Planning a major trip to Italy not for the faint-hearted

Reposting because my previous post got deleted because I mentioned a third-party vendor and an app I guess?

Ciao Ragazzi! The other day, I got a bit snarky online with someone who was asking about getting tickets to see The Last Supper in 10 days. I realize that I was semi-offended that someone had done so little research and expected others to do it for her. I know this site is to help people and I love sharing what I’ve learned but if you don’t even try to Google? So instead of continuing to be snarky, I decided to write this post.

I have traveled extensively my entire life and I have never had to spend so much time planning a trip as this trip. Don’t get me wrong - planning is at least half the fun for me but oh my goodness it’s been a lot ! So the below is what I’ve learned as the travel planner for a couple who do not like organized tours and prefer to do our own arrangements. We are in our mid 60s and we are Americans who currently live in Panamá

We will be in Italy for about 32 days from mid October to mid November. I just looked at my inbox; I made my first reservation for this trip 14 months ago. The issue I encountered is that every major site has a different ticket release policy, and those policies are not written in stone. For example, there is one site that releases their tickets for a month on the 25th of the previous month. The Colosseum releases tickets 30 days in advance, at the actual hour of the ticket, Rome time.

I had about 15 “must-see” sites, and far I’ve been able to get every ticket I wanted except the Colosseum. I might give up on the Colosseum since I have to get up at 2:30 in the morning to get those tickets.

So what’s the solution? What worked for me was to make a list of every site that is an absolute must. Go to the official website, just Google “NAME OF SITE official website”. (In the search results make sure you’re not on a sponsored result, which will often be a third-party vendor) Then, looking at what date the tickets are currently available through, make your best guesstimate is to when the ticket for the time you want are going to be available. Then go back to the site at least a week before you think the tickets are going to be available to double check, because rules do change. Then set a reminder on your phone or schedule an email to yourself to buy the tickets. If you do this and pay attention, you should get tickets to everything. I had no trouble getting tickets to The Last Supper; I just had to know exactly when to log onto to purchase. I know that fact that we’re going in October and November makes a MASSIVE difference in availability , so this might not be much help if traveling during the summer.

The good news is of course many of the sites release tickets the actual week of. So you do have a last chance to get them. And if you don’t want to do everything by yourself, you can get tickets through third party vendors