When I go online, I see many sites that offer skip-the-line tickets to Sagrada Familia. I would like to take in the tours in a guided tour. Is there a recommended site for tickets?
Posted by
Washington DC
27062 posts
The "Guided Experience" option on the La Sagrada Familia website may be what you want. That includes a tour offered by the site itself. It does not appear to include ascent of a tower. If going up a tower is important to you, you may want to choose that option with an audio guide instead.
If it fits with your sightseeing schedule, I recommend booking the first time slot of the day, when you will at least walk into a church that is uncrowded.
Posted by
Barcelona (Catalonia)
2939 posts
- ALWAYS go to the official site: www.sagradafamilia.cat or to the official TI site: www.barcelonaturisme.com Anything else is an intermediary and prices are, obviously, marked up. Also, in many, information might be misleading (ie. skip-the-line)
- As in many other sites in very popular destination cities like Barcelona, the "only" real option to access the most visited sites -almost anytime during the year I must say!- is always to pre-book. Expecting to line up and easily get a ticket to visit right then is ludicrous, 99% of the time that is, due to the sheer amount of visitors. With less popular sites that is possible though (duh!).
- The concept "skip-the-line" as such does not exist here (with the odd exception*). Be wary of sites using this term as it's often misleading. In SF and the other sites using a pre-book scheme, you choose an entry time when purchasing the ticket and that's your window (up to 15'-30' in most places). You're guaranteed entrance within that window, miss it and you need to purchase another ticket. Period. It has to do both with the practicality of managing crowds and also with the upkeeping of EU values of "same opportunity for all citizens",
(*): In BCN, among the most popular sites, only Casa Batlló (as of today) offers something that allows you to enter the premises "at the next entry window" without having specified any specific one (day/time of entry) when purchasing the ticket online. This ticket is valid for a determined period (a number of months, six if I am not mistaken). There's also a "fast track" option, which only ensures that "in the next entry window you'll be the first to enter". Again, semantics are important here... some marketing gimmicks might provoke confusion and misunderstandings.
UPDATE: sorry, yes, Ann's link above and mine are the same site :)