Museum tickets for Venice, Florence, Rome

The train tour sounds interesting although mid to late October is not the ideal time to visit the Castel Gondolfo gardens. You also dont have much time in Rome itself and you will barely scratch the surface in your 2.5 days.

Prebooking museums, Colosseum entry etc makes a lot of sense, especially given your limited time in each city. Another option would be to do some tours. If you have kids consider Pinocchio Tours in Rome snd Florence. Also, kids will enjoy rowvenice.org More fun than a gondola.

It really depends on what you want to visit and you haven't listed any sites.

For Rome you'll want to purchase entry tickets online before leaving home. This will allow you to avoid the long ticket lines.

http://www.coopculture.it/en/colosseo-e-shop.cfm

http://www.coopculture.it/en/colosseo-e-shop.cfm

If you want a tour of the colosseum you'll need to call to book it, you cannot do it online. Note-all the underground tours are sold out for most of October.

For the Vatican museums you can book entry tickets or tours through their official website:

http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/musei/tickets/do?weblang=en&do

These will allow you to bypass the very long ticket lines.

At both sites you will still go though a security screening. These two sites are the ones with the longest lines in Rome.

Donna

My experience in Venezia is that you do not need to pre-book except for the Secrets Tour of the Doges Palace if you want to take that. Probably need to reserve for the rowing lessons if you choose to do that.

Firenze: Reserve the Accademia and the Uffizi, by all means.

Roma: The Roma Pass allow you to skip the lines. If you can commit to using the two most expensive sites (Colosseo/Foro Romano/Palatino and Galleria Borghese) first it should pencil out for the cost. Otherwise just pre-book the Colosseo/Foro Romano/Palatino as recommended by Donna. By all means do NOT get in line at the Colosseo without timed entry tickets. You will waste a lot of time. If you think you want a tour of these ancient sites, I suggest for a group your size a private tour with Francesca Caruso (francescainroma@gmail.com) or Sonia Tavoletto (soniatav@alice.it) . They charge a flat hourly rate instead of a per person charge and can tailor the time and sites to your interest. So for 6 people a 3-4 hour tour might cost Euro 200.00.

As to the Vatican, the train trip is a full day and with your limited time, I think you can use the time better. Plus, it seems from the website that they are not booking in October. (For the record, we took the trip and liked it, but we have lots of time and have been to the Vatican several times.) A guided tour is also wise for the Vatican Museums. It gets VERY crowded and it is difficult to know how to spend your time unless you have a guide. Even without a tour, pre-booking imperative so you don't waste time in a very long line.

Back to the Roma Pass: It includes 3 days of transportation on buses, Metro and trams. Children 10 and under ride free anyway, so you might be better off with buying 72 hour passes, availabel at most newsstands and tabbachi.

If you are in Florence on a Saturday night both the Uffizi and Accademia are open late (11 PM). You do not need to book reservations for the evening times since there will be no crowds or line. Worth scheduling your trip around if possible. http://www.uffizi.org/1923-longer-hours-twice-a-week-from-june-through-december-2015/

For a family of 6, reservations for the Uffizi and Accademia in Florence will run 4 euros each (about $30 for 6) which is on top of the ticket price. Even those admitted free will be charged the 4 euro fee. Not sure the ages of the children but much under 12 and their patience will be spent quickly in these places.

With regards to the ages, the poster has disclosed in a prior post that it is the two of them, three children all under 10, and an elderly mother.

The kids will get into the colosseum for free. Just buy the free tickets online when you buy the adult ones. For the Vatican museums they will get discounted tickets unless they are under 6 years old and then they will be free. Be sure to bring their passports as proof of age.

Donna

Venetian museums don't need to generally be purchased in advance unless you want to do the "Secrets of the Doges" or any private tours. They can book up quickly. But otherwise follow Rick's recommendations for getting into St. Mark's or other sites quickly and you'll do just fine.

Here's Rick's Europe-wide article about avoiding lines and crowds. In a box on the right, he has a list of specific websites to use to prebook sights in Italy that you should make advance reservations for.

One that was only briefly mentioned above was the Borghese Gallery. This one strictly limits admission numbers, so if you want to see it, be sure to book ahead. (For other sights, you'll merely waste a lot of time without advance tickets; for this one, you probably won't get in at all). Get there at least a half hour before your admission time, both to allow time to check bags, pick up the audioguide, etc, and to make sure they don't consider you a "no show" and sell your tickets to someone else.

http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/sightseeing/avoiding-lines

Is there a website to book the tickets for the Uffizi and the Academia museums that is in English?

Here is the direct link to the English page for the Uffizi: https://webshop.b-ticket.com/webshop/webticket/eventlist?language=en&tokenName=CSRFTOKEN&languages=it&production=1#

And for the Accademia: https://webshop.b-ticket.com/webshop/webticket/eventlist?tokenName=CSRFTOKEN&languages=it&languages=en&production=4

If these don't work, go the pages Rick linked, then choose "buy tickets." You'll get a page in Italian, and use the "Aquista" link to get to the ticket buying page. If that's not in English, there's a place to choose language in the upper right.

Two other tips for foreign websites: If you see flags, choose the British one to get English (many websites use this instead of the US flag). And if you can't find an English website at all, you can use Google Translate to get an approximation. It's supposed to auto-select the languages, but I find it works better if I select them (so in this case, Italian to English). It's built into the Chrome browser, or you can go here: https://translate.google.com/

Got it! Thank you.