Saving Money with Go City Chicago or Chicago CityPASS

When this page first went up in 2010, a Chicago CityPASS cost $69. It's now $144. The big museums and the two skyscraper decks got a lot more expensive over those years, and the passes followed them up. A family of four can spend $400 on one long weekend of tickets without trying. CityPASS and Go City (the old Go Chicago Card) both still sell bundles that promise to cut that bill. For adults who want the big five, CityPASS usually does. Go City's unlimited pass usually doesn't, unless you sprint. Kids and Illinois residents are a different calculation.

Before you buy either, check if you can get in free. Illinois residents get free days at most of the big museums, and Bank of America cardholders get free weekends at several (more on both below, and on our free museum days page).

All prices below are as of September 2026 and come from the official pages linked. Several attractions now use date-based pricing, so what you pay on a July Saturday can be well above what you'd pay on a Tuesday in February.

What the big attractions cost at the door

These are the numbers you're trying to beat. Where a place uses variable pricing, I've given its own "starting at" figure and the top of the range CityPASS publishes on its C3 comparison table.

• Shedd Aquarium (1200 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.). Shedd doesn't publish a fixed price anymore. It uses plan-ahead pricing for anyone who isn't a Chicago resident, and CityPASS puts general admission at roughly $45 to $55 for adults and $34 to $41 for kids 3 to 11. Chicago residents pay $19.95.
• Field Museum (1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.). From $30 for visitors, $21 for Chicago residents, free for Illinois residents every Wednesday. CityPASS lists the child general admission at $23.
• Skydeck Chicago at Willis Tower (233 S. Wacker Dr.). From $32 for adults and $24 for kids 3 to 11, and CityPASS says it runs as high as $49 and $40 at peak times. Expedited entry starts at $55.
• 360 CHICAGO, the observation deck on the 94th floor of the old John Hancock Center, which is now called 875 North Michigan Avenue. General admission is from $30 for adults and $20 for kids online. TILT, the thing that tips you out over Michigan Avenue, costs extra.
• Art Institute of Chicago. $32 for out-of-state adults, $27 for Illinois residents and $20 for Chicago residents, according to Time Out Chicago. Kids under 14 are always free. Check current rates on the museum's visit page.
• Adler Planetarium. From $25 for adults and $13 for kids. Dome shows cost extra.
• Museum of Science and Industry, which has been renamed the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry (5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr.). General admission is $25.95 for adults and $14.95 for kids 3 to 11. The Coal Mine tour and Giant Dome Theater are $12 adult and $9 child each, and the U-505 on-board tour is $18 and $14.

Chicago CityPASS

CityPASS costs $144 for adults (12 and up) and $114 for kids 3 to 11. It gets you into five attractions over nine days, starting the day you use your first ticket, and you can visit each one once.

Two are fixed. You get Shedd Aquarium with a 4-D Experience added and Skydeck Chicago with expedited entry. Then you choose three from this list:

• Field Museum, with two add-on exhibitions or 3D movies
• 360 CHICAGO with fast pass entry
• Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, with Anne Frank The Exhibition and one extra (a Giant Dome film, the Coal Mine tour or a motion simulator)
• Art Institute of Chicago with fast pass admission
• Adler Planetarium with two dome shows
• Shoreline Sightseeing's 75-minute Architecture River Tour

You don't have to pick in advance, but most of these need a reservation, so book the time slots as soon as your dates are firm. CityPASS offers refunds on unused passes for 365 days.

CityPASS says you save "up to" 50%. That figure compares the pass with the highest box office price of the upgraded tickets, so treat it as the ceiling. Measured against plain general admission on an ordinary day, the saving is smaller but still real for adults.

The smaller version is Chicago C3, which costs $109 for adults and $79 for kids for any three attractions in nine days. Its list adds the Centennial Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier, and it covers general admission without the upgrades. It's the better buy if you don't care about Shedd or Skydeck, since neither is compulsory.

Go City Chicago (formerly the Go Chicago Card)

Go City now sells three products. Kids' prices apply to ages 3 to 12. Every pass has to be used within a year of purchase, and you can cancel for a full refund within 90 days.

• All-Inclusive Pass. Unlimited visits to the 37 attractions on its list for 1 to 5 days. Adults pay $149, $199, $239, $269 or $289, and kids pay $109, $159, $189, $209 or $229. The days are calendar days counted from your first scan, so they run back to back.
• Explorer Pass. Pick 3 to 7 attractions from 36 and use them within 30 days of the first one. Adults pay $109, $134, $159, $179 or $189, and kids pay $79, $99, $109, $119 or $129.
• Essentials Pass. $99 for adults and $69 for kids. It covers three attractions in 30 days. One has to be Skydeck, 360 CHICAGO, the Field Museum or the Shoreline architecture cruise, and the other two come from a short list of Go City's top picks.

Read the attraction list closely before you buy. Shedd is on the All-Inclusive Pass only. The Art Institute isn't on any Go City pass. Skydeck requires a booking. At the Adler, Go City holders can't book ahead and have to go to the box office. The rest of the list is mostly smaller stuff, like Navy Pier rides, speedboat tours, the Chicago Children's Museum, the American Writers Museum and the Hemingway birthplace in Oak Park. That's fine if you'd go anyway, but it's easy to pad a day with things you'd never have paid for.

When a pass pays off

These examples use five of the big ones: Shedd, the Field, Skydeck, the Art Institute and the Griffin MSI.

Two adults from out of state, four days in town. At the door, each of them pays somewhere between $165 (Shedd $45, Skydeck $32, Field $30, Art Institute $32, MSI $25.95) and $192 (Shedd and Skydeck at the top of their ranges). CityPASS is $144 each, so the couple saves roughly $40 to $95 between them, and they get skip-the-line entry at Skydeck and the Art Institute plus the extras at Shedd, the Field and MSI. For adults who really want those five places, CityPASS is the best deal in town.

The same trip with two kids, ages 8 and 10. The adult math stays the same. The kids' math doesn't. The Art Institute is free for them, so a CityPASS pick spent there buys nothing. Each child's door price for the other four comes to about $96 to $119 (Shedd $34 to $41, Skydeck $24 to $40, Field $23, MSI $14.95), and a child CityPASS costs $114. Swap the Art Institute for the Adler ($13) and the kids' total rises to about $109 to $132, which is roughly break-even. My advice is to buy CityPASS for the adults and price the kids' tickets both ways. If you're travelling off-peak, buying the kids' tickets separately is often cheaper.

A one-day All-Inclusive blitz. A Museum Campus day of Shedd, the Field and the Adler comes to about $100 to $110 per adult at general admission. That's well short of the $149 pass. You'd have to add Skydeck in the evening (it stays open into the evening) just to break even, and that's a long, hard day. Go City's own sample day stacks Skydeck, 360 CHICAGO, a Chicago Theatre tour, Flyover and the architecture cruise to reach $213.82 in walk-up prices. You can do that, but two skyscraper decks in one day is a lot of the same view. The multi-day All-Inclusive passes get cheaper per day, and they suit people who'd happily do three or four paid things daily.

The Explorer for a longer stay. The 30-day window is the Explorer's real advantage over CityPASS's nine days. If your list is Skydeck, the Field and the architecture cruise, Go City says that's $154 at the door against $109 on the pass. C3 costs the same $109 for three and also lets you choose Shedd or the Art Institute, so compare the two lists before you pick.

When a pass doesn't pay off

If you live in Illinois, you probably don't need either pass. The Field Museum is free for Illinois residents every Wednesday. The Griffin MSI has Illinois Free Days scattered across most months. The Adler posts its resident free days a few months ahead. Shedd has held its resident free days in the winter months and runs free Tuesday evenings, 5 to 9pm. Check the dates on its discounts page, and note that booking online costs $5 per order while booking by phone at 312-939-2438 is free. Chicago residents also get money off every day at Shedd, the Field, the Adler, MSI and the Art Institute.

If you have a Bank of America, Merrill or Bank of America Private Bank card, the first full weekend of every month gets you free general admission at the Art Institute, the Adler, the Griffin MSI, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Morton Arboretum and the Illinois Holocaust Museum, per Chicago Parent. You need the card and a photo ID, and the free entry covers the cardholder only, not guests. Participating museums can change from month to month, so check Bank of America's Museums on Us locator before you go. If both halves of a couple have a card, the Art Institute and MSI drop out of the math above, and CityPASS stops paying for itself.

A pass also loses if your list is mostly free stuff, and our list of free and cheap things to do in Chicago can fill a weekend on its own.

The old advice from 2010 still holds. Write down the places you'd pay for even without a pass, add up their door prices for your dates, and only then look at the bundles. If you're heading down to Hyde Park for the MSI, read how to get there first, because it's a trek from the Loop.