Please sign in to post.

“Skip The Line” Strategies A Bit Of A Misnomer

RS does a great job in his books telling his readers about strategies to make their trip easier and more enjoyable. Probably none more valuable than the strategies for skipping the often horrendous lines at popular sights.

I just want to issue a warning or maybe a bit of perspective.

I have just used the Paris Pass and the Firenze Card. Now These are very valuable tools for sure. But they do NOT necessarily let you “SKIP” the line. In Reality what they do is get you into a much shorter line. A lot of folks have caught on to this tactic and are reserving or getting the cards. This means there are lines for us Lucky card holders too.

Even though I will not recover the full monetary value of the Firenze card the time it has saved me is considerable. Right now in Italy it seems as if every school across the country is on Field trips. Group after group of hundreds of Italian school kids from 8 to 18 are on the move in the train stations and adding to the lines at important sights. So the card has saved a lot. I admire the way the Italians take their kids on these field trips. But it seems every kid in Italy is in Florence right now. It does make for a lot of smiles and quite a bit of laughter watching them all.

Now I have been to Florence at least three other times I can remember, once in July, and I drove here from a house I was renting. That was in the mid ‘90s as I recall and even then there was NOWHERE near as many people here as there are now. It is only Mid May. Obviously everyone from virtuallly every country is discovering This place. An NO it is not the fault of the cruise ships. Those groups are few, small and far between. The biggest groups I have seen are Asian and European.

So if you are coming this way GET THE FIRENZE CARD or make reservations (well ahead) and don’t expect to skip any lines except at the smaller places. But your line will be much shorter for sure and save you a lot of standing.

Posted by
8377 posts

aarthurperry, you make a good point. Often "skip the line" means skipping the line to buy tickets, not necessarily walking right in. The security lines can be longer than the ticket lines in many cases.

Posted by
8293 posts

The fact that “skip the line” entry tickets do not allow skipping the security line should not surprise anyone. You can’t buy a way to side step security and why on earth woukd that even be possible?

Posted by
8377 posts

Norma, its just an observation. I've stood in the lines several times, and heard or seen complaints from people expecting to go to the head of the line, a special line, or to cut in front because of having some sort of a pass.

Posted by
10178 posts

"Right now in Italy it seems as if every school across the country is on Field trips. Group after group of hundreds of Italian school kids from 8 to 18 are on the move in the train stations and adding to the lines at important sights."

I spent the first 3 weeks of May 2016 in Italy and had the same experience. Everywhere from the cities to villages of Tuscany. I'm happy these children have the opportunity to do these trips, but I would personally choose not to travel to Italy in May again. It did affect some of our sightseeing.

Posted by
19655 posts

Yes, May is school field trip time in Italy.

Posted by
361 posts

Our last trip to Italy was in late April and all of May. We really enjoyed seeing the various school groups in their matching ball caps wending their way around Ostia Antica. High spirited but very well behaved kids. While on the Funivia up to Orvieto a group of students from Naples engaged us in conversation, wanting to know where we were from etc. They wanted to practice English speaking and we enjoyed trying out our very limited Italian tourist phrases. In Taormina, Sicily there were school choirs performing in the main plaza and they were so good that we spent an hour enjoying their concert. I felt that these experiences gave us a window into typical, seasonal Italian life and would gladly travel again in May to Italy.

Posted by
546 posts

Just to clarify, I wasn’t addressing the security line issue at all. That’s a completely separate thing. I was solely referring to the actual ticket lines to get in. I have found the security lines to be fast friendly and efficient. However if people would leave all those little back packs in their rooms they would go a lot faster still. (But that’s for another post)

I am not sure how my post got misconstrued to be about the security lines. Security here is certainly necessary and done very well in my opinion.

My main objective was to just give a heads up to those who may read something into the text in RS books or others who may believe the tag lines used by the Cards themselves to just be aware that so many are getting the cards the lines are at times pretty long...but still much shorter than the regular ones.

About the Kids...yea they are fun and amusing and pretty well behaved for sure. But it is a fact that you will encounter maybe up to a hundred of them in line (or more) at a time. Personally I think we should do more of this field trip thing to our great museums in New York and
Washington for our kids...

Posted by
10120 posts

Actually trip season, whether school field trip, class exchange programs between countries, visiting Grandma and Grandpa who live in the capital city, or family tripsn begins at Easter break. The museums and other attractions start filling almost overnight. It lets up in November. We’ve run into school groups with prioity entry during fall semester, too.