Hi,
I am planning to book online ticket to visit Royal Palace of Madrid for 9th October. Looks like we need to select a specific time slot for the visit while booking the ticket. The issue is my itinerary is not very solid for that day due to some reasons and I am not sure which slot I will be able to visit.
My question is - Is the time slot very strictly followed for gaining entry, or is it fine if I have booking for an earlier slot and visit a bit later in the same day?
Thanks in advance!
Granted I went in November, but I just walked up, bought the ticket and kept going. I think I was scheduled for the starting time 15 minutes later. It was Nov 9th, Madrid's patron saint's day so I thought it might be overly busy, but it wasn't.
Particularly if there is only one of you, I may wait until you know your schedule better.
I don't think anyone will be able to answer with certainty unless there's someone here who showed up late for his or her entry on a recent trip. In general, however, there are sights where you buy an undated ticket, sights where you buy a dated but untimed ticket, and sites (like the Royal Palace) where you buy a dated, timed ticket. I don't see why any sight would choose to sell dated, timed, tickets and then treat them as if they had no time restrictions. The usual purpose of timed tickets is to smooth out the flow of visitors at very popular sights. If you could buy any old ticket for the day and then just show up during a different, sold-out time period, that would defeat one of the purposes of selling timed tickets. So I would expect to be turned away and have to buy a new ticket if I showed up late.
That nearly happened to me a couple of months ago in London: I went to a small, extra-cost special exhibition at a museum. I bought the ticket on the spot; they weren't busy at the time. For some reason I wandered around elsewhere in the museum for awhile before going into the special-exhibition area. I hadn't realized the exhibition ticket was timed. I was allowed to enter late, but the gatekeeper made it very clear that I was breaking the rules and was only getting in because it wasn't crowded at the moment.
The tourist attractions in major European cities seem to get more crowded every year, but I agree that you may be able simply to walk up to the palace and buy your ticket. That's what I did in 2015; I remember only a short hold-up at entry, and that might have been to pick up an audio-guide rather than at the ticket counter itself. I had a feeling a lot of the other visitors were Spaniards; probably some of those were locals. October 9 is a weekday. Unless it's a holiday in Madrid, my guess is that the palace will not be terribly crowded. No guarantees, obviously, because conditions can change from moment to moment if a couple of tour groups show up and need to buy tickets.
I was just there a week ago with a timed ticket. I can tell you the line was pretty long if you didn't already have a ticket. The cathedral right by the palace had no line, however.
Rats. KB, were you there on a weekday? This is why I am so cautious about telling people they don't need to buy tickets in advance; there'sno way of knowing whether you were just lucky when you walked right up to the ticket counter.
acraven, I was there on Saturday, Sept 21. Perhaps it is busier on weekends?
I don't know that it is, but I speculate that the palace gets a fair number of local visitors (I heard a lot more Spanish than English in 2016), who'd be more likely to be there on a weekend or holiday if it's outside the main summer vacation period. Unfortunately, there are never any guarantees. The whole day could be slow, but you could walk up right behind a 40-person bus-tour group.
I'm one who really hates to be tied to arriving at a sight at a specific time unless it's my first activity of the day, but I also hate standing in long ticket lines. Life's tough.
acraven, I totally agree with you about prebooked times. I hate it. But, it does keep avoid long lines.
So far on this trip to Spain and Portugal, I have had times tickets to the Royal Palace, Madrid, the Prado, the Alhambra, the Royal Apartments at the Alcazar in Seville, and, the Rooftop Tour at the Cathedral in Seville.
Although not timed, I did pre purchase for the Pena Palace in Sintra. This is one place I truly believe needs times entry. Lines for ticket holders were insane.
KB, you've done your research and planned well. The regular line for the Seville Cathedral was bad enough! Thanks to this forum I knew what I needed to book in advance, but I was often able to do it after arriving in each city, because I had allowed for a lot of sightseeing time and often also for at least one day-trip. That extra flexibility was helpful. I'm not sure how folks cope if they show up for a typical 2-night visit to Seville and find they need to spend over an hour in the Alcazar line (and who knows what entry time they'll get) and another hour in the Cathedral line. I guess the lines I saw may have been longer than usual because I hit Seville during Holy Week.
