Eiffel Tower - advice needed please!

Hi Bev, try a "behind the scenes" tour with Get Your Guide. Reasonably priced options, and a skip the lines ticket to the second floor. Once there, you stand in a short line to buy tickets for the summit (3rd) floor. I've done the tour twice with this company and think it was worth the extra few dollars. Have a wonderful honeymoon in Paris (how romantic!).

Hi Bev- I used Fat Tire Bike Tours for their Eiffel Tower tour twice, in 2011 and 2012 (traveling with different parties), and loved it both times. They still show availability for Sunday online.

We were at the Eiffel Tower in 2012 when an elevator was under repair and the line was hours long. We decided to walk up and waited less than 20minutes to get those tickets and get started. We took our time up and down and had no problems. The view was great from the second level and we felt there was no need to wait to continue to the top. I am not sure of your age or physical condition but we were in our early 50's and had no difficulty in walking.

Climb the stairs, I have done that twice, lines shorter and move faster. I am not going or fit, more like advanced midsleage and lazy! Lol

Lines for stairs different foot of tower, they are at base of Sud Pilar( south foot) . yes you can buy tickets to too from second level, but frankly after years of my visits ( I have been at least 8 or 9 times over decades) I think top is highly overrated, views great from second level, top is small, enclosed and crowded.

April 2014 we had the same problem. We did a Behind the Scenes engineering tour that visited out of the Public areas and we ended up virtually on the roof of the restaurant. It was a highlight of our trip. We met our guide at the statue of Gustave Eiffel and away we went. We were left on the second level where we could buy tickets to go up higher. My teen boys decided they didn't need to go to the very top and we walked down one level and caught the lift down. Again avoided huge queues. There is a link on the website you tried to buy your tickets on as its a recommended tour. Enjoy! Paris is such a romantic city!

tickets go on sale 3 mos ahead and sell out in minutes, sometimes seconds, so it is not surprising you find them sold out. As young vigorous people, you could easily walk up and then get tickets to the top when you get to the second floor.

This may have been a total fluke, but a couple of weeks or so after the tickets when on sale for our Paris dates, I accidentally went to website (I thought my bookmark was for something else Eiffel Tower related). Although I swear when I had looked before, there were no tickets at any time for any dates of our stay, that time I found tickets for the third level. The extra, added bonus - they were for our preferred date and only slightly later than our preferred time. Although we really don't care if we go past the second level, I was just happy to get tickets at all!

So, checking back and being flexible could possibly work...

I agree with Virginia, we were there one year ago, and we booked the "the backstage of the eiffel tower tour" with "cultival.fr/en. the tour is excellent, it takes you underground under the tower and gives a wonderful account of the history, you also get first in line for access, as Virginia said, you get to go to above the restaurant for more views, fyi-reg. ticket holders do not get this option, I highly recommend this tour, we also took a tour of the opera house with this same company, which was very informative.

Thank you all so very much taking the time to share your advice and suggestions...it is greatly appreciated! Happy travels!!! :)

We took an evening champagne cruise on the Seine that included tickets up the Tower. We had a great young guide that explained so much about Mr. Eiffel, the Tower and visible sites too. I don't remember the name of the company, but it was well worth it.

We walked to the 1st & 2nd levels with our kids (ages 8 & 10) then brought tickets to the top. We all had a blast.

We are in the same boat as you, and we booked the Culitval behind the scenes tour a few weeks ago for our October trip. This tour will also sell out.

If you are in reasonable health walk the stairs while everyone else waits in line and get the ticket to the top. when taking the elevator up and down you miss seeing how the whole thing is put together. and the stairs are wide so you can rest if you need to and let others pass with little interference. and once you are at the top you can take the elevator all the way to the bottom.

Hi Bev, My daughter and I were in Paris in mid-May. I didn't want to buy Eiffel Tower tickets because I didn't want to be locked into a certain day/time if the weather was bad. We arrived in Paris on a Sunday afternoon and after dropping our bags off at our apartment headed to the Eiffel Tower and arrived there about 5:30 p.m. Only waited about 20 minutes in line to get tickets and another 10 mins for elevator up to 2nd level. Maybe we just got lucky, but I've found in other trips that wait times really vary on when you go. A couple years ago in Rome my husband and I took the subway to the Coliseum at 5:00 p.m. and walked right up to the ticket window and bought tickets. We had been told by friends who were seasoned travellers that we needed to sign up for a tour in advance or we would spend hours waiting in line for tickets. It was early September so we still had plenty of daylight.

So depending on the amount of daylight you have maybe you can go around 5:30 p.m. or be in line when they open. Not sure if I would try walking up the stairs, and I'm in pretty good shape except a lot of stairs can be hard on my knees, but if means spending less time in line I'd go for it. Good luck. If you have time you may want to go back when its dark to see the sparkly lights (for 5 mins on the top of the hour). My daughter and I bought a bottle of champagne and took the Metro back one night and found a bench in a little park area outside the ticket area. We loved just sitting and enjoying the evening. We did have the souvenir hawkers hasseling us a little bit but I finally bought a 5 euro item just to get rid of them.

I am writing from our studio in Paris. We went by the Eiffel Tower this afternoon at around 4:00 pm on our way to the manège and playground and there were hardly any lines for the elevator or stairs - and that's with the North Pillar elevators closed. We always do the stairs and have never had any waits.

The only time we made reservations, the elevators to the top were broken!