Florence has the Firenze Card. Athens has the Athens City Pass.  And Cairo has the Cairo Pass.

Sometimes, it’s worth the cost.  If you visit enough places, you’ll come out ahead.  These passes also often enable you to skip the lines to buy tickets, or avoid a timed entry schedule at busy attractions.  So where does Cairo stack up?  Is the Cairo Pass worth it?

Where to buy the Cairo Pass

This is also a location where you can buy the Cairo Pass.  You’ll go up to the ticket window, tell them what you want, and they’ll direct you to sit at a little table and wait for an official-looking guy to come and help you.

There are other locations as well.  The Supreme Council of Antiquities has an office in Cairo, I’m putting a link to the location here.  You may also be able to buy the Luxor Pass here, although reports of that are often contradictory.

It’s important to note that this isn’t exactly a streamlined process.  Many who’ve attempted to buy the Cairo Pass have been greeted by people who don’t know anything about it.  Luckily this wasn’t a problem for me at the Pyramids — it doesn’t hurt that there’s a poster about it hanging next to the window, which you can point to.

You can also buy the Cairo Pass at the Citadel.

What you need to buy the Cairo Pass

This is…

Well, let’s just say it’s more complicated than it needs to be.

If you want to buy something similar in many other cities, you just walk up to a counter and buy one.  That’s it.  In cities like Paris, they have little kiosks at the airport specifically put up for this purpose.

In Cairo, you’ll need:

• Your passport
• A passport-sized photo
• A photocopy of the photo page of your passport
• $100 in USD

Seems a little excessive, right?  Well, don’t look at me.  I didn’t make the rules.

You’ll also need to make sure that your money is in the form of a $100 bill, and that it’s new.  There are reports of people not being able to buy the Cairo Pass because their money is creased or crumpled, or because they tried to pay in five $20 bills.

But some people were fine with different denominations.  Others have been able to pay in Euros.  But things aren’t always consistent in Egypt, and I’ve not heard of anyone having new $100 bills running into problems.

Another note: Do not fill out your pass incorrectly.  I’m speaking from experience. 

The man who sold it just told me to fill out the relevant information, and I foolishly wrote month/date instead of the appropriate date/month.  He took it, scribbled out what I’d written, and corrected it. This caused a massive headache at the big museum in Cairo, where my pass was rejected.

Is the Cairo Pass worth it?

The short answer: No.

But it’s complicated.  There’s a wealth of sites the Cairo Pass gives you access to, which are listed here.  You can do the math, but you’d have to spend quite a bit of time going from place to place to make it financially worthwhile.

Furthermore, while it would allow you to visit a place like the Pyramids of Giza more than once, the bulk of the sites you can visit are not ancient ones.

For some visitors, that’s fine.  I’m sure there’s a lot of people who are very interested in the medieval Islamic structures in Cairo, and that’s great.  But since my primary reason for visiting was to experience the history of Ancient Egypt, I didn’t spend a lot of time exploring that aspect of Cairo.

But…

There’s a reason I bought the Cairo Pass, and it’s because it comes in very handy later.  It gives you half off the Luxor Pass or the Luxor Premium Pass.  I bought the latter, and it cut the cost from $200 to $100.  The same process works in reverse as well, meaning you could get half off the Cairo Pass if you have the Luxor Pass, but I don’t know why you’d want to do that.

And yes, the Luxor Pass is absolutely worth it.  I go into a lot more detail in a separate article, but I think it’s really a must have when you’re visiting.

Note: Everything I say here is my own personal opinion, and may not work best for everyone. I’m far from an expert, so please just do whatever is best for you, and be sure to visit the TripAdvisor Forums to ask questions and do some more research!