Go Boston Card

You can save money with this card, but you need to do some research to get the most out of it. Go in with the mindset that you cannot experience all 45 attractions. Pick the ones you want, then price them to see if it works for you. Look into other options/​discounts for your chosen attractions. I planned a 6 ½ day trip, with 1 day for visiting my childhood neighborhood, and 1 with no set schedule. This meant the 3 day card would work best. i stated searching with discount/​promo type words and found a 3 day card at Costco for $ 87 plus tax, better than the $ 109 list price. I went to my local store for a refundable membership, then ordered the passes online and printed them out. I used these everywhere, not needing an actual «card» I read reviews of included trolley and decided to use another brand with a groupon on a non card day. I did see fewer of the Beantown trolleys compared to the others. I also chose my 3 days as Thursday, Friday, and Saturday for several reasons. First, the Museum of Fine Arts takes several hours to fully appreciate. Rather than take up a big chunk of the day, we went on Wednesday evening because the admission is free after 4pm (saving $ 25), and it’s open until 9, leaving the day (We did the Cityview Trolley). Thursday we went to Salem, as I have always wanted to go. It was $ 14 RT on the train, not included on the Charlie card (train/​bus pass for $ ¹⁹⁄₇ days) I will just do costs here, which would have been $ 40.50 for the 3 Salem attractions. We got back around 7:30, so went to the Skywalk Observation at sunset, saving another $ 17. DAY 1 $ 57.50. Friday, we took the redline to Harvard. We only did the Peabody/​Natural History (which was $ 12 for both not each as listed. We did not do the Harvard tour, as I had injured my foot just before the trip, but did go to the free scientific instruments display. We went to the Science Museum, which was not in our original plans, but the Pixar exhibit was of interest. It was not included, but was worth the $ 12 extra for the 2 hours we 2 adults spent playing and exploring. Since the museum is open until 9 on Friday night, we were there until it closed. DAY 2 $ 36. On Saturday, we went to the Aquarium, which was the only place we went that you cannot just walk up with the go card paper. We had to go to the will call line, which had no one in it, compared to a huge ticket line (at least a ½ hour wait). We were going to do the Freedom Trail, but sore foot changed to Mary Baker Eddy Museum. The church and reflecting pool were free. Our evening was the whale watch (included as a bonus with a 3 day or more pass. We chose Saturday at 5 pm. As soon as I got the Go Boston ticket numbers, I emailed the whale cruise to scheduled our time (2 weeks ahead). We then picked up the actual tickets for the cruise the morning of. Again the evening left the day free, plus the sunset and the city lights on the trip back were amazing. DAY 3 $ 82. TOTAL 175.5, less the cost of card, saved about $ 88 each or almost half.

Terrible
We bought this «deal» at the aquarium (which just the entrance to the aquarium was really expensive)
They told us the trolley would come every 15 – 20 minutes and it was the only way to see Boston
Beantown trolley was HORRIBLE
Went to Fenway waited hour and a half for trolley
No signs, customer service no help at all
Told us «well there is nothing we can do»
Do not get suckered like we were.
Take old town trolley we saw 5 of them go b part while we waited and waited in the heat :(
Then everything in the ticket closes by 4 or 430
So much to do but all at the same time :(

Good deal if you’re going to Boston and want to hit the major tourist attractions and save some money. I strongly suggest you check the weather for the says you’ll be in Boston and price out each individual attraction, travel time between attractions, and actual cost if you paid full retail price and you’ll realize your savings. Even if you don’t save on money, you’ll save lots of time by skipping the lines. Plan ahead and you’ll be glad you went with this card. I had a minor issue with mine but a call to customer service and Malika quickly resolved it. Thanks!!!

Yes, you can save money, no– they don’t make it very easy. No one seems to know what’s going on, and no one can really help. The book you receive is out of date, and they don’t give it to you until you actually buy the card– so planning is tricky. (Though I think I was able to find a pdf to download somehow on the website, but that wasn’t even until the night before we planned to purchase and site-​see.)
We planned to visit most of the attractions via the hop on /​hop off trolley, a feature of the card.
WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU:
There are no fewer than SIX different hop on /​hop off trolleys operating in the greater Boston area. Many logos look the same, none of them validate any of the others’ rides. Make sure you know which one you’re supposed to be looking for– we definitely learned this the hard way. We were staying in Sommerville, so we walked to Harvard Square for breakfast and attempted to hop on the trolley there to our next site, only to find that it wasn’t the same company. We ended up grabbing a Lyft from HS to find the kiosk in the mall at the Prudential Center to get our actual hop on hop off tickets. The Go Boston book was useless, as it directed us to a kiosk inside the mall currently occupied by a different trolley service, who sent us out to the front drive of the Sheraton hotel where the Beantown supposedly stopped– we asked the Valet, he sent us to the Concierge, they sent us back into the mall. By this point we’d lost literally hours to trying to figure this all out. My friend finally jsut called and was told the new location inside the mall (RIGHT next to where we’d walked in, but we didn’t notice cuz we were following the guide book!) In this case, the Beantown Trolley, appears to be the run of the trolley litter — all of the other trolleys were double decker or at least elevated rides. This is supposed to be patterned after a San Francisco street car, but really the only similarities are wooden interiors and an uncomfortable ride.
We finally found it and the guy at the booth apologized profusely and said he gets the same story, all day, every day. By the time we actually found the kiosk and got information on how/​where to catch it, it was too late to be able to make the last Freedom Trail Walking Tour (another GoBoston Card tour) by taking the trolley, so we had to hail a cab. (If you’re keeping track, that’s $ 13 for the Lyft to the PruCenter, and $ 15 for a cab to the Freedom trail– both of which we were supposed to have been able to do with the trolley pass.)
We were told the trolley stops were marked at each location, they are not (the only stop we picked up the trolley at was Fenway, and the Old Town trolley had a stop sign there, but no others.). Look for it, wave it down like it’s a rescue copter.
Last summer I did hop on hop offs in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris, and they all had pre-​recorded narratives explaining the history and sites you were seeing, triggered by GPS. Beantown had an irritable driver you couldn’t really understand speaking into a hand-​held microphone making announcements.
While the Beantown trolley fiasco (new band name?) was the biggest pain, we ran into other things– the first day we tried to schedule the tall ships cruise the guy was incredibly rude to my friend and couldn’t guarantee if they’d even be sailing the next day cuz another ship had just hit one of their two vessels, and the other was having mechanical problems or something. We called a few other attractions trying to figure out what we could ACTUALLY do with these passes and some were closed, others didn’t answer. Further, everything in this town seems to only operate between 10am and 5pm, so seeing a lot of the tours/​activities offered proved difficult to schedule.
When we added it all up– YES, we did save money. Was it 50% like they claim? Probably not. Things we did:
–Freedom trail Walking Tour — EPIC — loved it. Recommend it to everyone.
–Prudential Skywalk — One of the few things open after 5pm.
–Beantown Trolley — don’t bother
–Harvard Museum of Natural History — Interesting exhibitions on minerals (shiny rocks) and glass flowers (way more interesting than it sounds) but unless you’re in Cambridge anyway, pass.
–Fenway Park Tour — Awesome, baseball is why I was visiting to begin with! (Let’s go, Oakland!)
–Tall Ships — we REALLY enjoyed this. Apparently we picked the BEST day of sailing they’d seen of the season, perhaps the previous year — so conditions were fantastic. (A storm was moving into the area and we got on before it hit, so we stayed dry!)
–Aquarium. Apparently if you go in later in the day, they let you come back in the next day.

This is a pretty handy little card. BUT… I think it should be at least 25% cheaper during the off peak season. I bought the 3 day card for the 8 – 11 of May. We were not able to use a few of the cruises. The trip to Cape Cod, Martha’s vineyard and Tall ships were not yet operating. And that week the USS Constitution cruise was closed due to moving. They also make it look more valuable by listing places where there is no charge to enter anyhow. However, during peak season this card is well worth it. Though a lot of the vendors were not familiar with them and it caused us some delays and nearly our reservation on the whale watch. Every attraction employee should be familiar with this card. I will do this again, but at a time when things are open and operating.

Total rip off! Terrible customer support! Do not support this company.
We bought this card based off of the advertised savings in the company brochure, only to find out the actual savings were nothing like promised. I called the customer support number where they were exceptionally rude and unhelpful. Their best solution was to put me on a list to talk to a supervisor «probably within 24 hours». Unfortunately, waiting 24 hours in the middle of only a 7 day vacation was extremely inconvenient.
The supervisor finally called back but would not refund my purchase or even pro rate the purchase price to cover the downtime caused by trying to resolve the issues. The supervisors concluded her call with the splendidly dimwitted response, «let’s agree to disagree», which, as you might expect, solved absolutely nothing.

This card is a total rip off. We purchased a 5 day pass for 4 people. That was a $ 600 charge. The big draw was an advertised fully paid ferry Excursion to Provincetown. When we went to get our tickets we found out that we would have to pay $ 76 per person. The program only provided a $ 9 discount.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that a program that is being offered by the Boston Visitor Center in Boston Common would permit such deception.

This card is worth for a penny. Seriously !!!
We got a «Go Boston card» with 2 day pass.
We have visited the major sightseeing places, which covered the cost what we paid for.
1) Freedom trail walk (covers Old state house, Cemetry, Market)
2) Hop on Hop off Trolley tour (Covers 19 destinations, you can hop on/​off anywhere anytime (9 – 5) for 2 days)
3) Salem Witch museum (Good presentation)
4) Peabody Essex Museum (May be you don’t like it much)
5) The House of the Seven Gables. (Nice Plantation)
6) USS constitution cruise tour /​museum (Beautiful tour)
Pros:
Worth for money. you never be cheated here.
I would definitely recommend this card for all my friends.
Cons:
Timing is always a concern for both you and the tour hours.
The Best solution is, Time management for day 1, day 2 and day 3.
The other worst thing is Parking. Seriously parking sucks in downtown. Never park your vehicle near Harbor parking lot. you may be crying while paying back.
What we missed:
New England Aquarium,
Copley Square,
Whale watching
Swan boats
We additionally stayed 1 extra day and visited Science Museum and Boston Duck tours. That’s why i suggest you take 3 day pass which can cover Duck tour or whale watching or 1 more.
Again, all these were my experiences. you can plan/​do, whatever you want.
Boston is a great place to visit. Enjoy and Have Fun. :-)

This is a great deal. I did the trolley tour, aquarium, whale watch, tall ship, swan boats, walking tour, and I can’t remember what else. It saves money if you want to see a lot of attractions, and I like to know how much I’m spending before I travel.