Visiting the Top of the Rock with a Sun & Stars ticket (New York City) ~ YVETTHEWORLD

Watching New York City’s famous skyline is an absolute must-do when visiting the city that never sleeps. And the Top of the Rock is the perfect place for admiring NYC’s skyline…

In this post, I’m sharing all you need to know when planning your visit, and of course the best photo spots.

PS: Are you planning a romantic getaway to New York City with your loved one? Check out these unforgettable things to do in New York City, especially for couples.

Planning your visit

Before you visit the Top of the Rock, there are a few things you should know about:

Tickets – We pre-booked our tickets from the official website, and we had to choose a date and time for our visit. It is important to know that they will not let you in before the time that’s on your ticket. For just $15 per ticket extra, we got a “Sun & Stars” ticket. This ticket allowed us to come back after sunset on the same day.

Queues – If you have an untimed ticket, you will need to exchange it for a timed one. This will result in extra queuing time at the box office, which is separate to the queue at the lifts. We pre-booked our ticket for 8 am, so we just had to queue for the lifts. We only had about 10 – 20 other people queuing for the lifts at that time, so we got in really quick (maybe 10 minutes or so).

The queues were so much longer when we returned in the evening. We were even held in a cinema room between the lifts and the observatory deck, which didn’t happen in the morning. I think it took us about an hour to reach the observatory deck in the evening.

Weather – You should visit the Top of the Rock when it’s not foggy or raining to have the best views. The day we had originally booked our tickets for was very foggy, so the views would have been completely blocked.

Luckily, the staff at the lifts was completely honest about it and gave us the option to re-book our tickets for another date at no extra costs. So instead of taking the lifts up, we re-booked our tickets for the next clear sky day. The friendly staff even recommended us a date based on the weather forecasts.

Best photo spots

Now that you know all about planning your visit, it’s time to talk about the best photo spots. Needless to say, the best pictures are taken just after opening time at 8 am, when there aren’t too many other visitors on the deck yet.

My best tip is to have someone taking your picture from the upper deck, while you are standing in front of the glass wall on the lower deck. Tripods are not very useful here (plus they’re probably not allowed), so you’ll need to ask someone else to take your couple picture:

My favourite sides to take pictures of are the one with the Empire State Building (as in the pictures above), and the side from where you can see Central Park:

Here are some more pictures made from the upper deck, with the Empire State Building in the background:

Leaving the observatory decks doesn’t mean that the photo opportunities are over. Just before the queue to the lifts back down, there is a window with amazing views of the NYC skyline:

Day versus night

With our Sun & Stars ticket, we could come back any time after sunset. Of course we didn’t want this opportunity to pass us by, so here are our night shots:

It was a lot harder to take good pictures in the evening, because of all the reflections in the glass wall.

Also, there were a lot more people in the evening, so we couldn’t have someone on the upper deck taking a picture of the other on the lower deck, like we did in the morning.