Short answer
- The pass is $144 for five attractions over 9 consecutive days from the first attraction, and it advertises a saving of $144.90 (50%).
- We checked all eight gate prices against the attraction's own website. 8 of 8 charge less than CityPASS says they do, by $151.45 in total.
- Buying the same five separately comes to $154.40 if you pick the three cheapest options and $174.45 if you pick the three dearest.
- So the pass saves you between $10.40 and $30.45, against the $144.90 it advertises. Real, and about a fifth of the claim at best.
- Viator sells it at exactly the official price. It is also the one thing we list for Chicago with no refund at all.
01The short version
Buy it if you are going to do four or five of these things anyway and you are not an Illinois resident. It will save you something between $10.40 and $30.45 and it saves you eight separate purchases, which is worth something on its own. Do not buy it expecting the $144.90 on the box, because that figure is measured against prices no attraction actually charges.
This is not an accusation of dishonesty. CityPASS is pricing the premium version of several tickets, which is a defensible way to build the comparison and an easy one to misread. The useful answer is the arithmetic underneath, which is what the rest of this page is.
No markup, and no refund
Chicago CityPASS, five attractions over nine days
4.43 · 540 reviews
Sold at exactly the price CityPASS charges on its own site, so the choice of seller changes nothing: there is no markup here and no discount either. Shedd Aquarium and Skydeck are fixed, and you pick three from six. Two things to weigh before clicking. All sales are final, with no refund for cancellation, which is unusual among the things we list for Chicago and a lot to stake on a $144 purchase. And the saving is real but smaller than the fifty per cent on the box, for the reasons in the rest of this page.
02Where the 50% comes from
CityPASS does something most passes do not, and it deserves credit for it: it publishes the individual gate price it is comparing itself against. Eight attractions, each with an adult figure, adding up to the saving it claims.
That makes the claim checkable. Several of those prices we had already read ourselves, from the attractions' own websites, while writing the observation decks comparison and the free museum days guide. Each carries the date it was checked.
What follows is not an estimate. Every green figure below came from the attraction's own website or, for the river cruise, from the booking platform, and each one carries the date it was read. Three of them were read on 29 September, a day after this page first went up, for the reason in section 04.
03What each attraction actually charges
The eight prices, side by side
| Attraction | CityPASS says | The venue charges | Where that came from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shedd Aquarium (always included) | $60.90 | $41.45 | sheddaquarium.org/tickets, read 29 September 2026. Its prices change by date: $41.45 on 30 September, $45.45 on 29 September |
| Skydeck Chicago (always included) | $69.00 | $32.00 | theskydeck.com, read 16 September 2026 |
| Shoreline Sightseeing river tour | $54.00 | $39.00 | Viator from-price, read 20 September 2026 |
| Field Museum | $46.00 | $30.00 | fieldmuseum.org/tickets, read 29 September 2026: "Guests - $30" |
| 360 CHICAGO | $59.00 | $30.00 | 360chicago.com, read 16 September 2026 |
| Griffin Museum of Science and Industry | $37.95 | $25.95 | griffinmsi.org/pricing, read 29 September 2026 |
| Art Institute of Chicago | $40.00 | $32.00 | artic.edu, read 24 September 2026 |
| Adler Planetarium | $40.00 | $25.00 | adlerplanetarium.org, read 24 September 2026 |
CityPASS figures read from citypass.com/chicago on 28 September 2026. Venue prices read from each attraction's own website on the dates shown, except the Shoreline cruise, which is the booking platform's from-price. The highlighted row is the Shedd, whose price changes by date: it was $45.45 on 29 September and $41.45 on 30 September, and the lower figure is the one used here. Every one of the eight is cheaper than the pass says.
The two biggest gaps are the two that sell the view. CityPASS prices Skydeck at $69.00 against the $32.00 on Skydeck's own site, and 360 CHICAGO at $59.00 against $30.00. Those two alone account for sixty-six dollars of the gap. In fairness, the Skydeck figure is for expedited entry, which is a real product that costs real money; the 360 one we cannot explain that way.
04A correction, and what it changed
This page said something wrong for a day, and the correction improves it, so here it is in plain sight rather than quietly edited out.
The first version of this page claimed that three of the eight attractions, the Shedd, the Field Museum and the Griffin, published no adult admission price at all, and concluded that the 50% could therefore never be audited. That was wrong. All three publish a price. Each one does it on a page we had not opened: the Shedd on a booking calendar at sheddaquarium.org/tickets, the Field at fieldmuseum.org/tickets, the Griffin at griffinmsi.org/pricing.
What was true is that the pages we had read, the visitor information and the free-admission pages, carry no price. Going from "it is not on the pages I looked at" to "they do not publish it" is the error, and it is an easy one to make and a bad one to publish. We found it because a search result for Shedd tickets showed a price we had said did not exist.
The correction makes the answer better, not worse. With all eight prices in hand the arithmetic closes completely, and instead of saying the saving cannot be known, this page can now tell you what it is. That is the next section.
One detail worth keeping from the wreckage: the Shedd's price is not a single number. It runs a calendar and charges by date: $45.45 on 29 September and $41.45 on 30 September, with the museum's own advice to pick a non-peak day. The figure above is one day, including ours. The aquarium's own ticket page prints $19.95 for Chicago residents and tells everyone else that prices vary, which is why a measured date is the only figure anybody has for the most expensive item on this list.
05So does it save you money
Yes, and here is the whole sum. The pass makes you take Shedd Aquarium and Skydeck Chicago and pick 3 from six, so the saving is not a single number: it depends on which three you pick. Both ends are worth printing, because the range is the answer.
The pass against buying the same five yourself
| Chicago CityPASS | Cheapest three options | Dearest three options | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you pay | $144 | $154.40 | $174.45 |
| What the pass saves | $10.40 | $30.45 | |
| What it advertises saving | $144.90 | ||
| Valid for | 9 consecutive days from the first attraction | Whenever you like | Whenever you like |
| Refund | None. All sales are final | Both decks and most cruises refund up to 24h before | Same |
| Illinois residents | Same price as everyone | $20 at the Art Institute, and free museum days | Same |
Pass price and terms read from citypass.com and from the Viator product record on 28 September 2026. The cheapest column uses Shedd Aquarium, Skydeck Chicago, Adler Planetarium, Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, Field Museum. The dearest uses Shedd Aquarium, Skydeck Chicago, 360 CHICAGO, Art Institute of Chicago, Shoreline Sightseeing river tour. Every figure is the attraction's own from-price, so both columns are the cheapest way to buy that particular basket rather than a typical one.
So the pass saves between $10.40 and $30.45, against the $144.90 it advertises. That is between seven and twenty-one per cent of the price, not fifty. The saving is real and it is worth having. It is simply not what the box says.
There is a second thing the pass buys that does not show up in any of these figures, and in fairness it should: it collapses eight separate purchases into one, at attractions that between them use timed calendars, residency checkboxes, ZIP code validators and booking widgets. Having spent a week reading those pages, we would pay something for that, and you might too.
What we would not do is buy it for two or three attractions. At the prices above, three of them come to well under $144 on their own.
And if you live in Illinois, start with the free museum days, which cover four of the attractions on this pass and cost nothing.
06Questions people actually ask
Is the Chicago CityPASS worth it?
Yes, by $10.40 to $30.45, which is real money and nothing like the $144.90 advertised. The pass is $144 for five attractions. Buying the same five at the prices the attractions charge on their own websites comes to $154.40 if you pick the three cheapest optional attractions and $174.45 if you pick the three dearest. The gap between those two figures and the advertised saving exists because CityPASS compares itself against gate prices that are higher than what any of the eight attractions actually charges.
How does CityPASS calculate its 50% saving?
By listing a gate price for each attraction on its own page and adding them up. Those figures are $144.90 (50%) against the $144 pass. We checked all eight against the attraction's own website, and all eight charge less than CityPASS claims, by $151.45 in total. The largest single gap is Skydeck, at $69.00 against $32.00.
What does the Chicago CityPASS include?
Admission to five attractions over 9 consecutive days from the first attraction. Two are fixed, Shedd Aquarium and Skydeck Chicago, and you choose 3 from six: the Shoreline Sightseeing architecture river tour, the Field Museum, 360 CHICAGO, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Adler Planetarium. Food, drink and transport between them are not included.
Where is the Chicago CityPASS cheapest?
Viator sells it at $144, which is exactly what CityPASS charges on its own site, so there is no reseller markup to avoid and no discount to chase either. Tiqets shows From $194.00, discounted to $184.30. Buy it wherever you like at the official price, and be aware of the condition in the next answer.
Can you get a refund on the Chicago CityPASS?
Not through Viator: the product record says "All sales are final. No refund is available for cancellations." That is worth flagging because almost everything else we list for Chicago has free cancellation up to 24 hours before, including both observation decks and three of the four architecture cruises. A pass is the one purchase here that you cannot undo, and it is also the largest single amount most visitors will spend.
Does the CityPASS save Illinois residents money?
Less than it saves a visitor, and at one attraction it cannot win at all. The Art Institute charges Illinois residents $20 against $32 for everyone else, and CityPASS values that same admission at $40.00. There is also a whole category the pass cannot touch: the free museum days, which are for Illinois residents only and cover four of the attractions on the pass. If you live in Illinois, read those dates before you buy anything.
Is the comparison fair to CityPASS?
Partly, and the caveat belongs here rather than buried. CityPASS prices the premium version of several tickets: the Shedd figure covers all-access admission with a 4-D experience, and the Skydeck figure covers expedited entry. Those are genuinely dearer products than the ones we priced. What that means is that the 50% is measured against the most expensive way into each attraction rather than the cheapest, which is a legitimate way to build a number and a misleading way to read one.
CityPASS or Go City for Chicago?
We have not priced Go City, so we are not going to rank them. This page is about whether the CityPASS arithmetic holds up, and the method here would work just as well on any pass: take the gate price the pass claims for each attraction, open each attraction's own website, and see whether the two agree. In Chicago, for all eight, they do not.
Diego FresnoI paid full price at the Art Institute in July 2025 without a pass, which is the sort of thing that makes you want to check the arithmetic afterwards. What made this page possible is that we already had several of these prices written down with dates, from the observation decks comparison and the free museum days guide. What made it right took a day longer: the first version said three attractions published no price, which was wrong, and I only found out because a search result showed me a Shedd price I had said did not exist. The corrected version is a better page, and section 04 explains why rather than hiding it.
Pass price, validity, inclusions and the eight comparison gate prices read from citypass.com/chicago on 28 September 2026. Reseller price, rating, review count, operator and cancellation terms read from the Viator product record the same day. Venue prices: Skydeck and 360 Chicago from their own sites on 16 September 2026; the Art Institute and the Adler from their own sites on 24 September 2026; the Shoreline cruise from the booking platform on 20 September 2026. Shedd, Field Museum and Griffin prices read from sheddaquarium.org/tickets, fieldmuseum.org/tickets and griffinmsi.org/pricing on 29 September 2026, correcting this page's first version, which had wrongly said those three published no adult price: see section 04. The Shedd charges by date and $41.45 is the lower of the two days we saw, so treat it as a from-price rather than the price. We have not priced Go City or the C3 pass and do not compare them here.