Paris 2016 – Paris Museum Pass

Was it worth buying the pass? YES!

We bought a 6-day pass for 74€ and without it we would have shelled out 121€.

We visited 11 sites with the pass: The Archeological Crypt, Musée d'Orsay, Napoleon’s Tomb in Les Invalides, The Pantheon, The Louvre, The Arc de Triomphe, Conciergerie, Towers of Notre Dame, Orangerie Museum, Sainte-Chappelle and Versailles.

In terms of the time saved, that’s a tricky question to answer because we are visiting Paris in October, the off-season, so line ups are generally not an issue.

It saved us time at the Arc de Triomphe without a doubt. How much time? no clue. The line looked long, but I didn’t stick around to analyse how fast it was moving.

It did not save us any time at the Notre Dame Towers because there is no priority queue for this attraction. That was our longest wait for anything: one hour.

At the Pantheon, we just happened to arrive at the same time as large group and the staff seemed to have been caught off guard. They opened a second window for people with tickets so I changed to that line up, but then they told me we had to wait in the first line… then they said OK we could go though that one. Whatever. That whole thing lasted about 5 minutes.

At the Musée d’Orsay we were waiting in the wrong line because I didn’t realise that the “reserved” line meant for Pass Holders. I thought it was for groups. That was only a few minutes, however I did notice a long line up when we left but that was also around the time it started raining so it makes sense that people start looking for indoor activities and the line ups might start to grow.

Aside from that, there were no line ups of consequence anywhere.

Another bonus of the pass is that you will probably be more inclined to visit sights that you may not have previously considered because they are “free” – like in my case Monet’s Water Lilies in the Orangerie Museum.

And most important of all, had I not had the pass, I would not have gone to the Archeological Museum, and I would not have gotten my face on a gold coin!