The Tourist Attraction With the Most Expensive Parking

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 7, 1:00PM EST

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The Tourist Attraction With the Most Expensive Parking — © welcomia / iStock via Getty Images

Parking in America’s largest cities can be expensive. Some parking lots in Manhattan require payments of $600 a month, close to the monthly price of an apartment in much less crowded cities. And, daily parking rates can be astronomical. In some of Manhattan’s largest office districts, or near major attractions, parking can be over $50 a day. As it happens, that’s what it costs to park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – the American tourist attraction with the most expensive parking.

Parking garage owners clearly find that areas where people either have to go, or want to go, allow for very high prices. It is supply and demand at its purest.

The attractions that draw the most people in crowded places usually have significant limits on parking space. Some cities have metered parking on streets, but demand means that most if not all of these are filled. (These are America’s 50 worst cities to drive in.)

Most large cities have museums. The parking around these can be prohibitively expensive. A few cities have large theme parks which can draw tens of thousands of people a day.

The driver’s education site Zuboti recently released a report titled “The Attraction Parking Report”. Data was based on the Google search term “top attractions in USA”. Each of the locations on the resulting list was contacted for parking rates. The universe was the first 20 locations based on the Google search results. The report not only looked at the most expensive parking locations, but also at those with free parking. (These are the 30 most popular national monuments in America.)

Click here to see the American tourist attractions with the most expensive parking

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has the most expensive parking of any attraction on this list, is located on Fifth Avenue, on the eastern edge of Central Park, near a residential area that is among the most expensive in the world. “The Met,” as it is known, was opened in 1872. The cavernous building with several wings is the largest art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses two million pieces of art. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had over four million visitors a year.

At the other end of the parking price spectrum are four of America’s top tourist attractions outside New York City – Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Niagara Falls in upstate New York, Mall of America in a Minneapolis suburb, and South Beach in Miami Beach – all of which offer parking for free.

12. Carlsbad Caverns
> Location: Carlsbad, NM
> Cost: $0 (tie)

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12. Niagara Falls
> Location: Niagara Falls, NY
> Cost: $0 (tie)

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12. Mall of America
> Location: Bloomington, MN
> Cost: $0 (tie)

12. South Beach
> Location: Miami Beach, FL
> Cost: $0 (tie)

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11. Gateway Arch
> Location: St. Louis
> Cost: $9

10. Mount Rushmore
> Location: Keystone, SD
> Cost: $10 (tie)

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10. Pike Place Market
> Location: Seattle
> Cost: $10 (tie)

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9. La Brea Tar Pits
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $15 (tie)

9. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $15 (tie)

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9. California Science Center
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $15 (tie)

8. The Broad
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $17 (tie)

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8. Petersen Automotive Museum
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $17 (tie)

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7. Santa Monica Beach
> Location: Santa Monica, CA
> Cost: $18

6. The Getty Center
> Location: Los Angeles
> Cost: $20

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5. Walt Disney World Resort
> Location: Orlando, FL
> Cost: $25

4. Universal Studios Hollywood
> Location: Universal City, CA
> Cost: $30 (tie)

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4. Disneyland Resort
> Location: Anaheim, CA
> Cost: $30 (tie)

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3. Navy Pier
> Location: Chicago
> Cost: $42

2. Faneuil Hall
> Location: Boston
> Cost: $43

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1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
> Location: New York City
> Cost: $50

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.