You may not have a concierge in your home but if you swap with a hospitable home exchanger you'll have one on vacation. The swappers who will use my apartment in March just wrote me an email about which NYC attractions pass they should invest $300 in.
Larger cities like New York and Chicago often have these multi-attraction passes. They feature all-inclusive admission to a mix of museums, historic sites and, well, tourist traps. For instance, several of the New York passes include admission to the local franchises of a British wax museum and a hall of reproductions of "unbelievable" oddities, most of which were probably fake in their original iterations. What either of these tourist traps has to do with New York City is unclear, except to prove what was said about the work of local tri-state area son P.T. Barnum: "A sucker is born every minute".
Your home exchange partner offers "local intelligence". I shared my opinion of the attractions passes with the swapper. Where else would you get the real story from someone you can trust?
"The Citypass and NewYorkpass are not good deals. You can go to all the included museums for free or pay-what-you-like. Details here:
http://gonyc.about.com/cs/museums/a/museumdeals.htm
"The Statue of Liberty isn't really interactive once you're on its island and the ride there in the tiny boat is nauseating. It's more thrilling to see the the statue for free from the Staten Island Ferry than on its island because the new arrivals to America saw it from a ship as well.
"The Circle Line boat tour is a long day and its most interesting views are also available for free from the Staten Island Ferry. Top of the Rock is more interesting than the Empire State Building but it's not worth buying the pass just for that. The other attractions offered with the pass are tourist traps. The passes also rope you into a whirlwind of tourism since they are only valid for consecutive days. Skip the passes."
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