Nice views from the top etc etc yada yada, but is it worth the price AND enduring customer service from employee who clearly have no fear whatsoever of their behavior resulting in consequences? Not for us.
We arrived in the ESB lobby this afternoon, a freezing January weekday during low season, but of course this is NYC so there are still a decent number of tourists even if there’s no line. That doesn’t seem to resonate with the lobby entrance staff though. More than a dozen of us had accumulated by the reception desk over the course of several minutes before a staff member could finally be bothered to give instructions as to where to go. Unfortunately by this point, we had already purchased the express line tickets (a $70+ premium over the base rate for two tickets) from the only ticket dispensary in sight. It turns out that regular tickets are available if you go around the lobby, but this wasn’t clearly marked. Obviously an attentive staff member could’ve stopped us from wasting money on skip the line tickets when there’s no line, but that would require them to actually work on the job instead of drinking in the janitor closet or whatever it was that made them unwilling to attend to guests in a timely manner, and that just wouldn’t be a reasonable expectation, would it?
The staff member was attentive enough to comment on what a waste it was to buy the express tickets though, so thanks for that? I then asked whether it would be possible to get a refund on just the express option on the tickets and she just laughs and mutters something about “foreigners”, even though we’re US citizens and speak accentless English. We were so shocked that we had to take a few seconds and stare at her to see if she realized what she just said, but she just looked away and pretended nothing happened.
Most staff at the observation floors weren’t much better, to the point where you’d think they might be taking bets as to how rude and unhelpful they could openly be without any repercussions whatsoever. Again, it’d be understandable to a degree if this was peak season on a summer weekend when they’re getting swarmed, but there was nowhere near enough people today to justify this kind of can’t-be-f’d attitude. A few of them literally couldn’t even be bothered to speak when we asked for directions to the next floor—they just pointed around the corner without even looking at us. Oh and it turns out that the next elevator up was actually right next to the one we came up on—they just made us go around the entire floor for their own amusement, I guess?
I have no idea what management thinks is acceptable customer service, because as things stand they may as well be prison guards minus the physical abuse, but at least prisoners didn’t pay $200+ for the pleasure.
Strongly, strongly suggest staying far away. There are plenty of other observation decks available across the city. For example, we went up to Top of the Rock a few days earlier and their staff clearly cared about actually being employed.