Statue of Liberty Crown Tour

By
Saint Greg

October 16, 2023

I’ve always wanted to go to the crown of the Statue of Liberty. It was extremely disappointing when I visited New York for the first time last year and the crown was closed due to COVID. I knew I would want to go to the crown on a future visit so I decided not to visit the statue at all last time. Instead I took in the view from the free Staten Island Ferry.

When I booked this trip last year the crown access was still shutdown. I continued to check on it periodically and finally found it available for purchase early this year. Once I nailed down my travel dates, I booked my tour two months ahead of time. I highly recommend booking as early as possible. When I checked back in May they were sold out for the entire summer. I think Statue of Liberty Crown tickets are one of the best values in New York at only $24. It came to $31.80 after taxes and fees. You can purchase tickets here.

I originally planned to do the statue tour on my first day in New York. I think at some point I got nervous about a potential delay with the ship and ended up booking it for my second day instead. I forgot about that when I bought my ticket for Hamilton on the second day just three hours after my statue tour.

Due to the time crunch I’m going to try to get this started as early as possible. My tour time is 11am. The lady who hands out the tickets told me 10:30 was the earliest I could get in line. The guy running the line yesterday told me they would allow me in at 10am. It’s 9am now and I’m going to try to push it.

Inside Castle Clinton is where you pick up your tickets. The blue umbrellas on the right is where you enter the line. There was a huge line when I arrived at 10:30 yesterday. There is no line at 9am. I’d be doing them a favor going early.

Inside Castle Clinton are the ticket windows. There’s a special window to pick up your crown ticket.

I got my ticket and my wristband at 9:15. Again she told me I can’t get in line until 10:30. I’m about to test that.

I got past the line guy with no problem.

This is very much like airport security without the body scanner or the shoe removal.

I still have a jalapeno bagel with chipotle cream cheese from this morning. Me and my bagel made it through security.

There are different boats that run between the islands. This one runs between Liberty Island and New York. That’s why it says “To New York.”

The boat had multiple levels, bathrooms, and concessions.

This is some of the lower level seating.

The most popular place to be was on the top deck. I would recommend getting a seat on the end, starboard side so you can have a seat and stand up for your selfies. This will put in on the best side for the City, Ellis Island, and Liberty Island.

As you can see it got very crowded up here. I just got my spot on the right side and stood up for the ride.

Ellis Island.

The ferry docks on the southwest side of the island.

This is where I hit a snag. I tried to get in at 10:15 but Ranger Joe over there is enforcing my 11am ticket time.

For the purposes of trip planning, it took me an hour to get from the blue umbrella line outside of Castle Clinton to this line at the statue.

I spent the next 45 minutes exploring the island. For full coverage of that please check out Liberty Island. It has the history of the statue as well as the museum and information about audio and ranger led tours of the island.

I returned at 11am and Ranger Joe was gone.

This is the second level of security. I went through security before I got on the boat. Now I’m going through another security checkpoint to enter the statue. This was the end of the line for my bagel. I had to rent a locker for it. The locker situation was weird. Bring a quarter for the locker. Or bring a dollar for the change machine next to the lockers.

This time I made it through security and I’m heading for the back door.

If you read Liberty Island you know this wall that surrounds the pedestal is the wall of Fort Wood which occupied this island before the statue.

The bronze doors are known as the centennial doors. They were built for the 1986 Centennial of the statue.

There are stair and elevator options to the pedestal. The signs for stairs says 175 + 26. A guy working there told me it’s actually 215. Then another 180 to the crown.

If you do the elevator you have to wait in line. They only take four at a time in one elevator. Then you have to take the last 26 steps because it doesn’t go all the way to the pedestal.

There is another museum in here. If Ranger Joe had let me in at 10:15 I may have been able to spend more time in here. Of course then I might’ve missed the bigger museum.

I need to get moving.

This is the pedestal.

This is the view from pedestal. You can really get a good look at the 11 point star-shaped wall of Fort Wood. They are currently doing some restoration on the wall as you can see as well.

It does get quite crowded out here.

There goes the ferry.

If I hadn’t bought a crown ticket that would’ve been the end of it. But we’re continuing up.

A quick look down after the first part.

Here you can see that spiraling staircase we’re about to go up.

This says 146 steps from here.

Going up isn’t too bad. It’s a pretty narrow staircase but you can lean on that middle part as you go up.

74 more steps from here.

And we made it to the crown.

In this shot you can read the tablet.

In this shot you can see New York and one of the crown points.

This is what it looks like in here. There are two rangers. One when you first get to the crown and this one when you’re going down.

This is the shot from the middle of the crown.

Moving over to the other side.

They have some of the windows open.

Here you can see the two rangers.

These might be my favorite shots with the arm, part of the crown, and the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge in the distance.

Going down was way worse than going up. You weren’t really able to lean on that middle part. And it looked like it could be really bad if you slipped or missed a step. I didn’t pull my phone out until I got to the bottom.