What surprise’s me is people waiting in line to buy movie tickets when there are ATM-like ticket machines unused
I have to chime in to support the OP. Waiting in line is a horror beyond imagination for me, so obviously it’s to be avoided on vacation. Spontaneity is great, but I’m more than willing to commit if the alternative is that kind of torture.
Beginning to wonder how all the ‘can’t bear lines’ travelers manage at airports. It must be hell for y’all!
I don’t mind lines per se, however, why wait in a line when you don’t need to? Plus, super-long lines for attractions do have this in common with airports in general: you don’t know when, if ever, you will successfully be able to stop waiting, because the line moves so slow or you can’t see the end, and the plane is often delayed. For this reason I tend to drive rather than fly unless I am only visiting one place and I won’t have to drive once I get there.
Pretty much, which is why I sprang for the TSA pre-check. I stood in enough lines in my military career to avoid them now whenever possible.
I’m sufficiently spontaneous on holiday that I rarely plan more than a day in advance, and I have more than once decided to hop on a plane to another country/island at less than 24 hours notice for reasons like ‘It’s too hot here’ and ‘I’m bored in Helsinki. Hey, a friend’s visiting Berlin, not seen her in a while!’
All most treasured travel memories are the ones decided on the spur of the moment, almost none are from the places I carefully researched.
OP; I’ll do it my way, you do it your way, and we just agree to never, ever go on holiday together, OK? 
I definitely don’t understand a desire to stand in line if you don’t have to. You can’t do anything in line that you couldn’t do more comfortably somewhere else. I admit that having planned activities might be stressful, and I could see not bothering with them. But part of spontaneity is being able to do something when you want to, so I’d expect you to try and get in faster. The longer you wait, the more likely you’ll be in a different mood by the time you get there.
It just makes sense to try and see if you can get in faster without the line–especially when you’re being more spontaneous.
There’s lines, and then there’s lines: The longest I’ve waited at the airport to get through security, say, has been maybe 30 minutes. The line to get into the Vatican Museum without an advance ticket, which I mentioned above, was three hours.
You are fortunate. The average at O’Hare is 25 minutes. Cite. LaGuardia and LAX average 35 and 40 minutes respectively. I’ve been stuck in lines for up to two hours.
Global Entry and CLEAR.
Huh. I’ve been to O’Hare many times and never waited nearly that long.
Now, I have waited in awfully long lines to get through immigration when coming back to the U.S. Once, more than an hour at SFO. So this last time I downloaded the mobile passport app on my smartphone and tried that. It worked great: I wasn’t in line more than 5 minutes before seeing the officer.
Dunno about where you are but most of the ones here tack on a 25% surcharge for the privilege of using them.
You’ve been lucky. Twenty to thirty minutes is usual for me, and I like to budget an hour, just in case. The two hours is probably an overstatement. My worst was was at Midway about ten years ago. Well over an hour, probably an hour twenty to hour thirty would be a more accurate assessment. Line was so long it went into the parking garage.
The biggest problem I see to buying too many things in advance is the inevitability that you will end up not being able to or just not wanting to do it at the time and day you reserved it and then being out the cost of the ticket if you change your mind or you get sick or your kid gets sick or your transportation is delayed. I like planning in advance but plenty of people like going out on an adventure and playing it by ear.
25%!? I’ve never seen that. It’s usually a $1.50-$1.75 fee.
I like a mixed itenerary - for instance, for Paris, the Eiffel Tower was the only thing we booked (from a phone), but we did get the museum pass, because we knew we’d be mostly doing those, but didn’t care in what order or when. It let us skip lines at the Louvre & Versailles (and if there’d been queues elsewhere, we’d have skipped those too, but there weren’t - oh, except the queue waiting for the Pompidou to actually open)
Speaking for myself, I didn’t know you need a ticket for either the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, although if I ever planned a trip to Paris, I’d like to think that it would occur to me that you do.
I’d probably buy my tix to Euro Disney in advance, though.
I posted this before. With the exception of the Eiffel Tower none of the pre-purchased tickets for attractions like that have a day or time on them. You just use them whenever you get there.
Both times I’ve been there the lines just to buy tickets were well over 2 hours. Seems like a waste of precious vacation time to me when one can buy the tickets before going.
I’m sorry but that is F’d up!
That was you?
mmm
Be sure to check the schedule at the Palau de la Musica Catalana and get tix for a concert. The exterior is amazing but the inside makes your jaw drop.