Empire State & Rockerfeller

[metalguru]

Is it worth pre booking these two?

[Elbee]

You will save a bit of time lining up to buy tix. DH is taking his mum in August and has pre-booked Express Tickets which give front of line access to any lines. Paid a bit extra but it will save time, esp if they go at a busy time.
I believe that if you go up either first or last thing up the Empire State, it is fairly quiet so pre-booking may not save too much time although if you have the tix then that's one less thing to queue for. If you book online you can print the tix out.
When we went to Rockefeller we just joined the line and it was not too long, although again if you can pre-book it's less time wasted...

[birchco]

we bought tickets online for these. well worth it

[highlander447]

They are both worth it, if u get to ESB for opening you'll avoid the queues the do TOR at night:thumbs-up

[fiona3103]

my lovely DH took me to New York for my 40th - 3 yrs ago - & we bought tickets in advance & got down to the Empire State before opening. There was only one queue but when you got through the lobby if you had no ticket you went one way & if you had them you went to the queue for the lift. Not sure if that helps as it could be different now but there seemed to be queues for ESB all day, we didnt visit the Rockerfeller centre though.

[sylvy]

:wavey:Hi we went to both in January and just walked on the lines were minimal obviously at different times of year it will be busy,fantastic and well worth doing.:wave:

[Baggie Bird]

We got back just under 2 weeks ago and did ESB during the day. We had prebooked the tickets and when we got there at 8.15 am the attendant said that it was zero visibility and it would be better to come back in an hour. We went back at about 9.10 am and there was still a line to get tickets so we were able to bypass this and go straight to security. Then we had to queue to get on the lift to the 80th floor and then had to queue again to go up to the 86th floor. It didn't take too long before we were actually admiring the views.

It was quite busy there at this time and when we left there was a steady flow of people coming in. I would recommend you book your tickets beforehand so you can bypass the first queue and go straight to security.

We didn't prebook tickets for Top of the Rock - we did this at night around 10pm. There were about 6 people in front of us and we got the tickets and went straight up.

It was lovely to see the city all lit up and it was really quiet up there (not many people) did see someone propose though aaaahhh: I don't think that it is essential to prebook Top of the Rock.

Next time I go will go up during the day so I can see Central Park.

[LolUK]

I did ESB last December around 11:30 and just walked straight in with zero queues. Maybe I was just lucky though?

[TopFloridaFan]

I'm going to take a risk:erm:

[ljhleeds]

We went to Top of the Rock at night and didn' queue for long at all. We did Empire State building during the day and queued for 1 1/2 hours but that was New Years Day so dont know if thiswas typical or not.

[kirst_al UK]

Were going to head up at opening on our first morning first thing - we arrive from vegas on xmas eve.......do you think we'd need tickets??

[tinkerlink]

I have done both and never q'd for long we do one at day and the other at night as it's such a contrast!

[S'mE]

The queue for the tickets looked minimal when we visited ESB in an August. The queue for the lifts was the killer!! Well over 1hr. Then further queue on he upper floors.

If you're doing ESB, then DEFINITELY get the audio tour as it's great having a new yorker tell you what you're actually looking at while you're walking around the top, and giving you the low down on the building of NY and the ESB.