When I visited Amsterdam for the third time, I wrote about my experience with the Amsterdam City Card. When we booked to visit our friends in Atlanta, we realised the city also has a similar thing, the Atlanta City Pass. I was keen to see if it would work out for us and it looked like it would, so we ordered one each. In this post, I’ll talk about how I found using it, whether it’s worth the money, and the different things you can do with the Atlanta City Pass.
Atlanta City Pass cost and info
The Atlanta City Pass costs $115 for adults and $86 for children aged 3-12. It can be activated at any time and is valid for 365 days after purchase. Once activated, the Atlanta City Pass runs for 9 days. For most people, 9 days to use the pass will be more than enough. As we were only in the city for 9 full days, it worked perfectly for us.
Atlanta City Pass: What we did and was it good value?
The Atlanta City Pass lets you visit five out of six attractions, so unlike others I’ve seen, you’re pretty limited for choice. However, it covers Atlanta’s six biggest attractions, all the ones people are most likely to want to visit. We were excited to visit five of them. We chose not to visit the Fernbank Museum of Natural History as it’s not our sort of thing. Tickets for that museum would have cost $25.95 during the week, or $27.95 at weekends.
World of Coca-Cola
The World of Coca-Cola is a museum covering Coca-Cola’s history. The main attraction is the World of Coca-Cola tasting lab, where you can try over 100 different drinks, made by the brand, sold in different countries. We tried every single one and I can confirm that some are definitely an acquired taste!
There are five different sections: two are tasting; one lets you see the vault where the recipe for Coca Cola is locked away; and one lets you meet the Coca Cola bear. The bear appears at half past each hour but it is worth getting in the line early.
The museum wasn’t the best I’ve ever been to but it was good; I’m glad we went.
World of Coca-Cola costs $24.95 – $27.95 and a visit, seeing everything in the museum, takes 1.5-2 hours.
Photos are taken of you at the entrance and this wasn’t something they allow you to skip. Photos are also taken if you choose to meet the Coca Cola bear, but they did also take some on our phones. Each photo was $30 to buy which was, in my opinion, really expensive. I’m glad we got some with the bear on my phone.
Subtotal: $24.95
Atlanta City Pass must-see: the Georgia Aquarium
The Georgia Aquarium is the largest in North America and it is amazing. Our friends highly recommended it, they told us it was really good. We’re not usually Aquarium people so we probably wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been suggested by our friends and wasn’t on the Atlanta City Pass. I can confidently say that we would have missed out.
The Aquarium is absolutely huge. I expected it to be big, but it was much bigger than I thought. There were seven or eight different sections. It was busy and popular areas had a couple of minutes wait to get close to a tank to take photos, but the areas between exhibits were large. The aquarium didn’t feel crowded overall, and we got seats at the Sea Lion show pretty easily. I highly recommend the aquarium when you’re in Atlanta. Whether you do the Atlanta City Pass or not, it’s a must see.
The Aquarium is more expensive at the weekends, when it’s also likely to be busier. Ticket prices vary between $55.99 and $69.99
Subtotal: $80.94
National Centre for Civil and Human Rights
The National Centre for Civil and Human Rights covers the history of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. It was, to me, incredibly emotional and I felt very uncomfortable. I should, to be honest, as a white person, knowing I have never and will never understand what Black people went through whilst fighting for the rights they should have had all along.
Museums like this are incredibly important, however difficult to learn about, because learning from the past is the only way we can stop the same things happening over and over again in the future. Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, so the city has a strong civil rights history.
Exhibits like their diner, where you sit, close your eyes and put headphones on, and listen to the dialogue from the first time a black person went into a white persons diner, were really hard-hitting. Incredibly difficult to listen to, but it would have been so much harder to go through it.
Tickets for the National Centre for Civil and Human Rights are $28. The museum is located very close to both the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola.
Subtotal: $108.94
College Football Hall of Fame
On arrival at the College Football Hall of Fame, you are given a pass with a QR code. You register your pass and then use it to do activities throughout the museum. Then, at the end, you can buy the photos. A digital download of them all was $10. We chose not to bother, but it was a fair price.
You can also choose to get your photos on posters, t-shirts, tote bags etc in the gift shop. When entering the museum they offer to take your photo, but have no problem with people opting out.
We spent about an hour in the museum, which would have been closer to two if we’d read every bit of information. As we didn’t know a huge amount about college football, we read the bits we were most interested in and skipped those we weren’t. If you know a lot about college football, or if you have a personal connection, you’ll want at least two hours here.
The gift shop at the end was a really good one, with all sorts of things from various American colleges. Again, if you have a personal connection, you’ll definitely find a souvenir you want.
Adult tickets for the College Football Hall of Fame cost $38.
Subtotal: $146.94
Zoo Atlanta
We went to Atlanta’s Zoo on Friday morning, with our friend and his boys. I was a little surprised by how small the zoo was compared to some I’ve visited, but I think that’s a good thing. It meant we were able to see all the animals in a couple of hours, before the boys needed to go home for their nap, making it really family-friendly.
Zoo Atlanta is a bit of a journey from some of the other Atlanta City Pass attractions, located in Grant Park. It is not brilliantly connected by public transport and parking costs too. You’ll probably want visit Zoo Atlanta on a day you’re seeing that part of the city.
If you struggle for time, this one is skippable but if you do enjoy seeing animals, it’s a nice activity. Animal areas are smaller than some I’ve seen but didn’t feel too small, and the animals looked happy and healthy.
Tickets for Zoo Atlanta range from $28.95 – $39.95.
Total: $175.89
Atlanta City Pass: Is it worth the money?
We spent a total of $115 on our passes and got a minimum of $175.89 of value from it. In pounds, that works out to £132.53 of value on the Atlanta City Pass, which is £86.65. I think that’s an absolute bargain.
If you want to do three or four of the things on the pass – especially the Aquarium – you should be better off buying the Atlanta City Pass. If you only want to do a couple, some attractions have combo discounts when you can buy their ticket with another one bundled in. It’s worth looking at their websites to check.
Overall, I’d say the Atlanta City Pass is definitely worth it.
Leave a Reply