Eiffel Tower Tours

This is what Rick says:

“Tickets with a reserved time slot are sold online through the official Eiffel Tower ticket office at no extra cost, and are available up to three months in advance.
Unfortunately, these are often quickly snapped up, sometimes within hours of going on sale. If this happens, don't panic: You can always simply show up at the tower and wait it out to buy a ticket without a reservation. But to avoid a frustratingly long wait, consider booking a Fat Tire tour, or heading to Montparnasse instead.
Tour Packages: If advance tickets aren't available when you need them, you can essentially pay for a reservation by joining one of Fat Tire Tours' "Skip the Line" Eiffel Tower tours (which include a reserved Eiffel Tower ticket). These tours are not cheap,”

If you plan ahead you can save money and time by booking the tickets yourself. This is the case with every kind of tour. Whether it’s a day trip on a minibus visiting multiple sights, or a 21 day tour. What you pay for on any tour is for someone else to do the leg work (research, reservations, logistics). But that always comes at a price.

Try the ET official website first.

Another option is a skip the line tour with Get Your Guide. There are other companies but I’ve used this one twice and was happy with it. You meet your guide at the ET and get a 1 hour tour where they explain the history and how it was built. Then you go underground to see how the elevators and machinery works (very interesting). Finally, you skip the line and ascend the Tower. There are several options at various prices. Check the website.

We did a Fat Tire Bike tour to Giverny and thought it was fun. Enjoy your trip to Paris!

Thank you so much for your responses. Yes, I think most people, even those who do not travel, would recognize why you would pay for a tour and expect a higher price than you would get at the source. My question was the amount of the mark-up. which was double the actual price and whether this tour in particular had some features that others don't which would merit that kind of mark-up. From my observation, one of the goals of RS has also been protecting the traveller from overpaying. And the Skip the Line tour has significantly lower prices for the same access.

My sources on the language teachers sites that I am member of are reporting that if you buy the ticket in advance on the ET site, you will wait in line but the lines are reasonable and the wait times not excessive. But that might also depend on the day. So I will keep my eye on all the sites and hope that my sister and I end up with tickets.

Considering that if you buy a Fat Bike Tour, you are also paying for their staff time and the back-end costs (paying their office rent, managing their HR, buying their needed goods, managing the website, answering prospective client questions) etc . Of course it costs way more than buying your own ticket to simply go up the Eiffel Tower.

The markup is cost-covering, and supply and demand. They have found that the market will bear that ticket cost, because people want to visit the Eiffel Tower and get frozen out by the official site.

Everyone stands in line for security at the Eiffel Tower. If you purchase one of these tours, the “line” that you skip is to purchase tickets. You can avoid this line by purchasing tickets online in advance. If you are unable to purchase tickets online for the day you are interested in, then booking a tour (at a great premium) is an option to guarantee that you get up in the tower on the day of your choosing. They can charge this great premium because people who don’t plan in advance think it’s a “must” to go up the tower and are willing to pay that premium vs miss that chance.

My experience isn’t terribly current (2019), but we just kept checking the official ET website for when timed tickets for our preferred date went on sale. Three months sounds about right, and we purchased timed tickets. We did have to wait a few minutes in a security line that everyone waits in, but overall it was a hassle free experience.

My impression of the RS recommendation for the Fat Tire tour is for a last ditch case of “we must see the Eiffel Tower and timed tickets are sold out and the lines for same day tickets are insane”.

I’m sure a tour would teach you some things about the history of the EF, but I didn’t feel like we missed out on anything major by not taking one.

I'm currently trying to get tickets for the first week of April and not having any luck. The tickets have literally gone on sale and been gone within half an hour (and I only found out they'd gone on sale by changing the time zone on my laptop, before I changed it the tickets weren't available at all). My brother wants to go ahead and buy some ridiculously overpriced tours that include the tower and the Louvre, I'm going to try for the tickets in about an hour and a half for April 5th and if I don't get them I guess we'll be shelling out $100+ apiece to get up there. I've been before so theoretically I can just sit it out but our kids have been wanting to go to the top and that's literally the only thing they've really begged to want to see so I know we're doing it. I know that demand is greater because it's spring break but I wasn't expecting everything other than 10pm to be sold out within minutes (and even that was sold out before I could hit purchase).

Edit: just got tickets for 5pm!!!! whewwwwwwwwwwwww. although I'm second guessing myself, probably should have gone for the 8pm instead but oh well. It was 5pm, 8pm, a few later, some earlier but that was it. I'm just so damned relieved!!!!!! Now to figure out if we should do Versailles that day or push it to the next day (probably will!).

I’m hoping to get 1 ticket to the summit in early May around noon or after 60 days out, and if I can’t get will buy a tour for 3x the price.