Museumkaart

No. You can make a reservation now. They don't ask for any details of your - not yet bought - Museumkaart.

Excellent. Thanks very much.

Recently a new rule has come into place for the temporary Museumkaart. This can now only be used for a maximum of 5 visits total.

It is my understanding that the temporary Museumkaart is the one that tourists use - the full card is valid for a year, but is only available to Dutch residents. The temporary card is good for only 31 days.

Either way, the card is an excellent value - I used it in so many places and know I got more than my monies worth. Plus it allowed me to enter museums that I probably would not have gone to if I had to pay. The only museum that did not allow it was the MCEscher museum in Den Haag. Plus I had to pay a 10 euro supplement at the Hermitage to see the Dutch Masters exhibit.

Most tourist will indeed use only the temporary card, but even Dutch resident who buy the card at a museum will receive this card. But is possible to register without a Dutch address and receive the full card at your home address anywhere in the world (or your holiday address). Registering with a non-Dutch address will not be done via the website but via e-mail. Registering is only useful when you will come back to NL within a year.

The 31-day card is now restricted to a maximum of 5 museum visits, instead of unlimited within that period.

On their website they have that new rule hidden somewhere in the conditions of use, and in Dutch only.
They are getting more and more restrictive with the temporary card. First they limited the use to one month to prevent abuse (people passing it on). Now it's limited to five visits. It is still better than buying separate tickets, but marginally.

That's interesting because I know I used mine for many more than five visits - I probably used it for five in the first two days of my visit.

I did wonder if there were travelers who passed their Museumkaart on to others when they left. I did not because first, it's cheating, and second, it keeps money from going to the museums.

I understood that in some AirBnB's the Museumkaart was lying on the table for all future users.
It would be cheating. Not the individual museums, who get their money with every use of the Museumkaart, but the organisation and so the museums collectively. (Some museums have been cheating themselves, by scanning the card twice and so receiving a double compensation.)

@Mardee It seems the change is very recent. Their FAQ was updated 3 days ago.

Thanks, Flora. Wow, I'm glad I came in under the gun. Ton's right - it's really not much of a bargain if you're only limited to 5 museums. And the problem is that it will keep people from seeing some of the smaller, less popular museums, like the Willet-Holthuysen Museum. I think a better solution would be to put identifying information on the museum pass, and then require the pass holder to show identification to match.

I'm curious - I have Museumkaarts that I've had at least 10 years since they expired (they were originally from NS). I wonder if I can reactivate them in some way, or if I need to start from scratch.

Thanks, everyone, for the current information about the five museum limit. Two people in our travelling family of seven will be leaving after three days in Amsterdam. If they don’t plan to visit enough museums to break even with Museumkaart, is it worth paying extra, to avoid lines? Or are there many lines, other than at Anne Frank, Van Gogh, and Rijksmuseum? In another thread, I think some of you have said there’s no significant line even at Rijks, correct?

If you don't plan to visit enough museums to break even, I don't think it's worth paying extra to avoid lines. The queues at Anne Frank are based on ticket times, not whether you have a card. The Van Gogh had the same queue for everyone, regardless of whether you had a pass. I think at the Rijks you were able to bypass a line if you had a card, but it's wasn't a long long, so again, not worth it.

That being said, I'm wondering how strictly they are enforcing this new 5 museum rule. There is a thread on Trip Advisor that addresses this and the consensus there is that the five museum rule applies only to the same museum - in other words, you can't visit the Rijksmuseum more than once using the pass, but you can visit more than five museums overall. This actually makes more sense since otherwise the smaller less well-attended museums will not receive the fees they get from attendance.

If you buy tickets online right before you arrive, you can skip the line at Rijksmuseum, so no need to have a Museumkaart. We were just there last week and did the 'big 3' (AF Huis, VG and Rijks) so I did not do the Muesumkaaart as it would not have saved us any money. My kids have strict museum limits lol, and we only had 2 days there :)

I have been in den Haag since May 28th. My husband bought his Museumkaart on 5/31/18 and didn’t mention it. I bought mine on 6/4/18 and was shocked to find out that he could go to unlimited museums and I was supposed to be limited to five. The cashier did not put the date on it and when I went to my first museum the next day they said “when did you buy this?” I said last week, I think. They put 5/31/18 on it. We have been to 19 museums so far. Each one has scanned our cards and not asked any questions. I don’t know what to tell you all about how the five visit rule will be enforced. It obviously wasn’t in my barcode and nobody actually seemed to read the date, often it was just scanned by a machine. It’s not going to pleasant for the museums to turn visitors away, especially the small ones.
It’s possible that it was tour groups that screwed this up for us by buying a batch of cards every month then running many groups through with the same cards. Hopefully, Rick’s groups were not part of this.