I am very confused about the Venice City Pass. I was working on reserving tickets for the Secret Itineraries tour at Doge's Palace and saw where the pass would allow a discount. The Pass however is very confusing...at least to me. I will only be in Venice for two days. Saturday evening through Monday afternoon. Should I purchase the Pass?
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I was rather disappointed in a few aspects of the Venice City Pass. I found the 'delivery' of some of the products ineffective at best.
The good: I was able to purchase our Alilaguna tickets and vaporetto passes, church entrances pass, WIFI and public toilet passes on-line prior to arrival. The ticket pick-up process for the Alilaguna was fairly easy and uneventful. The church pass (CHURCHES OF THE CHORUS CIRCUIT) was also easy to pick up and can be done at the first church you visit. WIFI access code was returned as part of the confirmation.
The bad: It took an inordinate amount of time to pick up the vaporetto passes. The first several machines we tried inexplicitly refused to cooperate. We finally found a machine that would dispense the vaporetto passes it refused to dispense "other purchased products" as offered by the machine's user interface queues. Throughout this endeavor, repeated visits to the tourism information offices for assistance proved futile ("go to machine and follow the prompts").
My recommendation... Assuming you are able-bodied and can negotiate the thousands of stairs you encounter while crisscrossing the island(s), the vaporetto is of marginal usefulness if you are arriving Venice via bus (Piazza Roma) or train (Piazza Ferrovia) due to the enormous queues. These enormous are also found on the other end of the Grand Canal in the afternoon/early evening all the day-trippers try to return to the bus and train stations. Once you cross the Grand Canal to find a less-busy vaporetto stop, you might as well walk to wherever you were headed. At any rate, if you are going to use the vaporetto to get to one of the other islands, purchase a one-day pass from the machine.
If you are interested in doing the Church Circus, just purchase the pass at the first church (on the circuit) you encounter. If I remember right, the pass begins to save you money after the second church visit.