Venice Pass - is it worth it?

Only you can decide if it’s “worth it”
What does it include that you want to see/do?
You have to do the math

A length of stay vaporetto pass is always worth it for us.

You may still need timed entries to some venues and nobody skips the security lines.

It's up to you and your itinerary and travel style.
I personally think that it covers so many things it would only be worth it in as a multi-day purchase - are you really going to visit 5 museums and 18 churches in 2 days? - and at that point it is getting really expensive.

Honestly, one of my favorite things to do in Venice is just to walk around and get lost. It is an amazing city but it's big sites are not what really make it amazing - it's just the city itself. So I would get timed entry tickets for the big sites - St Marks and the Dodges' Palace - if they interest you and fly by the seat of the pants in terms of everything else.

Touring the lagoon and Murano and Burano are quieter external islands that require figuring out the transport system.
I know people like the Vaporetto (water bus) pass, but this is again a "worth it to you" decision. I don't think I would ever get my money out of a Vaporetto pass (3+ rides/day) but the freedom could be worth for a multi-day visit.

Venice is amazing - have a great trip,
=Tod

We were there for four nights last year. I spent quite a bit of time on the different configurations of passes and never found one that made sense for us. I think though you need to figure out what you want to do before making that decision.

The daily cost of a vaporetto pass drops significantly as the validity period increases.

One-day pass: 25 euros (2.6 rides per day)
Two-day pass: 35 euros (1.8 rides per day)
Three-day pass: 45 euros (1.6 rides per day)
Seven-day pass: 65 euros (1.0 rides per day)

(The pass-validity periods are actually in hours rather than days.)

The seven-day (168-hour) pass was a no-brainer for me on my recent nine-day trip, but it was frustrating that beyond seven days I was back to paying the higher cost of a shorter pass or buying individual tickets at 9.50 euros a pop.

I'm doubtful about the value of a city-wide pass in Venice for several reasons:

• Wandering around is such a big part of a visitor's enjoyment there, and that's a free activity.
• The likelihood of getting lost from time to time is high, so there may be less time available for going to paid sights than one might imagine.
• The vaporetti are not like subway trains: They don't come along every 2 or 3 minutes. Occasionally they are nearly full when they arrive at your stop and you have to wait for the next one (which could be 20 minutes later). That's more time spent not inside sightseeing attractions.
• It's difficult to predict how much time an individual will want to spend at each sight. This is not a problem unique to Venice. I spent a lot of time at the Guggenheim and at Ca' Pesaro. I didn't care at all for the exhibitions at Punta della Dogana or at Palazzo Grassi. It's difficult to predict those things on a first visit to a sight.
• At very busy sights one can get hung up in an entry line for 30 minutes or more--additional time not spent actually sightseeing.
• At some point one needs to eat. A nice Italian lunch is part of the experience but will probably require about 90 minutes, further reducing the time available for sightseeing.

Most of those potential issues apply to sightseeing passes for other cities as well.

I was in Venice for a week in May and I purchased a vaporetto pass for the week, and a museum pass that included the Doges Palace, Correr museum, several other museums and 15 or so churches. It worked well for me as I would plan my daily route by picking an area on the map and trying to see what was included with the pass. Then sometimes I would just pick a vaporetto to ride to see where it would go, then get off and wander around. But, if you aren’t going to have a week then the pass may not be the best value for you. Venice is very walkable, and if everything you want to see is in close proximity to each other then you won’t need it. If you want to spend a day island hopping to Murano, Burano, Torcello etc, then on that day just buy a day pass and make good use of it. The museum passes do work better if you have more days to spend in the city because some of the places you want to see aren’t included with the pass so yo will have to pay out of pocket. If you have the pass, and have lots of time, you will probably go into some places you wouldn’t buy an individual ticket for. Do your research, decide what you want to see, add up the cost of buying individual tickets, then check if all or most of the sights are included with a pass and compare the price.