It looks like I could buy a Paris Visite 1-day, 6 zone pass for about 18.50E. That would get me into the City from CDG on the RER and also be a Metro pass for the day.
On the other hand a one-way RER ticket from CDG appears to be 8.40E and a one-day, 3 zone pass is $8.80, or 17.20E.
So it looks like the 6 zone Visite Card doesn't make sense.
Am I missing something?
There is a one-day pass called a Mobilis, which for the 2-zone version costs about 6 euro and is perfect for hopping on and off buses & metro.
The current price of a single ticket from CDG to Paris is €8.50.
The English version of the RATP site omits some passes. For a list of all transportation tickets and passes with links to detailed explanations of each one, go here.
My experience is that the only one who makes out on passes is the pass peddler.
It's picking pennies, but back up and think about what you really need to do.
A ride in from the airport costs 8.50. Assuming you hop off the rer in the middle of things (near Notre Dame probably) just about everything is within walking distance. The exception might be if you're going to cram everything into one day or don't want to walk as far as the ET -- that's a single metro ticket at 1.40. Another metro ticket to get to your hotel at the end of the day is another 1.40.
Total cost for the day is 11.30 euros.
My experience has been that I might, just might, buy one metro ticket in the course of a week. If I'm camped out in the far beyond, I'll buy one ticket to get into the central area and another to get home at the end of the day.
One mistake a lot of people make is deciding to save a few steps by taking the metro, then ducking into one of the stations that is a combination rer/metro complex (or picking a route that has a line change in one of these stations) and hiking around underground forever and actually ending up walking further than what the surface distance would have been.
