Sistine Chapel

[JimD56]

Taking the train into Rome on our cruise day there. Want to get skip the line tickets to the Sistine Chapel. Is there a good time to go to avoid long lines, or will skip the line tickets mean that we can basically walk in? Don't want to spend much of our day waiting in line.

Thanks for any help.

[Pima1988]

Try to hire a private tour guide, it is worth every penny, make sure they are licensed.  They will bring you through a private entrance, so there is no lines, and they will do it at your pace.  We purchased this through the Amex concierge.  I remember when we did it..  We got there @ 8:30 and the line was already very long to get into the Vatican.

[tiny260]

33 minutes ago, Pima1988 said:

Try to hire a private tour guide, it is worth every penny, make sure they are licensed.  They will bring you through a private entrance, so there is no lines, and they will do it at your pace.  We purchased this through the Amex concierge.  I remember when we did it..  We got there @ 8:30 and the line was already very long to get into the Vatican.

Plus 1 on this, I used, https://www.romeprivateexcursions.com/tours-from-rome/

They picked us up at the port and we bypassed all of the lines to the Vatican. They sent us a link with instructions before hand so that we could purchase the tickets our selves. The when we got to the Vatican the tour guide picked them up. Doing it with one of their guides was great, they took us the whole way through and explained everything

Purchasing before hand is the way to go, when we went the line was wrapped around the outside and we just walked right past with the guide and went in.

[Pima1988]

That is also how it worked with picking up the tickets.  They were there waiting for us.  

[Atlantix2000]

My wife and sister-in-law did a trip to Europe before we met.  They said buying tickets in advance (typically online) to popular tourist attractions like the Vatican, Coliseum, Eiffel Tower, etc. was super important.  They said there were really two lines everywhere: one to buy tickets and one to get in and both could be an hour or more.  So getting advance tickets helped but didn't completely eliminate lines.  I don't think they did private excursions.  Based on the comments above, they sound even better than advance tickets!

[Pima1988]

For us it was worth the extra money for the personal tour guide.  I think it was only like 25 bucks per person more than the cost of tickets, plus we did tip at the end.  I want to say we were at the Vatican for a solid 3 hrs., but we saw everything and our kids got to ask specific questions bc it was only our family.  She was able to give even more tidbits bc the regular tour groups are large,  so they have to move them along faster. 

With the Sistine Chapel, that is the only point where we had to go in with the tour groups, and it is limited amount of time you can spend in there.  They basically enter you in one door and exited you out another door, once it is cleared out they allow the next group in.  I want to say that there were at least 100 people with us in the chapel and maybe 10-15 mins.  They have kept a small patch of the non-restoration fresco so you can see the difference from what it looked like before the restoration compared to today, at least they had than when we went.

[fonemanbob]

We enjoyed our private tour there 3 years ago.  The shhhhers have a great job going around saying SHHHHHHHHHH.   Two ladies from our ship wandered away and got split up from us and missed the ship.  

[ellcee]

On 4/24/2019 at 7:51 AM, JimD56 said:

Taking the train into Rome on our cruise day there. Want to get skip the line tickets to the Sistine Chapel. Is there a good time to go to avoid long lines, or will skip the line tickets mean that we can basically walk in? Don't want to spend much of our day waiting in line.

Thanks for any help.

I'm be there in a few weeks on a land tour. I was advised that the "skip the line" tickets were the best option if you didn't want to pay for private tours.

[mom2mybugs]

We booked one of the royal excursions that includes this for our cruise in July... Hoping we didn't make a bad choice by not going private.    I can tell you that skip the line tickets for the Eiffel tower was waaaayyyy better!  Jane

[MikeK]

Our TA set us up for private tours on our entire Med Cruise and it was worth every dime.  One of the tours was the Vatican and like some others have said,  we just met the guide and walked right in a spent 3 hours on an excellent tour with the guide, my wife and myself.  It is worth the money.

[Pima1988]

On 4/25/2019 at 8:32 PM, mom2mybugs said:

We booked one of the royal excursions that includes this for our cruise in July... Hoping we didn't make a bad choice by not going private.    I can tell you that skip the line tickets for the Eiffel tower was waaaayyyy better!  Jane

I would contact your TA or RCCL, depending on how you booked your cruise.  My assumption is that RCCL is using a private tour company, so you will skip the line and go in via the "other" entrance.  However, I would contact them and ask for specifics.  IE notice @MikeK they booked it through their TA and not RCCL.  

I am not saying RCCL's tour will be bad.  It might actually be better because you know for a fact you don't have to worry about travel.  I would assume that the groups will be not huge, but they will be bigger than the private.   Plus you need to think about the cost.  Personally for me, I loved the private, but if I were on a cruise, and knew that we would go through the private entrance, I probably would do RCCL.  My Mom on the other hand would want the true private, which I get.  I think the details were well worth the extra cost. ~~ The story behind the Jubilee doors.  The info regarding the mosaics in the Church.  The nooks and crannies that a group of 30 can't get into, thus the tour guide avoids that part. 

You have to ask what exactly is your goal here.  If you are okay hitting the high points, than do RCCL.  If you want to learn more than go with a private guide, but expect to spend more, and make sure you give yourself wiggle room to get back to the ship on time.  

[MikeK]

1 hour ago, Pima1988 said:

I would contact your TA or RCCL, depending on how you booked your cruise.  My assumption is that RCCL is using a private tour company, so you will skip the line and go in via the "other" entrance.  However, I would contact them and ask for specifics.  IE notice @MikeK they booked it through their TA and not RCCL.  

I am not saying RCCL's tour will be bad.  It might actually be better because you know for a fact you don't have to worry about travel.  I would assume that the groups will be not huge, but they will be bigger than the private.   Plus you need to think about the cost.  Personally for me, I loved the private, but if I were on a cruise, and knew that we would go through the private entrance, I probably would do RCCL.  My Mom on the other hand would want the true private, which I get.  I think the details were well worth the extra cost. ~~ The story behind the Jubilee doors.  The info regarding the mosaics in the Church.  The nooks and crannies that a group of 30 can't get into, thus the tour guide avoids that part. 

You have to ask what exactly is your goal here.  If you are okay hitting the high points, than do RCCL.  If you want to learn more than go with a private guide, but expect to spend more, and make sure you give yourself wiggle room to get back to the ship on time.  

  I didn't mention we did a 5 day pre cruise with our TA setting up the whole thing.  RC had a 5 day pre cruise which we signed up originally  but got canceled by RC because there wasn't enough people that signed up for it.  Our TA then mirrored the same pre cruise with a lot of extras thrown in and still quite a bit cheaper.  We had private cars (boats in Venice) picking us up when needed,  1st class train rides, and one on one private tours.  On our Vatican tour a RC tour passed inside the Vatican museum about 20-30 moving at a fast pace.

 But like Pima1988 said you are taking a chance with a private tour as opposed to RC tour.  Do you want to take a chance of something going wrong and missing the ship.  On the cruise we used RC tours because we did't want to take that chance.   You can really tell the difference between the private tours and RC tours.

I seem to think our TA went through Perillo Tours.

[bigpete]

I would take the train to the St. Peter’s train station and walk up to the Vatican Museums that way. Early in the morning the lines are long and by noon, they wrap around the walls. It would be your best bet to go there first thing, as early as possible.