From 8 March 2011, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich will be introducing charges for part of its site. Admission will be charged for the Meridian Line courtyard (and the courtyard buildings). The Astronomy Centre with its three interactive galleries will remain free.
An adult ticket will cost £10. Tickets for concessions will cost £7.50. Children of 15 and under will be free. In each case, tickets will also be an annual pass so that local and UK visitors in particular will be able to visit as many times as they like during the year for no additional charge.
Since moving to free entry in 2001, visitor numbers have increased to 1.58 million. A great success story, but also substantially increases wear and tear on the site and the Museum needs to ensure that it has the resources to manage this increase in visitors safely, while improving their experience and maintaining the world-famous site and displays at the Observatory. The Museum is also involved in ongoing developments to update all of its galleries and facilities over a ten year period after a prolonged period of limited investment in these areas and needs to look at generating more of its own revenue to enable this work to progress.
A full breakdown of the
charges are available on our website here.
What a complete disgrace that you intent to charge so much. And to charge £7.40 concessionary is even worse. I hope everyone boycotts you; I shall.
Comment by PDM 26 January 2011 @ 9:50 pm
How did you decide £10 was the best amount to charge? Fair enough you need to charge so you have money to repair the damage, but £10 is too much. Don’t you think you would get more than twice as many people paying if it was £5?
Comment by Alex 27 January 2011 @ 1:53 pm
Any chance there will be a discount for Greenwich residents just as Tower Hamlets residents get a discount to visit the Tower of London?
Comment by Alyxia 30 January 2011 @ 6:40 pm
£10 is an outrageous fee for access to the courtyard. I have six children. While I understand the need to manage wear and tear and visitor numbers, £65 to take a photo of the family in a significant place is simply gouging.
You have certainly put this out of the reach of my family, and should have given it more thought. Perhaps you would have been better to learn a lesson from the iPhone App store. Better to have one million people pay £1 than 10,000 pay £10.
I am VERY disappointed.
Comment by James Boswell 13 February 2011 @ 1:47 am
Thank you everyone for your comments, your feedback is important to us. Below is some further information about the charge, I hope this is of use.
- The charge (concessionary or otherwise) is for an annual pass, meaning that you will have full use of the site as many times as you like within a year, helping to spread out the cost if you are able to visit multiple times.
- We undertook extensive research with visitors on site, and with other heritage venues across London and the UK to determine a price which our visitors perceive as good value and competitive with other tourist attractions.
- We are indeed offering the concessionary rate to local residents in possession of a Greenwich card, details of how to apply can be found on Greenwich Council’s website here: http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/Greenwich/LeisureCulture/GreenwichCard/
- Children under 16 can enter for free.
Please do let us know if there’s any further information we can provide about visiting the Royal Observatory.
Comment by Emma McLean 22 February 2011 @ 12:02 pm
10 pounds will be $16 US seams like a lot. A year pass right. It will be more than year (if ever) before I return to to England. You are ripping us off.
Comment by Wayne Guinn 23 February 2011 @ 3:13 am
No, I’m sorry, that won’t wash. I’m not someone who normally complains about this kind of thing, and I agree it’s fair to charge an admission fee for such a well-thought-out attraction. But £10 for a museum of this size is just exploiting a captive market.
Also, regarding the compulsory purchase of an annual pass… please don’t pretend you came up with this scheme to help regular visitors. You’re doing it to get money from the tax-man. It’s a well-known (and perfectly legal) wheeze.
Comment by Richard 23 February 2011 @ 4:01 pm
Hi again all,
We looked carefully at what other comparable historic sites are charging. We think ten pounds is good value for money, and is lower than many other “must see” London sites. We believe that the annual pass is a great way of adding value for any visitor who is able to return to the Royal Observatory. It’s also worth noting that children under 16 will continue to get in absolutely free.
UK tax payers will have the option to make a Gift Aid declaration, which allows us to make better use of the admission fee by claiming tax back from HMRC; but every individual paying visitor will get an annual pass, whether they Gift Aid their admission or not.
Comment by Emma McLean 25 February 2011 @ 3:05 pm
I think £5 would be enough for this ‘small’ museum. If I compare it with the Natural History or the Science Museum, what should this museums take for a ticket £25 ???
Comment by Olaf 25 February 2011 @ 10:03 pm
£10 is a lot of money for admission. A compromise solution may allow free admission during the last hour of opening on some days, or charge £5 on, say, one day a week.
Comment by Andrew Jansen 26 February 2011 @ 1:26 pm
I have to agree the price is fairly high, so I will not be going.A year pass is not enough to temp us. We will spend another day at the British Museum where I believe the price is 10 pounds less per person and wear and tear is obviously less, with considerably more to see.
No thanks
Comment by David Phillips 27 February 2011 @ 12:38 pm
Hi Olaf,
Between our three sites we’re actually a very large museum, and in the top 10 most visited UK tourist attractions – http://www.alva.org.uk/visitor_statistics/. We’re just a little more spread out across Greenwich park!
Comment by Emma McLean 28 February 2011 @ 10:00 am
Well personally I don’t think £10 is actually out of the way. These days it is about the average for just about anything that can be paid for! For a family it is going to cost you £20 because under 16′s go in free, and most over 16′s are not going to be interested until they grow up a bit more, so why are people complaining so much? Yes, £5 would have been better, but things do have to be paid for somehow.
Comment by Brian Matthews 6 March 2011 @ 9:28 am
“we’re actually a very large museum”
Ridiculous attempt to justify the charges. The £10 only entitles you to access what is a very small museum – the NMM, Queen’s Gallery and the rest of the Observatory remains free and so you can’t claim the £10 goes towards that.
Comment by Observer 7 March 2011 @ 9:21 am
We were considering visiting at the end of the month. Only interested in getting a photo at “the line”, not planning to visit the museums. Is this going to cost £10 per person? If so, that seems VERY unfriendly to tourists.
By the way, from what I can tell, most museums in London are free, but may have a suggested donation.
I’m OK with a very small fee (or donation) for a photo, to help maintain the area, but £20 for my family to take a photo??
Comment by B Caldwell 9 March 2011 @ 4:49 pm
Having been to the observatory several times and always enjoyed it,I am horrified that there is now a charge and £10 for 1 adult but that is valid for a year!!!
My Wife and I usually try to visit London every 2 years but, £10 is far too much, why not £10 for a family ticket?Surely more reasonable?
Comment by Dick Daly 9 March 2011 @ 9:04 pm
I’m disgusted that you’re charging £10! This is nothing but greed when you could have had a donation drive to cover improvement costs. Do you really think people will choose to pay £10 for this over a whole day free at the interactive Natural History and Space Museums, both of which do incredibly well from private and public donations? I honestly would take any visitors to London to either of these instead. £5 would have been a lot easier for you to justify. What a shame that you are putting off foreign nationals from seeing this part of our culture.
Comment by Steve 10 March 2011 @ 12:59 pm
I know we all have to make money somehow and some updated displays may be beneficial, but I imagine you will loose a great deal of visitors, which it sounds may be part of the point. I think most go just for the photo over the meridan line and if that’s going to cost £10 they’ll just use the line and clock outside the wall. I like the idea that the standard ticket allows locals to revisit but I would perhaps have priced it at £8 personally.
It seems like children won’t be allowed in without an adult, is that correct? So that will prevent local young people going in on their own then. I can see this could prevent some potential damage perhaps, but could also prevent the interested from learning. On the other hand if children are allowed in without adults, they’ll be sent in to get a photo for free whilst the adults stand outside. In essence all these people that choose not to pay will miss out on learning about our astronomical history, which for many may be supplementary to the main reason for visiting at present.
Comment by Bradley 12 March 2011 @ 1:19 am
The museum has to pay for Kevin Fewster’s salary somehow
Comment by Robert Ainsworth 12 March 2011 @ 11:36 am
I was going to bring some guests who are visiting us from Thailand and there would be five of us. If you think we are going to pay £50 for a one-off visit (which it would certainly be) to stand in the Meridian Courtyard you have got to be joking!
To borrow a maritime expression we will be giving the ROG and probably Greenwich as a whole a wide berth.
Comment by Trevor Pearson 12 March 2011 @ 5:45 pm
Hello Bradley,
Our entry regulations already state that children under the age of 14 are admitted to the Museum Buildings provided they are accompanied by an adult (18 and over) – http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/times-and-admission/entry-regulations .
We undertook a considerable amount of research to decide on the £10 admission fee (£7.50 concessions), and while we are aware that not everyone feels it is a suitable price, we really have considered the cost carefully.
Best,
Emma
Comment by Emma McLean 14 March 2011 @ 9:59 am
I write as a former Observatory enthusiast and NMM member. I was very shaken that a rare day out to Greenwich Observatory on 12th March with 3 hard-up foreign guests for their education should be faced with the unexpected bill of £40, especially in these days of increasing economic hardship. Needless to say we could not go inside and had to be content with taking photographs through the courtyard gates. I am sure that in the coming months there will be tens of thousands who will also abstain from entry to the relatively small museum – £5 would be far more reasonable. It would be helpful to add some justification to the cost since entry was previously free, and most London museums do not charge. There also should be more prominent display to the fact of chargeable entry on your home page, to forewarn visitors. If indeed £10 is necessary, in my opinion it were wiser to reach that level in stages to adapt to the increases and maintain a high attendance at the Observatory.
Comment by Richard 14 March 2011 @ 3:17 pm
The museum needs the extra cash to pay for the following whopping salaries: -
Kevin Fewster £165,000
Chris Styles £90,000
Comment by Sammy Ofer 15 March 2011 @ 5:27 pm
Thanks for being free up till now. Londoners are spoilt with so many free attractions. £10 seems fair compared to a lot of other things. I don’t see the downside if the money goes to good use and there’s more space due to less people just going in because it’s free.
Comment by Steve 16 March 2011 @ 1:56 pm
I live locally and have often brought visitors to the Observatory – it is a great place. I have made donations when I have visited, and would be willing to pay a fair entry charge. But this part of the Observatory is a fairly small museum and £10 is far too high a price for one-off visitors to Greenwich who will not be able to use the annual pass again. I won’t be bringing visitors again at this price, and I urge NMM to rethink. How about £5 for a single visit or £10 for an annual pass?
Comment by PK 16 March 2011 @ 5:44 pm
Hello, just visited your website today (20 March 2011) because I was planning a visit to the observatory in the next month. I was hoping to visit the planetarium and am disgusted that there is now an additional charge to enter the courtyard and museum.
Think it is a shame as it was a good cheap and educational family day out and with us being on a tight budget this has now gone out of our reach
Comment by Colin 20 March 2011 @ 4:48 pm
I had friends visiting from the US on holiday with their two kids, and I they wanted to take a family picture at the “line”. Well after reaching the top, and being told that we would have to pay 10! My friends first comments were “that is crazy, just to take a picture of the line” That’s great for the locals to come back for up to a year, but for the tourists, this is a rip off! Sorry, but I won’t be taking anymore friends up the hill. I feel if there was a donation jar, that would be better. I think you are going to see your numbers go way down. Good luck.
Comment by Craig 20 March 2011 @ 5:44 pm
Iam discusted at you charging local people and tourist £10, just to go into the Court yard of the Royal observatory. I went there yesterday 20th March 2011 just to buy a certificate from the machine. Then told it would cost me £10.
This should now be known as Hysterical Greenwich As it is becoming a Big Joke.
Like other persons, I will be advising my family and friends Not to visit the royal observatory. It’s becoming Rip Off Greenwich.
Comment by Arthur Giles 21 March 2011 @ 12:57 pm
It is apparent that you are NOT listening to peoples complaints and not taking them seriously. Do you intend to charge British Military Persons to enter. These people who have and still serving in Afghanistan for your Freedom. If so then Shame on you Sir.
Mr Arthur Giles
Comment by Arthur Giles 22 March 2011 @ 12:35 pm
We are celebrating my fathers 75th birthday going to London (from Sweden). We are 11 in our party. Two are under 16. I was planning a visit to Greenwich for all of us and checked out your opening hours and admission fees on the Internet. £85 plus train tickets will instead be spent in central London.
Comment by Claes 24 March 2011 @ 8:39 am
£5 – it does not warrant £10.
Comment by KatherineJ 26 March 2011 @ 4:49 pm
I’m stunned – not least by the staggeringly high entrance fee – but rather by the continued and increasingly embattled tone of the replies posted here by the staff of this institution. Not a very good PR ploy. (Also, the link that Emma McLean has posted doesn’t seem to work).
£10 with “a year’s re-entry anytime” as a sweetener is a ridiculous sales pitch. Are your core visitor audience really all locals? What about overseas visitors for whom this may be the once in a lifetime chance to see such a historic location? Not all of these will be tourists of an affluent demographic by any means. It’s all very well to cheerily chime that children are still admitted for free, surely most of these will require at least one accompanying adult who must now be fleeced Dick Turpin-style at the door. I wouldn’t begrudge families on low incomes deciding to spend their leisure time elsewhere – and so, sadly, there goes another young generation put off astronomy for life.
I fear you may very well find that you have just shot yourself in the foot and consequently you will spend the next few months seeing your visitor numbers drastically decline. Perhaps you should confer with your colleagues at the Sir John Soane’s Museum and take a leaf out of their book? – if they can do it, so should you, especially when you are backed up by the support of the larger NMM institution as a whole!
Comment by Tim 1 April 2011 @ 2:13 pm
I am visiting Greenwich with my wife in May for a long weekend (free of the kids) and a visit to the Meridian Courtyard was the first place on our list. It has now been crossed off of our list. Having visited London last summer with the whole family I am well aware of the general costs of the major attractions. To charge £10 each is simply extortionate.
I completely agree with Tim’s last comment, particularly with regard to:
- trying to hoodwink people by saying it pays for a years entry. What use is that to anyone but a local?
- the tone of the official replies is as patronising as it is embattled.
Count us as another 2 visitors lost.
Comment by Robert 8 April 2011 @ 1:07 pm
I am dismayed……….do we really have to pay now to visit the Harrison clocks and Commander Gould’s notebooks on his restorations of same. It has been a sort of annual pilgrimage for us for some 45+ years from when they were housed in the main museum. Sir Christopher and Mr Hooke will not be happy……..let alone Messrs Harrison and Gould. Please reconsider.
Comment by John 8 April 2011 @ 8:55 pm
i agree with the comments above. Like most I shall not be revisiting for a year and £20 for our family is not realistic. Shall go to the maritime museum instead. PS and usually do donate!
Comment by Simon 13 April 2011 @ 12:18 am
I have recently had a group of students from Denmark visitung. Unfortunately I planned the visit before I knew about the introduction of the £10 charge. We were a group of 25 people. My students thought they had paid everything necessary for their trip to England. If I had taken the whole group into the courtyard it would have set us back an extra £172.50 for the students and £20 for myself and my colleauge.
May I suggest that you introduce a maximum fee of say £50 – £60 for school groups and £30 – £40 for large families. That way more people will be able to access your wonderful site and at the same time contribute financially to the upkeep. We could have afforded £50 maybe £60 that day but we couldn’t afford the £192.50 it would have cost even with concessions. We had come a long way and were very dissapponted when stopped on the way in and told to pay that amount. We had to stay outside.
Comment by Michael Grant 16 April 2011 @ 4:13 pm
We will be in UK in June and were looking forward to visiting the Meridian Courtyard, but not at 10 pounds each! London has many free and low cost attractions – shall choose somewhere else to go. Another 2 visitors lost.
Comment by Nola, Australia 18 April 2011 @ 8:25 am
Just visited your website today because i had planed to visit the observatory and museum this weekend.
Was expecting a cheap, fun and educational family day out but after seeing the price i will be finding somewhere else to visit.
Comment by Debbie 20 April 2011 @ 11:27 am
I’m bringing my disabled son to the Planetarium tomorrow and I’m glad I saw this forum before I came. I am not willing to pay £10 just to take his picture on the line!! I live in Middlesex, which is near London, but its still a journey of over two hours. Its not an attraction I would visit more than once a year so the “annual pass” is no good to me. I think you should lower the charge or ask for donations….other museums seem to manage to do this so why can’t you especially in this day and age with the recession and the sky high cost of living?
Comment by Judy Leer 20 April 2011 @ 10:54 pm
Hi, Just come on to the website to plan a visit.
I live out to the west of London. My family of 4 can get to the museum by train for less than £25. As we are all over 16, if you think i am paying £40 to get into this area you have to be joking. Don’t worry i will not darken you door!!
Comment by Anonymous 21 April 2011 @ 11:47 am
I is very sad to see this amount of fee, I had family visiting London and we stay outside. I can’t bare spending £40 just for a picture…At least I have the park…
Comment by Karina, Blackheath 23 April 2011 @ 1:05 am
I agree that £10 is a bit much especially when you have to pay for the planetarium shows as well.
I will becoming a member instead as I have a keen interest in astronomy. I have just recently moved to Greenwich and will spend a lot of time up there. I am disabled and in a wheelchair so this is the perfect place for me to spend time whilst my husband is at work. I think that there should be a different price for those that are unable to come more than once a year to visit.
Helen
Comment by Helen Langfield-Smith 23 April 2011 @ 11:50 am
Passing off this outrageous charge as an annual pass is just a joke. To get better “value” out of the £65 you want to charge me to take a photo with my family in the courtyard, you want me to spend another £10,000 to fly them back to the UK within 12 months.
£65!!
For a photo!!
What were you thinking ???
Comment by James Boswell 24 April 2011 @ 12:45 pm
Quite by chance I’ve just found this reintroduction of (rather high) admission charges while planning my day. I shall be finding somewhere else to go to. The compulsory ‘annual ticket’ approach is frankly daft.
Comment by Paul Clift 25 April 2011 @ 5:24 am
£ 10 is simply a rip off ! I’m a Belgian resident who returned yesterday from a 4-day city trip to London and I went as far as the gates of the Royal Observatory only to find out that the admission fee is indeed £ 10, in full contradiction with the “free admission” quoted in the 2011 (!) edition of “Le Routard” guide. What a disgrace when you compare this to the free admission of such reputable museums as the British Museum, the Tate Modern or the National Gallery ! Tear and wear has a price, but it must be reasonable. Please reconsider admission fees as a matter of urgency.
Comment by Bernard Dubois 26 April 2011 @ 1:06 pm
You say above that since moving to free entry visitor numbers have gone up to 1.58 million a year. It would be very interesting to see what the numbers were like prior to going free and indeed how the first month of charging the ridiculous £10 compares with the same month last year. Could you furnish us with these numbers Emma? Perhaps the numbers will tell us who is right here, your thoroughly thought prices or the rest of us that think it’s totally bonkers.
Personally I think you are making a huge mistake. Call me stupid but if indeed 1.58million people visited the site last year, assuming a ration of 2:1 between Adults and Children/Concessions, a £2 per adult and £1 for Children/Concessions charge would mean that 95% of the 1.58mil would happily pay it without second thoughts and you’d be banking £2.5 million a year. Now if you cannot maintain a courtyard and a tiny museum with £2.5 mil a year you have some serious management issues down there.
I am a concierge in a Central London hotel and I have always tried to get people down to Greenwich because I think it’s a great place for London visitors to see but there is no way myself or any other concierge in London who respects their guests/customers can any longer recommend it, not when people will be fleeced at the rate of £10 each for the sake of standing above a line and having their picture taken.
What you are doing is a bit like the Mayor of London putting railings around the Trafalgar Square Lions and charge people a tenner to walk 5 yeards inside the rails to take a picture! It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and the quicker you realise it the better, not just for you but for the rest of Greenwhich as many others will suffer if visitor numbers in the area drop dramatically as a result of this.
As for me, I’m throwing all the leaflets I had displayed for Greenwich in the recycling bin and I will be warning my guests against paying the £10 charge as it is at this moment probably the worst value for money ticket I can think of in London.
Comment by Andreas Iona 27 April 2011 @ 12:12 pm
I agree with the majority. While I understand the need to generate income to cover what is necessary, I think that £10 charge is in the long term unsustainable and damaging for the reputation of the ROG. But, only the future will tell.
As a former Greenwich resident, I loved the place and used to highly recommend it to my friends and family visiting me from overseas.
Sadly,with the introduction of the fee you have lost my recommendation.
Comment by Lukas 7 May 2011 @ 11:33 am
I can’t agree more with all the people leaving negative comments. It’s such a rip-off to charge 10 pounds for the super small museum and taking pictures at the M-line (remember most museums in the UK are free of charge! and they are 1000 times bigger). 5 pounds would be the most I would possibly pay.
Yeah I also loved to recommend the RO to my friends, but last time when I took my parents over and found out that we had to pay 35 pounds to get in, I was not only p***ed off, but also humiliated and found the new policy to be so funny.
Yes it’s a one-year pass, but who the heck would go to see this little place (with tiny tiny so-called museum) again within 12-month?
To be honest, I would never, ever, take my family to this place again. You are not only ruining your own reputaion, but also ruining the reputation of Greenwich.
Comment by Fred 12 May 2011 @ 1:44 pm
Its obvious isnt it.
The Obsevatory just wants to cash in on all the additional wealthy visitors to Greenwich park for this years Equestrian Events and then the Olympics next year.
£10 is too much for a family.
I am crossing off London as a place to visit this year. The city appears to be one giant building site, with Greenwich one of the biggest. If I was a tourist I would put off visiting London this year!
Comment by Nick 22 May 2011 @ 9:52 pm
Fine idea.
That will keep crowds of disinterested, screaming kids away and make it possible for people with real interest to see the things they want without disturbance.
Try Science Museum and Natural History Museum on a Saturday, and you will know what I am talking about.
10 pounds a year is well worth that.
The meridian is accessible from the North pole to the South pole, and could be marked out in the park below the hill at no great expense and that would spare the climb too!
Comment by Bj 23 May 2011 @ 9:52 am
Im astounded about these charges.An Australian,I will be visiting England in June,2011 FOR ONE VISIT.To “thieve” ten pounds off me for visiting a site of international significance ONCE shows a certain amount of arrogance.You are well aware that a “yearly pass” excuse is irrelevant to me.I suggest you adopt a “one off “fee for overseas people like me..but I get the feeling that such a fair and reasonable attitude will not eventuate.
I thought only sheep shearers “fleeced”,but Im obviously wrong.
Comment by Karl Parkes 26 May 2011 @ 5:16 am
It is a high charge however given that the Maritime, Queens House and parts of the RO are free it would represent great value. If you went abroad you would be paying a fortune to enter these museums collectively.
The whole point of the charge being high is to cut down footfall to conserve the buildings – lots of people must wander around these areas just for the sake of it rather than wanting to really see it.
I’m local and so am able to reuse the card however as a one off for a visitor it must seem lots.
Comment by bermondseyman 28 May 2011 @ 11:24 am
I will be coming with a group of twelve or fourteen people in September, are there special prices for groups (all over 60)?
Thanks for your answer
Yannick Jappy
Comment by yannick jappy 28 May 2011 @ 1:13 pm
Do we have to pay $10 for just one visit? I’m from Brazil, and will not visit England again in one year time, may never go there again. We are in a group of seven adults, is there any group discount? we just want to see and take pictures at the line, $10 is just to much for that, espeacialy whem most museams are free in London.
10 pounds is 12 euros and 16 dollars, that’s just too much for just a picture, may be you could charge to enter the exibitions but not just to see the line.
Comment by emanuella 28 May 2011 @ 5:18 pm
10 pound is a lot for many middle class families. It seems a decision taken at haste and not in the interest of visitors. The reasons given are not at all convincing. British Museum or Natural History Museum or Science Museum has no fee. Authorities have to rethink on capitalising a world renowned site in the name of maintenance.
Comment by Lavanya 1 June 2011 @ 6:08 pm
I agree with most of the negative comments. I will still recommend friends to visit Greenwich village and the park itself but will warn them of the new charge. £10 is a bit much for such a small place if you compare it with the other big museums in London. People will start going else where!
Comment by MW 3 June 2011 @ 11:27 pm
Embarrassing! Whoever made a decision to charge £10 should be blamed for lower numbers of turists visiting Greenwich. You are very greedy people to look only towards your short term profits.
Comment by Local Greenwich resident 14 June 2011 @ 12:03 am
What a shame about the £10 fee. I had planned to visit, but have now decided against it, as I feel it is far too expensive and to be honest a rip off. I will take my money elsewhere.
I feel sorry for people who have families, or people who turn up, without realising that there is such a high charge. The excuse that ‘you can return as many times as you like, without charge’, is a very poor one. Many visitors will not live locally and this will not be an option.
Perhaps you should reconsider the charge and ask for a donation instead?
Comment by MJones 18 June 2011 @ 5:19 pm
Wow–What a high performane fee! Zero-to-£10 in 60 seconds flat! Glad I went in for the first time on my last visit to Greenwich. Will never pay £10 to go in there. Aim of fee is to reduce visitors as close to zero as possible- I get it. But look at the ill-will raised by London/Greenwich in such a gouge. Fee totally gouges travelers: annual use pass, ya right. Reminds me of the USD40 knifepoint robbery that foreigners get at the Taj in Agra. Bunch of flippin’ opportunists.
Comment by Steeveebee 21 June 2011 @ 7:54 am
Agree with so many of the comments above that £10 is far too much, especially for larger groups. It seems a shame to discourage people from visiting a site of historic and educational importance by charging excessive entry fees. As a local resident, this had been an interesting place to take visitors. I won’t be visiting any longer and will just take my visitors for a walk around the park instead.
Completely disagree with the comment above that:
“These days it is about the average for just about anything that can be paid for!”
Is that because we are too willing to keep quiet and accept price increases from all directions? This is not a question of a right to charge high prices, but about providing value to customers.
On a more positive note, perhaps it will encourage people to spend more time in the free sections of the museum instead. It is perhaps a shame that the highlight of a visit is a photo on “the line”.
Comment by Another Greenwich Resident 24 June 2011 @ 2:35 pm
Clearly this is a very clever scheme introduced to capitalise on the extra tourism the Olympic Games will bring to London but £10??? £5 would be more realistic.
Also I think it should be free entry for all Greenwich Borough residents, not just a concession if you have a Greenwich card.
I was horrified when I popped down to Westminster Abbey to see Kate’s bouquet on the Grave of the Unknown soldier and faced with an entrance fee of £15 – I walked away……disgraceful!
It should be free entrance to the major London tourist attractions for all residents of London.
I’ve had family visit from N.Ireland recently and when I told them it was £10 entrance fee, they said, ‘well we’ll just put £6.50 to that and have a tour round Buckingham Palace or £7 to it and go on the wheel’. It will drive people away to other attractions where the attraction justifies the fee charged.
Luckily enough I’ve been in many times to the Observatory before the charges were introduced and will never be back while an entrance fee is in place and it’s not justifiable to say it’s £10 for the year and you can come back as many times as you like.
Comment by David Johnson 4 July 2011 @ 3:19 pm
I am arriving in August with a group of Italian adult students (14 people). I usually start my London trip in Greenwich where I recount the story of Flamsteed, Halley, Newton etc, mapping the stars, setting the prime meridian, the marine chronometer and John Harrison’s attempts to determine longitude. It would appear that my love of recounting English history and achievements in astronomy to spellbound foreigners is now going to cost me £140 for the privilege. It was with great pride that I told my students that England prides itself on giving free access to her history. I’m sure I’ll think of somewhere else to take them, What a pity!
Comment by Phillip Heath 7 July 2011 @ 9:11 am
Looking forward to a trip to Greenwich with my children, we’ll be travelling quite far to London to do this, but I wanted them to see and understand the significance of the place.
But we’ll have to make do with the park and the view. I can’t afford another £10 on top of the train and tube fares.
Yet more of the cultural heritage of our country becomes accessible only to the rich.
Very, very disappointed. £10 is far too much.
Comment by J. Boyd 29 July 2011 @ 10:26 pm
An entrance fee for a publicly funded museum is absolutely disgraceful. UK residents already pay for this museum through our taxes and the organising genius behind this levy thinks that charging us twice is somehow acceptable? Utterly unacceptable. It is greed with no concern for history and disinherits it’s own people from their history.
UK residents at the very least should be able to enter for free (as with Parliament and St.Stephens).
Comment by Victoria 31 July 2011 @ 6:58 pm
My wife and I took our grandaughter to Greenwich Observatory, whoa what money pinching peasant decided it would be a good idea to charge an entry fee. What with having to pay £5.00p on parking and ice creams at £2.50 a throw it gets very expensive for a day out for something that used to be free. My wife and I will certainly not be going again. Yup! Rip Off Britain Rears It’s Ugly Head Again!!!.
Comment by Pete Guerrier 2 August 2011 @ 5:10 pm
Well there you go that’s what a Tory Government does for you. We have been visiting The Observatory for 40 years bringing new visitors each year. Although interesting it is certainly not worth £10 or even £7. This also means that Greenwich market will not benefit from our spending money and it is doubtful if we shall bother to come to the Maritime museum.
Comment by Isabel & Sandy Leslie 10 August 2011 @ 10:45 am
Unbelievable. I took two foreign visitors here today as Greenwich park is such a beautiful place, and the meridian courtyard is a great tourist picture. But £10 per person for this is a travesty. Something has clearly gone wrong when there are crowds of people outside taking a picture of the line through the gate, and 2 or 3 people have paid for go in.
By the way – when I asked staff about this price introduction, the ticket lady told me a blatant lie by saying it was only free “many many years before”!
I am sure we will still visit Greenwich park, but certainly won’t be paying £10 admission.
What a shame you are effectively shutting 90% of visitors out of this historic site which was previously a reminder of Britain’s great maritime heritage.
Comment by Don 1 October 2011 @ 10:21 pm
I have been a regular visitor to the RO, and have been bringing friends and relatives on several occasions, but today, bringing people for the first time since the charge was initiated, we got to the line outside the ticket booth, saw the outrageous price you pretend to be worth, and we all just turned on our heels instantly and left.
Ridiculous – £2-£3 maybe, but £7 for a day pass? Never!
You see what you have done here – you have created the impression that this should be free! No matter the value you believe you provide, the public still believes that it should be free!
Comment by Endre Lunde 2 October 2011 @ 3:54 pm
Apart from the facts of the charge and the amount, the really disappointing thing is that the adult charge kicks in at 16 – unlike most other sites who charge entry fees where the adult charge generally starts at 18!
I also note that the museum staff have not attempted to provide any further information and have retreated into silence.
Comment by Marnie 6 October 2011 @ 7:14 pm
Why is the RGO allowed to do this? Are museums able to start opting out of the free admission policy as and when they choose?
Comment by Mike Dorey 28 November 2011 @ 11:38 am
I for one won’t be attending since they are now charging, I will visit the NHM and science and leave a donation.
Comment by Mr A Dally 18 December 2011 @ 11:24 am
I have no objection to the admission charge,we have to pay for the upkeep of our museums and most European museums have admission charges.
I do think however that all students should have free admission.
Comment by Hilary 7 January 2012 @ 3:47 pm
I want to know from RGO management how they are able to opt out of the government’s ‘free admission to museums’ policy.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/museums_and_galleries/3380.aspx
This is government policy and has not been repealed. RGO have no right to introduce charges, and it would seem illegal to me.
Are RGO telling us that all museums are able to follow their lead now? In which case I would like to know when this policy was debated, and where it is documented that they are able to do this.
Comment by Mike 31 January 2012 @ 6:26 pm
Free access to museums was and is government policy. It isn’t some optional ideal that institutions can choose to opt out of if they wish.
Comment by Mike 31 January 2012 @ 6:29 pm