Confusion over purchasing Hofburg Treasury Tickets in advance

I just showed up at the ticket office, bought tix and entered the Hofburg—no advance purchase was necessary

I did the same in July of this year.

There is often no advantage to the customer who buys tickets in advance. There is a big potential advantage to the sight selling the tickets. Sightseeing tickets are usually not refundable.

I would never buy such tickets in advance unless I had current information to the effect that ticket lines were long or tickets were selling out ahead of time. One place in Vienna for which advance purchase is suggested is the Upper Belvedere, which has timed entry tickets; no one would be thrilled to approach the ticket office there and be sold a ticket for entry 90 minutes later. There may be other potentially problematic sights (perhaps the Sisi Museum?), but I spent 17 days in Vienna, and the Upper Belvedere is the only place for which I purchased a ticket ahead of time.

Ok good to know. I just thought that because we were visiting over Christmas it would be insanely busy everywhere but it sounds like we would be fine to just show at the Treasury and purchase our tickets then.

I haven't been to Europe at Christmas, so I can give no guarantees, but I suspect the people who report Europe is super-busy at Christmas were expecting it to be the off-season, not comparing it to the traditional (summer) high season. However, as the summer weather gets worse (Vienna was quite hot to miserably hot almost every day I was there), more people are trying to avoid July and August, which I think makes it more difficult to predict how touristy places will be at different times of the year.

Vienna felt busy in July in the sense that there were lots of people out on the streets, especially in the area around the Hofburg, but I can't remember any indoor sight that was crowded to an annoying degree. There were lines to enter some of the cafes, that's the main thing I noticed. I made no dinner reservations, but anyone interested in a specific restaurant would have needed to do that, I assume.

Ok thanks so much. We will just purchase those tickets when we get there.