Hands down, my No. 1 favorite activity in Boston is the Boston Duck Tours. This is an extremely popular activity for adults and kids as you get to ride around Boston in a World War II style amphibious vehicle for 80 minutes. Even though we live in Boston, it is a great way to see the sites and the kids absolutely love it. We love taking friends who are in town on the tour as well.
Boston Duck Tour Review
During the tour, you’ll spend 60 minutes on land seeing many popular sites such as the State House, Newbury Street, Quincy Market, TD Garden (home of the Celtics and Bruins) Boston Common, Copley Square, Holocaust Memorial, City Hall and more. The ConDUCKtor’s are extremely knowledge and have a great sense of humor.
You’ll then go into the Charles River for the remaining 20 minutes where you kids can actually steer the boat. You’ll also get some great views from the water.
Even though I was born and raised in Boston, I still learned a lot on this tour. While the teaching moments might have gone over my kids heads (since they are still young), they did not find it boring one bit. They love riding in the boat and quacking at pedestrians along the streets of Boston. And of course driving the boat was a huge highlight for the kids.
Making a Duck Tour Reservation
The Boston Duck Tours leave from three different locations within Boston: Museum of Science, New England Aquarium and Prudential Center. This means regardless of where you are staying in Boston, you should be in walking distance to one of these three departure points.
Tours start as early as 9pm and go until an hour before sunset. Tours from the New England Aquarium leave every 20 minutes, while tours from the Museum of Science and the Prudential Center leave every 30-60 minutes.
Unfortunately, the Duck Tours are seasonal and if you are planning on visiting Boston during the winter, you might be out of luck. The typical season runs from the end of March until the end of November (all three locations have slightly different start and end dates), although the Prudential Center location runs a special tour. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday between Dec. 6-22, 2019, you can reserve one of these Holiday Duck Tours.
Duck Tour Discount Code
Although I love the Boston Duck Tour, ticket prices do not come cheap. A regular ticket will run you $43 for adults, $34.99 for seniors and active military, $28.99 for children 3-11 and $10.99 for children 2 and under.
Fortunately though, there are many ways to find discounted tickets and coupon codes.
25 Years with 25% Off
The Boston Duck Tours turned 25 years old this year and to celebrate they are offering 25% off tickets. Just use promo code 25years during checkout.
I personally found this offer to be the most cost effective discount for my family of four.
Early Bird Special
If you are an early bird, you can take the 9am or 9:30am tour and save an extra $9.50 per ticket.
Family 4-Pack Special
A family of 2 adults and 2 children can purchase the Family 4-Pack Special for $125 total. This offer is valid every day of the week except Saturdays from the Museum of Science location. If you have more than 2 children, you can purchase an additional child’s ticket for $22.75 per child.
Groupon
There are many times you can purchase a ticker for the Boston Duck Tours on Groupon. These are discounted adult tickets and there’s no extra discount for children. If you are looking to take advantage of this offer, you’d want to purchase your children tickets separately.
Note: When you go to redeem your Groupon you’ll have to pay a convenience fee.
Package Deals
If you are looking to purchase tickets for another museum or activity, they offer package deals. For example, if you are also looking to go to the Museum of Science (which is also an awesome family activity) you can see if purchasing a package deal will save you money as you’ll get $10 off admission to the museum, $4 off an Omni film and $4 off a Planetarium show.
Overall…
If you are visiting Boston or even live locally, the Boston Duck Tour is a great activity. Not only do you get to ride the streets in a cool looking duck, you’ll learn a ton of history and see a lot of sites along the way. They are extremely well run and the tours are very informative.
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I really enjoyed the similar duck tour in Pittsburgh. They were popular but had to shut down this year, last year’s accident in Missouri that killed 17 made it so they were unable to buy insurance for their operation. Hope that doesn’t happen in Boston!
We did it this summer through the Boston Card that we got at Costco.
@Points for Four – Awesome!