Having lived in New York for six years, I have a complicated relationship with the Vessel. My husband and I watched it go up back in 2019, this giant copper honeycomb rising out of the concrete on the far West Side, and I remember standing at the bottom thinking two things at once. One, it was genuinely stunning. Two, it looked like a $200 million shawarma. Both are still true.
So here’s the question everyone types into their phone before booking a Hudson Yards afternoon. Is the Vessel worth it now that it has reopened? I climbed it again this year, netting and all, to give you a straight answer instead of the glossy version the tourism sites hand out. Short version. It depends entirely on what you want from it, and I’ll tell you exactly who should go and who should skip it.
What the Vessel Actually Is
Let’s get the basics down, because half the confusion comes from people not knowing what they’re paying for. The Vessel is a 150-foot climbable sculpture designed by Thomas Heatherwick and built by Related Companies as the centerpiece of Hudson Yards. It’s made up of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, roughly 2,500 steps, and 80 landings, all arranged in that hollow, honeycombed geometry that looks completely different depending on where you stand. From one angle it’s a beehive. From another it’s an Escher drawing. From the base looking straight up, it’s kind of glorious.
It opened in March 2019 to enormous hype and, honestly, deserved most of it as a piece of design. Then came a stretch of real tragedy. A series of suicides between 2020 and 2021 forced the structure to close, and it stayed closed for years while everyone argued about whether it could ever safely reopen. It came back in October 2024 with a big change. Full-height steel mesh netting now runs along every level.
That netting is the whole story. It’s why the experience today is not the experience people posted about in 2019, and it’s the single biggest factor in whether this is worth your ticket.
Is It Worth It? My Honest Take
Vessel-Holiday-02974.jpgVessel · Hudson Yards
I’ll be honest with you, because that’s the only reason to read a local instead of a booking page. The Vessel is worth it as a short, cheap, genuinely cool architectural stop. It is not worth it as a viewpoint or a bucket-list “experience,” and it is absolutely not worth crossing town for on its own.
Here’s what changed for me. The magic of the old Vessel was the vertigo, standing on an outer landing with the wind and the open drop and the Hudson spread out in front of you. That’s gone. The mesh is fine and unobtrusive from a distance, but the moment you’re climbing, it’s right there between you and everything you came up to see. Photos through it look hazy. The upper reaches and the river-facing sections are closed off entirely now, so you can’t even get to the best old vantage points.
What remains is still worth twenty minutes if you’re already there. The interior geometry, all those crisscrossing copper staircases folding over each other, is best appreciated from inside anyway, and the netting doesn’t ruin that at all. Climbing partway up and looking back down into the honeycomb is the actual highlight. Not the view out. The view in.
The other thing nobody warns you about. It’s a workout. Roughly 2,500 steps is roughly 2,500 steps, and while you don’t have to climb them all, the landings and switchbacks add up fast. There’s an elevator, but it runs on a schedule and prioritizes visitors with disabilities, so plan to use your legs. I watched a couple in matching sundresses give up around the fourth level, laughing, and honestly, fair. Wear real shoes. Learned that one the hard way in sandals.
So my verdict. Go if you’re at Hudson Yards regardless, if you like architecture, or if you have restless kids who need to climb something. Skip it if you’re picturing a skyline photo op, if stairs aren’t your thing, or if you’re making a special trip. There are better uses of a New York afternoon two blocks away, and I’ll get to those.
What It Costs and How Tickets Work Now
Pier-57-Skyline-Fall-9642.jpgLittle Island · Chelsea
Good news. It’s cheap, and this is the part that tips the whole thing from “scam” to “sure, why not.” A standard timed ticket is $10 and locks you into a specific entry slot. A flex ticket is $15, sold online only, and lets you show up whenever. Kids five and under are free, though they still need a ticket booked in their name.
Now the two rules that trip people up, so learn them before you’re standing at the gate annoyed.
You cannot go alone. Solo visitors aren’t allowed. Every booking requires a minimum of two tickets, and you have to enter with at least one other person. A child’s free ticket counts toward that minimum, so a parent and a toddler are fine, but a single adult on their own is turned away. This is a safety measure tied to the structure’s history, and it’s non-negotiable.
New Yorkers can get in free on Thursdays. If you’re a city resident, this is the move. The Vessel offers free Thursday admission to NYC residents. You reserve online using your NYC zip code as a promo code, and a new batch opens on the last Friday of each month at 9am for the following month. A limited number of free day-of tickets also drop each Thursday. Bring proof of residence. My husband and I did this on a random Thursday and it made the whole “is it worth it” math irrelevant, because free is free.
Current hours run Monday through Saturday from 10am to 9pm, and Sunday from 11am to 7pm. Go early or go at golden hour. Midday is when the tour crowds pile in and the plaza gets loud.
Getting There and What’s Around It
The Vessel sits in the middle of Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s far West Side, at the northern end of the Chelsea neighborhood. The 7 train drops you right at the 34th Street-Hudson Yards station, which spits you out practically at its base. That convenience is a big part of why I say go if you’re already nearby, because you genuinely don’t have to go out of your way.
And this is where the Vessel stops being a destination and becomes a stop. It’s wrapped by The Shops at Hudson Yards, a glossy vertical mall that is exactly as expensive as it looks, and it sits at the top of the busiest cluster of attractions in this part of town. You can knock out three or four things in an afternoon here without ever hailing a cab, which is really the argument for the whole area over the sculpture itself.
The southern stretch of Chelsea runs right into all of it, so if you time it well you can make a genuinely lovely half-day out of a neighborhood most tourists rush through. If you’re weighing your view options for the same day, my comparison of Summit One Vanderbilt versus the Edge covers the two big-ticket decks you can pair with a Hudson Yards stop.
The Alternatives That Are Actually Worth It
High-Line-Spring-04927.jpgThe High Line · Chelsea
If your real goal is a New York view or a memorable couple of hours, here’s where I’d send you instead, all within walking distance.
The High Line. This is the one. The High Line’s northern spur ends right at Hudson Yards, so you can literally walk off the elevated park and up to the Vessel in the same trip. It’s free, it’s gorgeous in every season, and it gives you the elevated-perspective feeling the Vessel used to and no longer really does. If you only have time for one, walk the High Line. I’ve done it more times than I can count and it still gets me. For the full case, I wrote about whether the High Line itself is worth it, and my answer there is a much easier yes.
Edge. If you want an actual sky-high view and you’re willing to pay for it, the Edge observation deck is right here in Hudson Yards at 30 Hudson Yards. It is not cheap, and it is not the Vessel’s ten dollars, but the outdoor deck with its glass floor and open-air platform delivers the vertigo the Vessel used to. I ranked it among the city’s observation decks, and it holds up. If you’re choosing between climbing 2,500 netted steps for no view and paying more for a real one, the honest answer depends on your budget. But don’t expect the Vessel to scratch the observation-deck itch. It won’t.
Edge-NYC-01174.jpgEdge NYC · Hudson Yards
Chelsea Market. Ten minutes south, Chelsea Market is an old Nabisco factory turned food hall, and it’s the best cheap-and-happy pairing with a Vessel visit. Grab lobster or tacos, wander the stalls, and you’ve turned a twenty-minute sculpture into a proper afternoon. This is genuinely how my husband and I do Hudson Yards. Vessel photo, High Line walk, Chelsea Market lunch. In that order.
Chelsea-Market-1004050.jpgChelsea Market · Chelsea
Who Should Actually Go
Let me make this simple. Go to the Vessel if you love architecture and want to see one of the strangest structures in the city up close, if you’re already at Hudson Yards, if you’re a New Yorker cashing in the free Thursday, or if you have kids who will lose their minds over a giant climbable honeycomb. On all of those counts, ten dollars for twenty minutes is a fair deal, and I’d do it again.
Skip it if you’re hoping for a skyline view, if you’re expecting the open-air drama the early photos sold, if you’re traveling solo, or if it means a special trip across town. The netting changed the assignment, and pretending it didn’t would be doing you a disservice.
The Bottom Line
Is the Vessel worth it now that it’s reopened? As a cheap architectural curiosity that you fold into a Hudson Yards afternoon, yes. As a stand-alone attraction or a view, no. It’s a beautiful object that lost the one thing that made it thrilling, and what’s left is a pleasant ten-dollar stroll up a copper beehive. That’s not nothing. It’s just not the pilgrimage the internet still makes it out to be.
My advice. Come for the architecture, stay for the neighborhood, and let the High Line and Chelsea Market do the heavy lifting. That’s the Hudson Yards afternoon that actually earns the trip.
Have you climbed the Vessel since it reopened? I’d love to know whether the netting bothered you as much as it did me, or whether I’m being a grump about it.
Until next time,
Antonina