Budapest Card: Free Public Transport, Spa & Museums with Delivery

Posted By : chad_h
Great experience with the card, made using public transport really easy. Buses don’t really check for tickets but the metro can have inspectors you just show the card to, very easy to get into the included museums aswell and definitely a time saver.
Rating :
Posted On : 2024-04-22

Posted By : HelouiseC
I bought the 72 Plus card for a three-day trip. I built my itinerary around the card and calculate that I broke even, so it was just about worth it from a financial point of view. It was mainly helpful to me in structuring my trip and not having to mess around with buying and validating public transport tickets. As others have said, it's not a massive money saver and would require you to jog round a lot of attractions in order to see the benefit. However, I probably would have never done a walking tour if it hadn't been free and I probably wouldn't have gone to the Lucaks baths either, so it was a spur to do a few things I wouldn't have otherwise chosen. A few glitches that need to be ironed out - some, but not all, attractions require you to get a ticket from the booking office even though entry is free with the card, and it's not clear which attraction operates which policy, meaning that I queued unnecessarily for tickets when all I needed to do was show the card at entry. Also the Minibud airport shuttle experience was quite poor - it's advertised as free with the 72 Plus card but I couldn't book a transfer before my arrival as you need to have the physical card (which you collect on arrival) so had to pay for a taxi (I was arriving late at night so didn't want to faff around finding my way to my hotel). For my return leg I found that I couldn't book online without going through a payment process and no one replied to my email query so I ended up having to telephone. That was fine but I didn't receive any confirmation following the call, which my hotel said was wrong, so rung them the next day to check and it wasn't clear whether they had my booking, which made me somewhat anxious that the shuttle wasn't going to arrive. It did, but the driver seemed unhappy about my using the card and frogmarched me to the Minibud desk on arrival at the airport. I still don't really know what that was all about but it wasn't a good experience and the process needs to be clearer. The same goes for using public transport - I used the trams and had no idea whether I should swipe the card or whether I just needed to show it to an inspector (it turns out the latter is acceptable). These are all things that many travellers want to know beforehand. To be fair, the Minibud issues were partly at the Minibud end but there's definitely some improvements to be made.
Rating :
Posted On : 2024-04-19

Posted By : 925ale_m
One of the most useless thing you can buy for trip to Budapest. This card is way much overpriced. Please carefully study the list of places that are included for discounts before you even buy it. It refers mostly to the places that are looked for by tourists the fewest. The only thing that is really useful is free public transport but that's something you can get way cheaper buying an ordinary ticket.
Rating :
Posted On : 2024-04-05

Posted By : 662dimitriosm
They did not accept the card on Castle History museum today 19th December, (72 explorer card) and they told me they only accept the plastic physical ones, which is mental, since it’s the same card in digital form.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-12-19

Posted By : daveburgess1
Just returned from Budapest and wanted to give an update of travelling on public transport. Use the bus (100E) to and from airport. They're trialling a new paying system. All you do is Tap your bank card on the machine for up to 5 people and that's it...! Runs about every 40min and goes right to city centre. The very same set up applies on the Metro but only on the Yellow district line. Just tap n go.. This worked out at £1/trip pp. Airport run is about £5 per trip pp and is roughly 40min. If you're there longer or intend to make many trips around then there is the option to purchase a 24/48 or 72hr card which makes travel cheaper.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-12-10

Posted By : AmaMamma
We went on line and quite honestly had a hard time deciding which card to get. We ended up with the brand new digital eXplorer card. Stay away from it. It seems pretty clearly designed to force you onto the Hop On/Hop Off bus but doesn’t include public transit. It’s not at all clear how to activate the card. We were riding the trams for 2 days without realizing this card doesn’t include that. A lot of places do not accept it, including the St. Matthias Church and the funicular on the castle hill. Honestly, it was frustrating and not just for us. The card is so new people don’t seem to know what to do with it. I thought getting a digital card ahead of time would be easier but it was not. Maybe the standard 72 hour card with public transit is a better choice.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-11-25

Posted By : 191jannickeb
We bought 48 hours card. We got public transport free (wich we used a couple of times) and castlebus free. Some museum were included i the price, but none we would like to see. Otherwice you would get a discount on sightseeing things, but like 20%.. So I do not recomend to buy this. Expenciv, and you don't get value of the price...
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-10-06

Posted By : almoni33
when and if your hotels are located in the city centre and your trip lasts longer than 72 hours it will be more convenient to buy only a pack of single tickets in a machine . because everything is in walking distance and a weekly pass is more expensive . for cabs use the application bolt . it is tested more than once .
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-09-12

Posted By : 890natalijam
The card is not really a great investment since it is nearly impossible to use enough services to justify the price of the card. We were using the 24 hour card and we were in motion the entire day and still we calculated that we would spend half of the money spent on the card if we just payed for the things we used. We took the walking tour that is free with the card and i must say it was amazing. Our guide, Fésus Monika was awesome, really interesting and a wonderful guide, you can see she loves her job and is great at it. The town is so big and beautiful, full of interesting things to see, we only saw a portion of it. So we are definitely coming back.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-08-02

Posted By : davidkW5235OB
It is very difficult to get the full value out of the card because few places take it, even those listed in the book and there are several included sites too far to reach without a car. Some of the places also tried to scam us into buy additional tickets or refused published discounts by saying the that the material which came with the pass is wrong or outdated. Highly recommend just buying the activities you want and avoiding this pass all together.
Rating :
Posted On : 2023-07-07