, super expensive but a fair amount of choice. We had three slices of pepperoni pizza, a plate of salad to share, one plate of meat with rice and three cans of pop. Leo had a banana and some Mac and Cheese … I almost died there and then when she said “That will be $80 please!”. Definitely aim to have your lunch before or after your visit! After lunch my mum took Leo for a walk in his pram to try to get him to nap, whilst we spent an hour properly checking out the exhibits. Once we had finished in the Museum we went across to Central Park and briefly checked out the south western part. We found a couple of play grounds and let Leo live his best life while we sat on a bench with a coffee.

Top of the Rock Observation deck

On our third day we had Top of the Rock booked for 14:00 (the sun set was due around 16:00 but the sky starts to get pretty during the golden hour before). Again we woke up extremely early and had no plans until our 14:00 slot, so we decided to get a subway to Brooklyn and walk back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. This cost us £2 each on the subway and was one of the highlights of the trip. Highly recommend. Once in Manhattan we walked towards Wall Street, saw the famous charging bull statue (people were actually queueing to take pictures with its balls) and then headed towards Battery park to see the Statue of Liberty. When I saw “Statue of Liberty view point” on google maps I had high expectations. The park is lovely, there’s a nice water side walk – but the statue is so far away you can barely tell what it is! We got great views a few days later on our Circle Line landmarks cruise, skip this view point unless you just happen to be in the neighbourhood!

Once again we didn’t have to queue when we arrived at “Top of the Rock” – there is much less of a build up than there was at the Empire State Building. You have your picture taken sat on an iron cross beam – copying the famous “lunch atop a skyscraper” photograph. It was $26 for three digital pictures so we didn’t bother buying them. After this you can stand and listen to some short films on the construction of the Rockefeller building and its cultural importance. Then thats pretty much it, you’re heading up to the first of the observation decks. There are three different levels, the top being my favourite and shown in the photograph below. The first and second levels have glass separating you from the view, but right at the top its open air.

9/11 Memorial Museum

We spent our fourth day at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. By this point in the trip our feet were sore from all of the walking, we had been doing almost 30,000 steps a day prior to this, so we decided to take the subway. We got the Number 1 service from our nearest station ‘Penn Street’ heading towards ‘Downtown and Brooklyn’. We got off at ‘WTC Cortlandt’ and then followed signs to the ‘memorial pools’. We walked passed one of New Yorks newest icons ‘The Oculus’ where there was an entire production filming an episode of ‘Law and Order’! I’ve never seen the show and so had no idea who the actors were, but the crowd seemed very excited by it. The memorial pools were right next door.

The memorial is a beautiful tribute to the thousands of people who lost their lives in the world trade centre attacks. There are two pools in place of the original twin towers, each surrounded by the names of every individual who lost their lives. It is heartbreaking to walk around reading the many names, some plus their unborn children. Single white roses are placed in the names of people who have a birthday that day. There is at least one birthday for every single day of the year, obviously with some days having more. I have never felt such a sombre atmosphere. The grief and tragedy of that day is still palpable in the air. The museum has been put together extremely well. You leave there with a great understanding of the sacrifice and heroism that was shown on that day. Sometimes the true strength of humanity isn’t evident until something terrible happens.

Circle Line Cruise

We chose the ‘landmarks cruise’ and were really excited to see the famous skyline from a different perspective. The cruise departs at 12:00 and they ask you arrive half an hour early. We walked the short walk to Pier 83 from our hotel, stopping off at Hudson Yards and seeing ‘The Vessel’. We ended up arriving 45 minutes early, this worked in our favour as even then there was a small queue developing. We joined the queue and ended up having a good choice of seats once we boarded. We sat on the top deck, right at the back. This was ideal as we had space for our pram and had great views of both sides throughout the tour. People who joined late had to sit below deck where the view isn’t as good. There are toilets on board and a place to buy food and drink at reasonable prices. The tour guide was very informative and taught us a lot about the city during the 90 minute cruise.

The Metropolitan Art Museum

The largest art museum in the western hemisphere, colloquially known as ‘The Met’ – it has over two million works spread across seventeen departments. It’s based by Central Park, at the opposite side to the Natural History Museum. We spent the morning exploring the park and visited Central Park Zoo. The Met website says you don’t need to reserve tickets here, you can just turn up and be admitted. During the whole trip we had planned to visit here on our last day, so we were winging it a bit. This proved to be a school boy error when we got to the doors and found out it doesn’t open on a Wednesday (take note!) Given it was our last day we weren’t able to return on another day either. So you will have to tell us what it was like if you have been!

Overall

Having the CityPass meant we had the reassurance that we would (at the very least) see five amazing attractions. It was great to have a bit of structure to the trip, while still having the flexibility to change things around if Leo wasn’t in the mood for exploring. Knowing once we paid for the passes we wouldn’t have to spend any more money on attractions made budgeting for the trip easier too. I would highly recommend looking into different tourist passes when visiting New York City.

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£266pp is a fab package holiday price for the Easter holidays. There’s a heated indoor pool for the kids to splash in, and the cooler weather makes it a great time to explore this gorgeous island.

Comment EASTER and I’ll send you the link for the hotel. Alternatively check out my linktree as it’s currently on there.

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Mar 10

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Ksamil is a town on the Albanian Riviera and has had some very mixed reviews over the years, and I think a lot of that comes down to when you visit.

We absolutely loved our trip. It was incredibly affordable too - we paid £190 for six nights in an apartment that slept five! (This was in 2023) I’ve written a full blog post about the trip over on the website, where I’ve shared some great-value accommodation options and tips if you’re thinking about booking something similar.

Comment BLOG and I’ll send you the link along with some cheap flights and info on how to get there!

Expect things like:

🍻 £1.50 pints
🦐 Seafood dishes for under £10
☀️ Beautiful, crystal-clear beaches

We visited in May, when there were very few other people around. The town was just starting to open up for the season, the weather was lovely, and it felt relaxed and easy to enjoy.

June also seems like a great time to visit – a few more things open, but still without the peak summer crowds.

July and August appear to be a very different experience. The town is quite small, and it struggles to cope with the number of visitors in peak season. It can feel very crowded, and prices - particularly for things like sun loungers - can become very steep because of the demand.

So if Ksamil is on your list, timing really is everything!

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Looking for a great value family friendly holiday? Look no further 🫡 We are a group of mums who spend our time hunting out the best deals and sharing them with you!

If you want more information on these holidays, comment “DEALS” and I’ll send you the links with more info. We aren’t travel agents, just a group of mums hunting for great family deals and sending you the best ones. You will book as normal on the providers website.

The La Palma deal is flying from Manchester.
The Tenerife deal is from Leeds.
The Marrakech deal is from Glasgow.

We have pages for each airport over on our website ❤️
I’ll post the best deals we find each day like this all week - are you looking for anything specific?! Let us know!

The links we share are affiliate links.

#thetravelmum #familyholiday #traveldeals

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The links we share are affiliate links. We source our own deals from lots of different holiday providers.

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Flights alone can cost this, but you’re getting flights with luggage, transfers and ELEVEN nights at this lovely hotel! Menorca is amazing, so many great places to explore. I’d recommend hiring a car and exploring the island.

I’ve got the link in my linktree or comment MENORCA and I’ll send you the link plus a blog post I wrote from our latest trip to the island ❤️

The links we share are affiliate links. We source our own deals from lots of different holiday providers.

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Things to do in New York – CITYPASS

Jenna Carr

Top things to do in New York City – CITYPASS

Choosing our pass

Key facts about the CityPass NYC

Purchasing the pass

The Attractions

Empire State Building

The American Museum of Natural History

9/11 Memorial Museum

Circle Line Cruise

The Metropolitan Art Museum

Overall

Want to visit NYC on a budget?

Recent Posts

Post Tags

Written by: Jenna Carr

Keep up to date...

thetravelmum

Unlock the perfect
Cheap holiday

Things to do in New York – CITYPASS

Jenna Carr

Top things to do in New York City – CITYPASS

Choosing our pass

Key facts about the CityPass NYC

Purchasing the pass

The Attractions

Empire State Building

The American Museum of Natural History

9/11 Memorial Museum

Circle Line Cruise

The Metropolitan Art Museum

Overall

Want to visit NYC on a budget?

Recent Posts

Post Tags

Written by: Jenna Carr

Keep up to date...

thetravelmum

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