Barcelona skip the line tickets

Going to be in Barcelona for one week before a cruise. Should I pre-book or purchase skip the line for any places ahead of time? Or is it pretty easy to just get tickets when I get there?

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Going to be in Barcelona for one week before a cruise. Should I pre-book or purchase skip the line for any places ahead of time? Or is it pretty easy to just get tickets when I get there?

 

 

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Definitely prebooking is the way to go. We purchased Sagrada Familia tix before leaving home. Even doing that, we still had to wait in a significant, although not bad, line to redeem tix and get headsets.

The tix are timed tix.

Since you will be traveling in summer, that is one of the busiest times of the year, so definitely purchase in advance if you can, otherwise you most likely won't be able to see the inside of the Sagrada, which is AMAZING!

If you are looking for tours, we used Barcelona Day Tours for one tour

They do book up well in advance, however

Barcelona is very easy to do on your own. The Metro is great and you can by a T10 ticket at the station and for 10 euro you can use it and share it with others in your party, so if you have 5 people, the T10 would give you 5 round trips. We took the metro to the Sagrada, which has its own stop across the street Very, very easy

https://www.clorian.com/site/SagradaFamilia/

The above link is the official site for the Sagrada. If you want to just see the inside, it is 15€, 22€ with headset, more money if you want to climb the tower

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Rule of Thumb in Barcelona: if there's online pre-booking available.... DO pre-book!

Do skip the line when ever possible

Purchase skip the line tickets. It beats standing in line for hours.

Sagrada Familia pre-booking is a must. Parc Guell has timed entry to the main area so book those in advance also.

**IMPORTANT**

I would like to clarify that AT some of the most popular sites (ie. Sagrada Familia or Park Güell among other) there is -technically speaking- no "skip the line". These sites work on a time-based scheme, that means that when you purchase a ticket, whether online or queueing at the booth, they sell you a time-slot for you to enter the premises. This translates in practice in that, if one has decided not to pre-book online but to queue on-site, there's no guarantee that when you reach the booth and purchase a ticket you'll be able to enter the premises right away. I've known cases in which someone has been queueing for a couple of hours under the sun on a scorching morning in August in Sagrada Família just to be told that the first available slot is, say, at 5pm that same day. Hence the reason pre-booking online is strongly advised.

So pre-booking you're not technically "skipping the line", you're just buying a time-slot. When you reach the Sagrada Familia and you're standing to enter you're doing so with the people that have your same time-slot. This raises another point: in Sagrada Família -as in other popular sites- there are two queues: one to purchase the ticket at the booth and another one to enter the premises. The second one, which is generally short and fast-moving, is only for ticket holders of the "next" time-slot.

This is the sort of scheme that's growing in the city for the most popular site as it's the most efficient and egalitarian, noting also that too often a balance has to be stricken with visitors and maximum capacity -as determined by law and health and safety regulations.

There are, however, a handful of sites which offer something "similar" to the concept you mentioned above. One being Casa Batlló, where you can purchase and "OpenDate" ticket that allows you to visit any day at any time -within a validity period. But again, this does not necessarily mean that you can absolutely waltz in at any time either since, as mentioned when the maximum capacity has been reached no more visitors are allowed in. Having said that, since the rotation of people coming in and out is very high, should an "OpenDate" ticket holder had to wait on a specially busy day, the wait would be short.

To mention that time-based schemes regulate the time you enter the premises, not the time you spend on them. You can stay as long as you want.

We went to Sagrada last month, and were told tickets were sold out until Sunday (three days hence), so we just walked around the outside and had a drink at a nearby cafe. We specifically wanted to see how much progress had been made since we last saw the cathedral around 10 years previously, when we just walked in, no long queues. Obviously, however, the numbers of visitors have grown considerably since then, so I would recommend anyone wanting to see it book tickets to avoid disappointment. It's amazing from the outside, but equally stunning inside (and that was with it looking like a builder's yard!).

As the cathedral nears its finish date over the next decade, numbers will only increase even more.