Museum passes

We will be arriving in Paris 4PM Monday, (in end of May) and leaving noon on Wednesday. Becuase the Louvre is closed Tuesday we probably wont get a chance to visit it. We would like to purchase our pass to the Museum D%26#39;Orsay online to save ourselves valuable time. What is the best website to buy these passes online?

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You don%26#39;t need to buy the passes on line. You can buy them at a metro stop. We just got back, and the entire process took less than 2 minutes. Have fun!

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%26gt;%26gt;%26gt;We will be arriving in Paris 4PM Monday... and leaving noon on Wednesday...We would like to purchase our pass to the Museum D%26#39;Orsay online to save ourselves valuable time. What is the best website to buy these passes online?%26lt;%26lt;%26lt;

You can certainly pre-purchase the CARTE MUSEE et MONUMENTS on-line, through any number of third-party agents. BUT...you should be aware that your will pay a 25%-to-35% premium above the regular price in Paris. Since you will be arriving on Monday, it%26#39;s a fair bet that you will have to purchase either transportation passes or a CARNET of reduced price tickets at a nearby Metro station when you first arrive. You can purchase CARTE MUSEE et MONUMENTS passes at the same Metro ticket kiosk as you do your transportation passes/tickets. So there is NO convenience or cost advantage to on-line pre-purchase.

You should also be aware that the regular price of a one(1) day CARTE MUSEUM et MONUMENTS pass (good for admission to over seventy(70) museums and monuments in and around Paris..not just the d%26#39;Orsay) is 18 Euro. The regular Full admission price for the Musee d%26#39;Orsay and Neo-Impressionism exhinbit is 9 Euro. There%26#39;s no way that you can tell how long the line will be at the d%26#39;Orsay on the Tuesday of your planned visit (it%26#39;s worth noting that the d%26#39;Orsy will tend to be busier on a Tuesday when the Louvre is closed) but you could make it a point to get to the d%26#39;Orsay early. If the line is short, simply purchase a regular admissinon ticket or if it is long, head down to the RER statation and purchase the museum pass there. It%26#39;s a gamble.

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Thanks to you both for the good information! With that in mind, I think we will plan to check into our hotel when we arrive Monday afternoon, and just sightsee for the remainder of that day. We will purchase the Musee pass for the Tuesday, at 18 Euro%26#39;s, thats a pretty good deal, even if we only get to see 3 museums!

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Again, as I have posted on this site quite a few times, the value of the Museum Pass is not in the discount it allows you, but in the time saved in terms of waiting in line.

The best place to purchase a museum pass is in the metro, if they have them. DO NOT purchase them at a major museum such as the Orsay because you will need to wait in line to purchase it - thereby defeating the purpose of the museum pass.

When in Paris, I usually purchase my museum pass either in the metro or in a less crowded attraction like the Musee Cluny where I don%26#39;t need to wait in line.

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Another of the intangible benefits of the CARTE MUSEE et MONUMENTS pass is that it presents you with the ability to simply %26#39;..drop in..%26#39; on places that you might otherwise walk on by if you had to stop to calculate the cost of the ticket and the time spent waiting on line to purchase it. With the museum pass you can simply serendipitously pop-in and look around, stay a while if the place interests you or simply move on to somewhere else if it doesn%26#39;t. We%26#39;d probably all be surprised at the number of times that visitors with museum passes have stopped into a convenient museum, with no other purpose in mand than to find a clean rest room, and %26#39;..discovered..%26#39; a %26#39;..new favorite place..%26#39; in the process.