are fast track tickets worth it?

no lines at dawn (c) 2018 by David Ourisman, all rights reserved

Questions like this come up frequently on travel forums: "Are Fast Track tickets worth the extra cost?" This is what a recent visitor to fodors.com was wondering about. He's heard about the L-O-N-G ticket and security lines at Europe's most popular attractions. Is it worth paying extra to avoid the long lines, he wonders?

Here's how I calculate the cost/benefit ratio.

(1) Think about a typical trip to Europe. Add up the cost of your airfare and hotels, trains and transfers. You're spending thousands of dollars on your bucket list trip. For the sake of argument, let's assume the trip costs $5,000.

(2) Let's make another set of assumptions: you have six full days on the ground and spend 8 hours a day sightseeing. This means your trip costs about $104 for every sightseeing hour.

(3) If you've seen the lines at Europe's popular tourist destinations, you know can easily waste hours of your precious time doing and seeing nothing. Each wasted hour costs you $104.

Now, let's consider the value proposition of the Paris Pass. It includes unlimited travel, zones 1-3, on the Paris Metro, RER, and buses. It includes a Museum Pass, covering entrance fees at many of the most popular museums and attractions in Paris. (Benefit: you don't have to stand in queue to buy tickets). You also get Fast Track entry at the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, and Centre Pompidou.

If you plan to maximize your museum visiting over the days of your Museum Pass, it won't cost you a euro more — but even if you enjoy a very leisurely vacation, it's totally worth paying to skip the ticket lines.

copyright (c) 2018 by Ourisman Travel LLC. All rights reserved. We provide Virtuoso and other Preferred Partner amenities as an affiliate of Brownell, a Virtuoso® Member. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.