Advance tickets Eiffel Towel & Louvre?

You'll most likely get personal experiences in answer to your question which will vary greatly. I spent the month of August last year in Paris, out of 30 days I had 3 days when it rained and none of those was a washout. Is that normal? I don't know. I only know what I experienced. From what I leaned from my research is that August is not normally a very rainy month but, that being said, some posters here have mentioned cool rainy weather in August. As for lines, I found them not horrendously long while I was there. Longest line I dealt with was at the Musee d'Orsay on the monthly 'free' day. I experienced no line to speak of at the Louvre - enter through the Carousel entrance on Rue de Rivoli across from the Louvre itself, there's rarely a line there. I went to the ET one evening just before sunset and did not have an advance ticket. My wait in line was about 20 mins. Again, just my personal experience. While I was there I was lucky to not have any time constraints so did not get advance tickets for any of the sites I visited. I hesitate to buy advance tickets to anything that is weather dependent such as ET, Versailles gardens, Giverny, etc.. I'm usually on a tight budget and don't like to pay for something and then not be able to go - a waste of my travel dollar.

I would definitely recommend buying tickets in advance for the Eiffel Tower. I bought tickets back in April and visited earlier this month. At the time I bought them, they were already sold out for time slots up until 10 pm. As it turned out, 10 pm was a nice time to visit since the sun was just beginning to set and the lights were coming on. We showed up at 9:50 and got right in at 10 and there were still very long lines at the ticket windows. We didn't go inside the Louvre, but saw very long lines there, too, so if you can buy tickets in advance, you probably should.

The lines for the Louvre seem to vary by location. We were there a few weeks ago, had the Museum Pass, though, and barely even had to stop for the security check. When we did the ET 3 years ago we went at about 10:50 p.m. for one of the last elevator rides up and there was no line at all. We were on the ET for the twinkle show. This year we didn't go up the ET, preferring to look at it from atop the Arc de Triomphe.

Unfortunately advance tickets available on the Eiffel Tower website will be sold out now.. they were probably the minute they came out for sale( I think they release tickets only 3 months or less in advance, and some people literally count backwards and book on the exact day their date becomes available)
You may however be able to find some sort of advance tickets by booking through a tour company, price will of course be much higher then booking through official website( which is 14 euros to top I believe ) You have the option of taking the stairs to the second level( which is fine for great views) , its only 5 euros and there is normally a very short faster moving line for stairs,, maybe 15- 20 minutes max. as opposed to an hour and a half or more for elevators!

We didn't bother with advance tickets due to weather concerns. We went to the Eiffel Tower Saturday July 13 (night before National Day) at 7:00PM. The line to climb the stairs took 45 minutes. Not sure if this much delay was due to several summit closures due to capacity issues while we waited. People with advance tickets also had to wait due to the summit closures. Once reaching the second level it took another 45 minutes to purchase tickets to the summit and then get into the elevator. It worked out very well though because we were also able to watch the sunset from the summit and shortly after the light show started. The waiting wasn't so bad since the weather was great, we were in Paris, and enjoyed talking to others waiting in line about their holiday's. As for other delays at sights it was usually less than 5 minutes. We had the Paris Museum Pass and had no waits at the Louvre going through the Carrousel underground entrance, no waiting at the Orsay (take the Pass holder line off to the right), and 4 minutes getting into St. Chappelle at 11AM the same day we did the Eiffel Tower. When we left the line had grown significantly so we just hit a good time window.