Budapest Card walking tours/boat rides

I took both the Buda and the Pest walking tours back in 2018 and thought they were good. Wanting to take those was what convinced me to get the card. I at least broke even on the card, but I didn't save much money. Budapest is a really pretty city, so it's not the kind of place where I wanted to run from place to place, using the card to hit every museum imaginable.

I didn't take the boat ride.

Sure, but you will have to schedule your trip around the card benefits to have it save you anything.

A 72 hour Budapest Card with the boat trip is 96 euro

A 72 hour Travel Card for the metro is 14 euro. The boat tour you get with the card I suspect is the 50 euro ride. Free tours are .... well fee.

So, with out using the Budapest Card for anything else, you just spent 96 euro for 64 euro worth of goods.

If that doesn't work for you, book direct for the free tours and the boat (but do an evening cruise) and buy a 72 hour TravelCard. If you will be there longer, spend another $5 and get a 15-day pass.

When I had the card, the walking tours weren't run by one of the "free"-tour companies. They were a commercial operation, and you could buy the tours independently, which some people on my tours had. I think the tours cost 15 or 20 euros each in 2018.

I assign very little, if any, value to the transportation component of any city sightseeing card, because I prefer to walk as much as possible. It's easy enough to buy a one-day or multi-day transportation pass separately if you think you'll benefit from one.

To be honest I don't know anything about the walking tours that come with the card. I am just betting they are equivalent to the "free" tours in town ... which aren't bad at all.

As for the transportation, with the card, like it or not, you get free metro.

Absolutely nothing wrong with walking. I average 5 or 6 km a day around town, and ride the public transportation. City park to the castle is 5km. Andrassy alone is about 3km so the walk up is fine, but I ride back.

And if your interests align with what the card provides, it's a good deal.

Here is the only free walking tour company that I am the slightest bit familiar with. https://www.triptobudapest.hu/

AND I misspoke in my first post. I said I assumed the cruise was the 50 euro cruise. Should have said the 15 euro cruise. Like this one https://legenda.hu/en/duna-bella. But a good company,check all they offer, but the night cruises are the best.

AND I found the link to what you get and the value of each. https://www.budapestinfo.hu/storage/files/WQTOtgkcer4LiKxeykyoIgW6RDYX6WxDJNYl001v.jpg

Do the math, maybe it works for you like it did for acraven.

I see! It's all coming together now. Thanks for the insights!

And here is the link for the 72 hour public transportation pass.
https://bkk.hu/en/tickets-and-passes/prices/travelcards-valid-for-one-or-more-days/72-hour-budapest-travelcard.33/

Good information, thank you. This card doesn't seem worthwhile unless you're racing around the city like crazy to recoup the costs.

Yes. That, I find, is true of nearly all big-city passes. They are priced high, and visitors are not likely to have enough actual sightseeing time to make them pay off; one must stop to eat occasionally, after all. A lot of the major-city passes look like they were put together by a third party that includes a lot of marginal sights to make them attractive to visitors who haven't done research on the local sights and really thought about what would be most meaningful and enjoyable for them. The company packaging the pass makes a profit, so it's not reasonable to expect the pass to be a good deal, on average. That's not to say they are useless for a blitz visitor who wants to spend only about an hour at the Louvre and other relatively high-cost, large museums.

I've found some good deals on small-city passes, so I encourage people going to places like Orvieto and Padua to take a look at local options. I also did well with annual country-wide museum passes in Finland and Estonia and with the Campania regional pass in Italy. Lombardy, Piedmont and Friuli-Venezia Giulia are other Italian regions offering annual passes at reasonable prices. Annual passes will often pay off if you're spending more than a few days in an area, because you don't have to alter your sightseeing plans in order to hit covered places within a compressed time.

It's hard to make it worth the cost unless you are a museum hound ... many are, in whch case that may be the way to go. Get a travelcard and relax.