Visiting the Statue of Liberty’s Crown was one of the most highly anticipated parts of our trip. We’d taken the older kids to the Statue a few years earlier, but we’re very big fans and were excited to make another trip and introduce Abe to her. So adding on crown tickets as something new and different just made sense. Sadly, Abe wasn’t tall enough to make the trip up to the crown, which, in turn, meant Dave had to stay below with him. But that just means we’ll have to get back there sometime after he grows a bit.
Getting crown tickets is a bit of an ordeal, but definitely worth the extra planning. I’ll walk you through it a bit here and talk about some of the questions and concerns we had beforehand and how those worked out. 
Can you visit the crown?
Kids under 4 feet tall are not allowed, which meant no crown for Abe this time around. I will say that no one was standing around with a tape measure while we were there, so I have no idea how strict they are (we also didn’t see anyone taking a small kid up there; maybe the tape measure gets broken out when someone does). That said, once we started the climb up, I was really glad we didn’t have Abe (5) along. He probably would have been fine, but the steps are very steep and the staircase is very tight, and it would have been stressful. I would wait until kids are more like 7 or 8 to attempt it, but, of course, all kids are different, and I don’t know yours. Abe won’t be tall enough until he’s a good age for it anyway, but word of caution if you have a very tall kid (or a claustrophobic one).
Should you visit the crown?
The National Parks Service website is full of stern warnings about who should attempt a crown visit. But the NPS tends to be a little hyperbolic about these things. So a few thoughts. You do need to be in pretty good physical shape to make the climb. There are a total of 377 steps from the base of the pedestal to the crown, and 146 of these are in the statue itself (i.e. that’s how many you’ll climb beyond what you can see with just a pedestal ticket). If you’re reasonably active and able to do a moderately hilly hike, you should be fine. And you’ll climb the pedestal first before you have to commit to the crown climb; if you can do that okay you shouldn’t have any trouble making it all the way up.
What about if you’re afraid of heights or claustrophobic? I’m fairly….both of those, and I didn’t have any real trouble. I was a little nervous on the steps, but I just kind of kept looking at the actual steps as I climbed, and I was fine. My fear of heights mostly kicks in in open spaces with big drop offs, so it wasn’t much of a factor. And my claustrophobia is more with headroom than narrow spaces, so also not a problem. So I’d say that mild versions or either claustrophobia or acrophobia are worth pushing though so you can have the experience.
Getting crown tickets
This is the most complicated part of the whole crown visit experience, or, at least, it’s the only part you need to think much about in advance. Tickets are available several months in advance (right now it’s early October, and the website is selling tickets through the end of March), and they go fast because they strictly limit how many people can go up each day. Statue Cruises, the place you buy tickets from, recommends you reserve 3-4 months in advance. We bought tickets for our early June visit in early February. You can only reserve 4 at a time (if we’d needed them for all 6 of us, I’m not sure how it would have worked. I assume Dave could have reserved 4 and I could have gotten the rest at the same time….though as far as I can tell there’s no way to see on the website how many tickets are left, so that plan could backfire) and you can only have one reservation in a six month period.
Some general stuff about Statue of Liberty tickets: you’ll buy tickets from a concessionaire, Statue Cruises, rather than directly from the NPS. All tickets get you a ferry ride to both Liberty Island and Ellis Island (leaving from either the Battery in Manhattan or Liberty State Park in Jersey City). Then you have the option of getting a ticket that only grants you access to the grounds, one that includes access to the pedestal, or one that includes access to the pedestal and crown. The tickets without pedestal access are exactly the same price as the ones with pedestal access, so I guess the only reason anyone buys those is if pedestal access is sold out. It’s a whopping $3 more for adults to move up from pedestal to crown access ($21.50 vs. $18.50), so it’s certainly worth paying for–the only issue is whether you’ll be able to plan far enough ahead to get tickets. The time on your tickets is when you’re allowed into the screening facility; it’s NOT when your boat leaves nor when you’re supposed to try to get to the Statue.
Be aware that there’s A LOT of security involved in going to the Statue. All adults have to show ID (and it has to match the name you gave when you bought the tickets), and you’ll go through an airport-like screening to get on the boat and again to get into the pedestal.
So what’s going up to the crown like, anyway?
The first part of it is just like a visit without a Crown ticket. When you get to Liberty Island, you’ll need to leave most of your stuff in a locker and go through security again. The official rules are that you can bring one camera per person (no camera bags) and any necessary medication. I was carrying my mirrorless camera and asked and was told it was fine to also bring my phone in. There’s a small museum at the base of the pedestal, which we skipped at the beginning in favor of heading right up. This is where you want to make sure you go to the bathroom, because there won’t be another chance until you get back down.
Then you make the climb up about 10 stories to the top of the pedestal. Along the way, there are signs telling you how much farther you have to go, sharing facts about the statue, and you can pose for funny pictures about how you’re disassembling the statue:
Once you get to the top of the pedestal, go outside and look around and take a break:
And then on to the crown! We left Abe and Dave to finish checking out the pedestal and made plans to meet them in the museum after. And then we showed our fancy crown passes to the rangers and they let us head up. They only let 10 people at a time in the crown, so you might have to wait for someone else to come down before you can go up. But there was no waiting for us, and we had the crown to ourselves (aside from the two rangers up there) for a few minutes, and then one other couple came up before we started back down.
Unlike with the stairs in the pedestal, there are no signs to let you know how close you’re getting to the top. You just go around and around and around and, eventually, you make it! It was not a hot day when we were there, so it was a little stuffy but not really uncomfortable inside the statue. Definitely think about how much heat you’re willing and able to tolerate if you’re making the trip in the height of summer, though.
So basically, you’re climbing up a whole lot of narrow stairs for a long time, and you can’t see much until you get to the top. But you can see that you’re inside the Statue of Liberty, and that’s pretty amazing.
Wavy statue hair!
The actual view from the top is….nice. But you’re peering through small windows, and, honestly, the coolest part is not the view but just the fact that you know where you’re viewing FROM:
Incidentally, if you’re wondering about getting up to the torch….you can’t do that anymore. It’s been closed to the public ever since a World War I German attack on a nearby munitions depot sent flying debris that damaged the arm and torch. These days you have to work for the NPS and score a torch maintenance job to get up there. You can see the original torch up close in the pedestal lobby, though:
We stayed up in the crown maybe 10 minutes or so (if that) before heading back down. It’s an experience I’m very glad we had, but there’s not that much to look at up there (and I wanted to give the people who’d come up behind us some space and time by themselves to take pictures and whatever). There’s a separate staircase for going down (it’s a double helix design). Going down was probably a little scarier than going up for me, but not terrible.
We made our way back down to the museum to meet up with Dave and Abe, stopping for some pictures on the way:
And then back to the ferry for the ride back to Jersey City.
I’m going in reverse order because I figure the crown stuff is the most exciting and/or helpful thing I have to talk about in this post (since relatively few people get a chance to do it), but we stopped at Ellis Island, too! So let me back up.
We stayed at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson, NY while we were visiting NYC. Generally speaking, the location worked well for what we wanted to do in the area, but it was a really long drive from there to Jersey City (well over an hour). It was probably still a bit faster than taking the train to the subway to Battery Park would have been, though, and, at any rate, we weren’t feeling up for another long, public transportation filled day in Manhattan.
There’s plenty of parking at Liberty State Park, so that was easy. We just barely missed one ferry after getting through security, so we had a pretty long wait for the next one. I entertained myself taking pictures of the skyline. Incidentally, I was traveling light on this day and opted to take only my wide angle lens with me. I was happy with the choice.
Wide angle lenses do make for kind of funny looking portraits, though:
The ferry stops at Ellis Island first. It’s a very short ride, but it gives you time for more skyline pictures:
I remember Ellis Island being a whole lot more fascinating for ME than for my then young kids when we took Ari, Milo, and Gus there a few years ago, so I wasn’t sure how Abe would do.
But when Ari, Milo, and Gus were little, we knew nothing of Junior Ranger badges (!). We got a booklet for Abe right away, so he had that to work on. You can do separate Junior Ranger booklets here and at the Statue of Liberty, BUT there’s only one badge you can earn. We opted to only do the booklet at Ellis Island (although doing the booklet at the Statue would be a good way to occupy younger kids who have to wait while bigger kids get to see the crown).
And, for whatever reason, we didn’t use the audio guide (included with the ferry ticket) last time. They have a kid version of this, and Abe enjoyed it….for quite awhile. It’s REALLY long, so I suspect Abe is not the only five year old who can’t make it to the end. But we definitely got to see and learn more than we would have without the audio guide. The older kids went off on their own with the grown-up audio guide while we stayed with Abe:
There’s a TON to see at Ellis Island, and it’s all fascinating. The first part of the audio tour takes you through all the different areas where new immigrants would have gone when they arrived and tells you a lot of detail and personal stories about each one. It’s very well done (well, the kid tour is. I have no idea about the grown-up one, but I bet it’s good, too).
Then there are a number of gallery areas with exhibits on immigration and the history of Ellis Island. And, of course, there are also areas for researching your own family history. We probably spent two hours or so here, but you could spend 3 or 4 easily if you want to linger and see everything.
But we had an impatient preschooler and a date with a statue, so we headed back out to wait (a long time again) for the ferry.
The best thing about the ferry ride is how you can take ONE MILLION PICTURES of the Statue of Liberty from all sorts of angles.
And now you can go back up to the top of the post to see what happened next! Endless loop!
So all told this was a very long day, much of it because of transportation. Long drive to Liberty State Park, lots of waiting on ferries (there was another long wait to get back to Jersey City after the statue), and then a long drive back to the campground. We stopped to eat at Zeppelin Hall, a fun biergarten place in Jersey City, before making the drive back.
This is what Abe looked like on the drive back. Before he fell asleep he sighed and said, “I’m going to miss the Statue of Liberty so much!” We all are, buddy.
Oh, one last suggestion for a pre-visit read with younger kids (really at least up to middle school age. heck, I learned a lot, too): Dave Eggers’s “Her Right Foot” (affiliate link). It’s both a great introduction to the history of the statue and a meditation on what it means to us as Americans. Recommended to me by Kerri at Travels with Birdy.
maybe you would like to pin this?
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