CityPass saves money on New York City breaks

New York CityPass adds The Metropolitan Museum of Art as the sixth blockbuster ticket in its booklet of must-see attractions in New York City. CityPass, known for bundling big-city destinations’ most popular museum and attractions tickets into one time-and money-saving booklet, announces a new era of its New York CityPass.

Available June 1, 2007, New York CityPass features the iconic Empire State Building Observatory, a Circle Line Sightseeing cruise, and four of the world’s most important museums: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Guggenheim Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History and Rose Center.

Priced at $65 for adults – a $130 value – New York CityPass represents a travel savings of 50% off individually purchased attraction tickets, plus line-skipping privileges. Visitors have nine days to use the six tickets.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world’s premier cultural destinations. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe.

The New Greek and Roman Galleries-the Met’s newest grand public space-were inaugurated on April 20 to great fanfare. A spectacular architectural space, a light-filled, soaring atrium, it comprises New York’s newest museum – a “museum-with-the-museum” – for the display of the Met’s extraordinary collection of Roman, Hellenistic, and Etruscan art, much of it unseen in New York for generations.

More than 5,300 works in all media, collected since the time of the museum’s founding in 1870, are installed on the two levels of the new galleries.

Note: The Museum ticket entitles its holder to bypass admission lines, and provides entrance to all galleries and exhibitions, plus same-day admission to The Cloisters, which is the Met’s branch for medieval art and architecture in upper Manhattan.

There’s no time like summer to discover the cool halls and galleries of New York City's other premier museums. The American Museum of Natural History tells the remarkable story of human evolution from millions of years ago to modern Homo sapiens; Gold!, a special exhibition with a ton of gold in a thousand forms evoking Nature, greed, beauty and power appears through August 19, 2007.

Note: CityPass ticket holders may upgrade to see Gold! for a reduced fee of $9.

The Museum of Modern Art offers a chronological overview of Post Impressionism to contemporary art in its galleries, in a range of six curatorial departments: painting and sculpture, drawings, prints and illustrated books, photography, architecture, and film and media.

Its remarkable environment and collections introduce vanguard artists of various periods, or the chance to stroll up to a Brice Marden or Jackson Pollack painting, or see what the fuss is about Fassbinder films.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s instantly recognizable curving Frank Lloyd Wright exterior is presently under restoration to ensure another 50 years of landmark status. Inside, the Kandinsky Gallery remains a magnet, as are Chagall, Picasso and van Gogh paintings, the changing exhibits and the museum’s intriguing multidisciplinary art programs.

The remaining two tickets deliver breezy daytime or superb dusk skyline counterpoints to the streetscapes. The Circle Line Sightseeing cruise ticket includes a close view of the Statue of Liberty and stories of Manhattan’s past and present. The Empire State Building is more than legendary architecture; it is a trip to the top of a landmark that has appeared in more than 90 movies and fueled the city’s romantic reputation for decades.

Also included to underscore Big Apple distinctions and nibble at other costs, the booklet includes tips, transportation information, contact numbers and Web sites, museum shop discounts, restaurant values, and Bloomingdale’s shopping package.

New York CityPass, $65 for adults and $49 for youth 12-17, is valid from June 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008. Ticket holders have nine days from first use to visit the six museums and attractions in New York CityPass.

New York CityPass is one of ten North American destinations designed for ultimate value and urban distinctions. CityPass destinations also include Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Hollywood, and the theme parks of Southern California.

Ticket booklets can be purchased in advance at Citypass.com, and at all participating attractions or visitor information centers in each city.

For more information about CityPass, go to Citypass.com.