Omnia Card vs Roma Pass

I have never heard of the Omnia Pass, but the Roma Pass can be a good bargain. If you make the two most expensive sights you want to see the first two, they are "free" and then the others that follow are at a discount. So if you go to say the Colosseo and the Borghese as your first two, I think that's about €23.00. The transit portion of 3 days for buses, metro and trams is well-worth the convenience. Generally our guests break even with the pass. Not a huge savings, but a huge convenience.

It activates for museums/sights at the first place you use it. It activates for transit the first time you use it on a bus/metro/tram, and expires at midnight the third day after activation. So if you get on a bus for the first time at 4:00PM on Thursday, it expires at 11:59PM Saturday.

Mine is mostly a comment about "jamming as much as possible" into three days in Rome. I was just in Rome a couple weeks ago and did something similar. I included the major sites of the Vatican; Colosseum and related sites; Catacombs and related underground sites; the Borghese Gallery; spending time around the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona; and also included a day long Tuscany trip to Montepulciano, Pienza, and lunch and wine tasting near Montalcino. Plans to spend an afternoon at Ostia Antica were foiled by a rail strike, and I spent that time poking around Trastevere instead. All that in 3 and a half days. I learned these lessons: 1. Try to do too much in a single day and you can really exhaust yourself, limiting your enjoyment. In general, I would suggest limiting your schedule to one major group of sites or tour per day, with the other part of the day allowing more leisurely poking around a neighborhood, market, etc. 2. I became a real fan of small group tours with professional guides. These guides are really excellent, know the information inside out, clearly understand what are the highlights and what parts that can be skipped over, and importantly, they NEVER use your time and energy getting lost, which I often did when on my own. Getting lost during a leisurely stroll can be great fun, but getting lost when you really don't want to be can be truly energy-sapping and aggravating. For a few reasons I did not use the Roma or any other pass, and did not miss it at all.

For the last couple of years the transportation part of the Roma Pass and the discount portion of the pass run at the same time, from the time that the pass is first used for the first free entry OR first use on the transportation, then is valid to midnight on that day, all the next day, and until midnight of the third day.

Only the first two attractions are free on the card, then there is a discount for other places during that 3 days.

A very good summary of the card (just a touch dated) by the fabulous Ron In Rome is at http://www.roninrome.com/%20transportation/should-i-buy-a-roma-pass

There is also comment on the very expensive (and IMVHO so outrageously priced to be classed as a ripoff) Omnia Card.

The omnia pass is a very over priced pass. It makes you squeeze 5 days worth of sites into just three days. You would be better off buying the romapass and booking the Vatican museums on your own than trying to do it all in such a limited time. If you do the math you will see that the pass will not save you any money. The pass actually costs more than buying the tickets on your own. There was a huge debate about this pass last year on the TA forums. The prices were broken down and it was discovered that they were claiming that entry into the basilica was 12 euro, it's actually free. This is just one of the things that I can remember off the top of my head. They also make you use your free entries for the colosseum and the borghese galley. That's fine if you plan on visiting them but if you wanted to use your free entry for another expensive site like the castle st. Angelo you're out of luck.

You're better off with the romapass. You can choose the sites you want to see and get reduced admissions to all the others covered by the pass for three days. To visit the Vatican area simply go before or after you activate the romapass and enjoy the city at a leisurely pace.

Donna