r/visitingnyc

Hi.

Booked a table ticket for tonight. Wondering what the set up is. Are you expected to dine while the performance is on ? OK not to dine ?

We’re a group of 5 visiting NYC for the first time over Memorial Day weekend, and Summit One was one of our main planned highlights. We booked SUMMIT One Vanderbilt tickets through a third-party site (TicketEx) for this upcoming Saturday (May 23), and selected an “evening entry” specifically because we wanted the sunset → night skyline experience.

We just received our confirmed entry time and it’s 9:30 PM. This completely removes the sunset portion we planned for. We’re a group of 5 visiting NYC for the first time over Memorial Day weekend, so this was one of our main planned highlights.

Questions: Is there any realistic way to get the slot moved earlier? Has anyone had success with TicketEx customer support changes or refunds?

If we keep the 9:30 PM slot, what’s the best way to adjust the rest of the itinerary so we still get a good sunset experience elsewhere (Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO, etc.)?

Would you consider this a major downgrade or still worth going at night?

Any advice from locals or people who’ve done Summit would really help. Thank you!

Hi, we are planning a trip to New York as a family for the first time ( Couple and 15 yr old daughter) June 25-28th. Driving from Toronto.
I am a bit worried if it will be too crazy with the World Cup going on?

I am looking at staying in the Bayonne area- close to the 22nd street LR station. Would that be a good option? This is the only time all of us have vacation so not able to move to another time 😕

Hello! Visiting soon and 2 of my teens want to see the Met. On their website, it says the Modern & Contemporary Galleries, as well as the Ancient West Asia & Cypress Galleries are closed, as well as partial closures of a bunch other galleries. I’m just wondering if enough is closed that we should hold off on going this trip. Has anyone been recently? Thank you!

Any suggestions for places that make house made alt milk in would be greatly appreciated. My interweb searches have turned up only Bittersweet and Electric Beets in Brooklyn. Thank you in advance.

I had previously posted our itinerary in this group yesterday. Group of 5 guys coming to NYC this Memorial Day weekend and the weather forecast is suddenly looking rough.

Current plan was:
- Saturday evening: Edge / Hudson Yards / Times Square
- Sunday: Central Park → Midtown → Lower Manhattan → Brooklyn Bridge → DUMBO
- Monday morning: leave NJ and head back home

But now the forecast is showing rain basically Saturday evening + most of Sunday.

For locals:
- Is this looking like “light annoying NYC rain” or “your weekend is cooked” type weather?
- Are skyline views (Edge / Brooklyn Bridge / DUMBO) gonna be ruined?
- Should we pivot more toward neighborhoods/food/bars instead of viewpoints?
- Any good rainy-day NYC recommendations that still fit our Manhattan/Brooklyn route?

Trying to decide whether we’re overthinking this or if we should seriously cancel this plan.

Born n raised NY'er here! I have been getting curious about bushwick lately. Is it worth it? I have this image of roving packs of pretentious transplants, and overpriced coffee (pretty sure thats everywhere now..). For anyone who lives in bushwick, what is there for me to do? How are the queer bars over there? Are there any notable ones that I should check out or that you can reccomend. Thanks

I’m planning a trip to NYC in June 7-10 with my parents, so there will be 3 of us total. It's my parents' first time in New York as well as in US, and we plan to stay in nyc for 3 nights and take the Amtrack at Penn Station to DC at 11 pm last day. I've been to nyc one time before but just scratch the surface, and is not familiar with the city, so my itinerary roughly looks like (feels a bit empty tho):

Day 1:

Arrive at 6am JFK, take the train to hotel for luggage, brunch nearby.

Sightseeing and strolling around the Times Square / Broadway area, maybe stop by the New York Public Library.

Hotel check-in + rest.

Visit Fifth Avenue and see the sunset at the empire state building/top of the rock at Rockefeller Center.

Want to find a close place to see the city skyline in the evening.

Day 2:

Upper manhattan for the Met and central park, lunch at that area.

SoHo in the evening if there is time and dinner near that place.

Day 3:

After breakfast take the train to lower manhattan, walk around wall street and 911 memorial.

Probably Lunch somewhere in Financial District or Chelsea.

Take the ferry to see the statue of liberty, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and go to Chinatown for dinner. (Or walk across the bridge after dinner to see the lights)

Day 4:

Flexible

Check out and store our baggage at the hotel.

Not yet decided, maybe Natural History Museum or other places worth visiting (like UN,The Intrepid Museum or just some park), Brooklyn/Queens(Flushing)?

Grab our luggage at the hotel and go to penn station around 10:30 pm to catch the 11pm amtrack to DC.

I still haven't decided if I'm gonna buy the NYC CityPASS, but I'm open to any suggestion and is happy to reschedule plans totally. Based on the plan, is staying near grand central station reasonable or we should stay close to time square.

Any rec for local restaurants for visitors like my parents is also weclomed! The only thing is that I think they tend to save money but nyc is expensive, making me hard to really plan a lot. Also I'm not sure whether the World Cup will affect our plans.

Have gf visiting and she’s really into spiritual stuff like chakra energy balancing/healing, reiki, singing bowl sound bath, Kundalini yoga, breath work, etc. Id like to get her a session as bday gift. Anyone have any recommendations preferably in Manhattan but willing to travel to other boroughs if worth it.

I've somewhat spontaneously decided to take a 3ish day trip to NYC. I visited it as a kid with my Dad, but would love to see the city again as and adult. He passed back in December and this is really the first break I'll have given myself since, so I want to make the most of the relatively short time.

Photography is one of my main drivers behind the trip but I don't necessarily want to carry my camera around the whole time, and I have an idea of what I want to do while I'm there (arriving Thursday morning on the red eye and flying out Sunday evening, in and out of JFK), but at a high level I want to see:

• Top of the Rock at sunset
• Brooklyn Bridge park or Long Island City for skyline photos (if LIC around sunrise my last day)
• Staten Island Ferry
• 9/11 Memorial
• International Center of Photography
• At least part of Central Park
• Times Square (not a must do I saw it when I was younger but the photography would be cool)

I've solo traveled before but not anywhere near the size of NYC, so I wanted some input: I've been looking at hotels around Grand Central and even considered a couple near Times Square, how practical would either be for the stuff I want to do and see? Any recommendations for a different area to consider?

Also any recommendations for photography/restaurants/bars/ around any of the stuff I mentioned is greatly appreciated!

Hello! Me and my boyfriend plan on coming to nyc from august 16th to the 19th. We are staying at hotel 38 tapestry hilton in midtown. We are debating whether to take the bus or the car. The bus is long and I keep seeing bad reviews about the staff, delays or cancellation. So I am contemplating taking the car but where would we park for our stay? Is the parking expensive in midtown? Am I better of taking the bus?

Thank youu :)

Just wanna make sure our itinerary not all over the place. The trip is for this upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

We are staying in North Bergen, NJ. It’s right across the street from the NJ Transit bus stop (Route 125), which goes directly to Port Authority in Manhattan. We’re planning to commute in and out of NYC daily using that bus + subway inside the city.
We are really hoping to avoid wasting time with bad routing since we only have 2 full days + arrival/departure time.

Day 1 (Saturday, Arrival around 3 PM, NYC evening plan)
- Check in at Airbnb in North Bergen
- Take NJ Transit 125 bus → Port Authority (Manhattan)
- Explore Midtown / Hudson Yards area:

1. Edge at Hudson Yards (Around Sunset)
2. 5 mins Walk to The Vessel (quick stop)
3. 30 mins Walk/End at Times Square at Midnight
   - Return to NJ by bus

Day 2 (Sunday, full NYC day)

We want to do everything in a logical flow, not zig-zagging:

1. Start at Central Park
2. Walk through 5th Avenue
3. Subway (40 mins) to SUMMIT One Vanderbilt (Prebooked)

Then again, take subway towards Downtown Manhattan:
4) Wall Street / Financial District
5) Charging Bull
6) 9/11 Memorial (outside only, not museum)
7) Oculus
8) 15 mins walk towards the Brooklyn Bridge walk (Manhattan → Brooklyn direction)
9) DUMBO (sunset skyline views)

Question:
Staten Island Ferry (for Statue of Liberty view only, not going to the island). We’re trying to figure out the best order so we don’t waste time going back and forth across Manhattan.

Day 3 (Monday – morning + departure)
- Optional quick NYC stop (not sure what fits here realistically)
- Visit BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in Robbinsville, NJ (planned 2–3 hours)
We plan to leave for Ohio around noon.

Questions:

- Is our overall structure efficient or are we still doing too much zig-zagging?
- Is Staten Island Ferry worth it just for Statue of Liberty views or should we skip it?
- Any major must-fix routing issues you see?
- Are we missing anything obvious or overestimating what’s doable in 2 days?
- Anything worth doing in NYC on Memorial Day morning? (Early hours before rest of itinerary starts)

For subways/ buses, we have gotten tickets through the app. Would really appreciate advice from locals so we can optimize this properly before we go.

Hey, y'all, I've updated the itinerary from my last post with y'all's suggestions. For context, we're a party of five, and we've decided to stay in a hotel in Jamaica instead of an Airbnb in New Jersey. Y'all mentioned going to see the church on Sunday but my parents decided we might just watch our home church's livestream, so there is no church listed to see in the itinerary.

I'm still unsure what to add on Monday since I wanted us to explore places in Queens, since we'll be staying there, so any recs will be appreciated. We'll first be getting our passports that morning, but the rest of the day is left for whatever.

The itinerary is tentative, so we might not hit every spot for each day. For food, we plan to just get whats in the area unless we get more recs.

Otherwise, does this new itinerary look more decent or at least entertaining?

,
Saturday, June 20th (Departure from NC)

• Train departs @ 10:13 am
• Arrival at NYC train hall @ 8:35 pm
• Hotel check-in time: anytime after 3 pm
• Take subway to Hotel

Sunday, June 21st

• Church Livestream @ 9:15 am - 10:30 am
• Upper West Side
  • American Museum of Natural History
  • Central Park Zoo
  • Central Park 
  • Times Square at Night
    • Food: Levain for cookies, absolute or liberty for bagels

Monday, June 22nd

• Passports @ 9:30 am (Commute: ~ 1 hr)
• Queens
  • Flushing - Chinese Food
  • Astoria - Greek food

Tuesday, June 23rd

• Midtown
  • Top of the Rock - to see Empire State Building
  • Rockefeller Center
  • RiseNY
  • Koreatown
  • Broadway @ 7 pm

Wednesday, June 24th

• Union Square - Farmer’s Market (Wednesdays)
• Walk thru Village - Washington Square
• SoHo
• Little Italy 
• Chinatown Neighborhood
• Brooklyn Bridge and DUMBO 
  • Walk to Borough Hall - take 4/5 train to Bowling Green
  • Leads to: Staten Island Ferry - Statue of Liberty

 
Thursday, June 25th

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met)
• Fifth Avenue
• Madame Tussauds
• New York Public Library - Bryant Park

Friday, June 26th

•  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
• The High Line
• Hudson Yard
• Chelsea Market
• Little Island - Park

Saturday, June 27th

• Hotel check-out time: 11 am prompt or prior
• Train departs
• Arrive home

Hi everyone,

I am planning my first-visit to NYC this coming September. Visiting New York has been a lifelong dream of some sort for me—I've always been fascinated by the city's culture, energy, and urban landscape.

As a specific hobby of mine, whenever I visit a new city, I love keeping the local transit cards as a souvenir. For years, I’ve dreamed of owning one of the iconic yellow MTA MetroCards. However, I know the city has been phasing them out in favor of OMNY, and I read that they are becoming increasingly difficult (or nearly impossible) to get from standard station booths or vending machines.

Since I’ll be there in September, I wanted to ask the locals: Is there any place left in the city where I might still be able to find or purchase an unused or even a vintage/collectible yellow MetroCard? Are there specific stations that still dispense them, or perhaps transit museums/gift shops that sell old stock or commemorative versions?

I’d highly appreciate any tips or leads on this. Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I'm Italian and I'm going to visit NYC for the first time. I remember from my past trips to the US that my debit card didn't work, since it was a national circuit.

I have a second debit card which is Mastercard, will it be enough?

I don't want to make a credit card just for a week long trip, I already booked my accomodation and won't rent a car.

I've read online that some people couldn't get a metro card with their debit card.

Can you help shed a light on this?

Thank you!

How do the three airports compare on ease/price to get to manhattan on public transit? Any recs on timing into the city e.g. should I avoid 10pm-12am flights?

Hi.

Visiting NYC this week and would like to visit a jazz club. The idea of being a gooseberry at a shared table is undesirable, so which club best suits solo and why ?

The gf and I are going to NYC next month. Currently, TSA is running a deal for those 30/u for $25 off their TSA PreCheck registration. I fly every year or so, and I don't really run into TSA issues (knock on wood). Has PreCheck helped at a place like LGA? FWIW we're flying out on a Saturday afternoon.

My wife and I will be going to NJ for a wedding later this month. When we arrive we were going to go into the city to visit some family in Manhattan for dinner and drinks and then want to go back to our hotel that night. Trying to figure out a safe route there and back that won’t be a $150 uber ride. I’m not as concerned about getting into the city but I don’t quite know the best path to get back later that evening. We would probably be leaving the city that evening between 10pm-midnight. Any insight would be very helpful!