I booked 4 NYC Explorer Passes online to save money. But when I exchanged my printed confirmation for my passes the assistant did not explain that I had to have them activated. It was only when I tried to get on the "Hop on Hop Off" bus tour that they told me the pass had to be activated at the nearest booth, but they then sent us to the main Office. We had to get a taxi to this office as it was about 9 blocks away! When I got there the staff said that they did not have a machine to activate it and they sent me to another office, another taxi ride. This office activated the pass and gave me the tickets for the tour. There is no mention on the confirmation that some activities may not be able to activate your pass. So it cost me money to find this out. I think it should be made easier to use the pass right away on all of the activities.
I went to pick up my passes from the 56th St shop, and was treated rather rudely by the staff there, who were completely uninterested in answering questions. We picked i) Empire States Building (86th Floor Observatory) which was fine, no negatives here; ii) the (supposedly) 3 Hour ferry tour of Manhattan Island - nothing complicated as far as getting to the pier and picking up tickets were concerned (including paying $5 supplement per person); but the tour itself? All done and dusted within 2 hours and 10 minutes. The term cursory comes to mind. Too bad if you're not sitting on the 'right' side of the ferry, you just miss out on the sights. Our 3rd choice would be my favourite out of all of them - The Cloisters Museum. A more detailed guide on getting there would have been appreciated, although we didn't have that much trouble getting the subway to 190th St and from there it was pretty well signposted. The Museum itself is completely transfixing, with an entire treasure trove of mediaeval artefacts looted from Europe, which seems to escape most tourists' radar. My advice? Get there as early as you can on a Friday or Saturday morning; so that you can make full use of the fact that your entry to The Cloisters will also let you in to the Met Museum on the same day, thus sailing pass the queue at the latter! Why Friday or Saturday? The Met closes at 9pm on those days.
Well what can I SAY,um,I did not realise you could not go to the same attraction twice.I'm not going to go into reason's as to why,but I found it extraordinary,simply because most attractions were round the same price.