Willis Tower

Address:	233 S Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60606, USA
Phone:	+1 312-875-0066
Site:	willistower.com
Rating:	4.4
Working:	10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM 10AM–8PM

Location

Photos 100

Reviews 4

Saurabh Rahurkar

Info (as of 07/17/2017): General admission (Adults): $23 General admission (Ages 3-11): $15 Fast pass admission: $49 Time: General admission takes 2-3 hours. I did this through the Explore Chicago pass which gives you the general admission. When you enter , you wait in the line for the sky deck. The line takes you to an elevator, the elevator takes you to the basement. Theres another queue here, for the security check (regardless of whether you have a prepaid ticket or not). Once you are done with the security check, you get in the line for tickets or if you have prepaid tickets you skip the queue (hooray!) and get to the next stage: a photograph. After the photograph, theres – you guessed it – another queue. This queue takes you to the ticket checker, who leads you to the next stage. The next stage is, yes, another queue. There are things to entertain children and some infoboxes to read along the way in this room but not much to keep you from getting bored. This queue takes you to the informational movie which is actually pretty interesting. It gives you the history of the chicago, starting with the fire and changes in architectural styles to the conception of the Sears tower. After the movie, theres another queue. This moves fairly quickly, thankfully. This queue finally brings you to the elevator! The elevator ride takes just over a minute ( i used a stopwatch to measure this). When you finally arrive on the sky deck after all this, its seriously not that impressive. Yes you get the views, but seriously not very impressive. Theres the skyboxes but the queues for that are LONG and time taking. There are two manned skyboxes where you get a limited time so those queues move pretty quickly, but the unmanned ones dont. The manned skybox queues also have professionally setup cameras that that take your pictures. Once you get downstairs you get to see your pictures. You can buy all the shots that they take for a low, low price of $50, NOT! These are already printed and if you dont buy them my guess is they are thrown away. Apparently the business model is to spend all this money on printing every single photo taken and throwing away the ones which arent purchased (which is a lot!!) rather than selling them for a more reasonable price. The pictures are available online for purchase but each picture costs $30 online. Fuhgetaboutit! This is another patel-point that you may want to cross off your list but this strictly OK and so not worth the ~3 hour wait that it takes. Also, if you have elderly folk in your group, keep in mind theres absolutely no seating in all the queues that you have to wait through.

Michael Wang

Looking for a place to get an amazing view of Chicago? Well, Willis Tower, formerly known as Sears Tower, is definitely the place to go. I was in Chicago for a business trip which just so happened to end early. I had a couple hours to kill around the Loop, so where do I go? Well, normally I dont like going to touristy spots, especially in a full blown suit, but where else better to get an amazing view of Chicago than Willis Tower (the artist formerly known as the Sears Tower)? Admission to Willis Tower ran $18, which isnt too bad when youre comparing it to the admission price for Rockefeller Center. Once you buy your ticket, youre treated to the usual history of the building, and how everything came together. From videos to miniature models, if you really really wanted to know how everything was built, then youll definitely love this part. For everyone else, the great sights are coming up. Once you step in the elevator, youre shot straight up the building, right to the top. The elevator ride itself is a trip because youre going up this tower at an alarmingly fast speed. Once you get to the top of Willis Tower, you are just treated to an amazing 360 degree view of Chicago. From downtown, all the way to the suburbs, you can literally see all of Chicago. Now for the adventurous types, there are 2 ledges that you can step out onto to. These ledges are glass, so you can literally see right below you, straight down to the ground floor. I was totally tripped out by this, but still mustered up the courage to drag myself to take a picture there. If anything, thats probably the coolest part to Willis Tower. You can stay up at the top for as long as you like, snapping pictures away to your hearts content, but youll probably get tired in 30 minutes, and take that elevator back down to civilization. Willis Tower is definitely something to see if youre coming to Chicago to visit. From its amazing views, to the stunning ledge, what better place to see the city, than from the top of an amazingly tall building?

leigh Christensen

While the views are nice, something you MUST know that I found quite upsetting was, you will possibly wait in line to get up there. The day I went, we only waited maybe 15 minutes. You can purchase a fast pass to get there faster. No big deal. Right? But, you WILL wait in line to get OUT!! We waited more than 30minutes in a line to get one of the only 2 elevators that take you back down! NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE STAIRS! Seriously? Can NOT TAKE THE STAIRS! I was told they were LOCKED! This was really disturbing to me. They refused to answer any questions that I had with regard to protocol for emergency evacuation. They were even quite rude about it. Pretty much an attitude of "whatever". You are already up there, there is nothing you can do about it. VERY RUDE! It is ONE thing to wait to see an attraction. It is an entirely different matter when you have to WAIT TO LEAVE !?! People should KNOW this, be TOLD this, BEFOFE they go up! I dont understand how the city allows this sort of thing. They need to LIMIT the number of people that can safely be gotten back down before allowing more up. Also, on the day I was there, a urinal broke in the mens room, water was pouring out into the public area, and I mean pouring like a broken water main. It took the a while to figure out what was happening. They closed the restroom and tried to rope off the wet area, which was impossible due to the amount of water and how fast it was running out of the restroom. It was one example of the sort of chaos that could ensue if there were a real issue, like a fire that needed to be dealt with. And again, when I tried to speak to the person that appeared to be in charge and express my concerns , I was treated very rudely and dismissed with crossed arms and no eye contact and not one question answered.

Chelsey

This was the WORST EXPERIENCE EVER and was just a waste of time. 6 years ago, we came to this attraction and it was breath taking and it was a wonderful experience. We thought it was a wonderful idea to go back and experience it again. So we decided to go on Wednesday at 6, before the fireworks. When we got there, we had to check through security (back then there was no security check) and the workers there were so AWFULLY RUDE. All they care about is rushing through everyone and be done for. The line was terribly long and it took about a dramatically quick 4 minutes. It was my turn for security check and there was a bag in the machine that didnt go through because it was stuck. I told the worker about it but they rudely replied "put your bag on there" (they did not even bother to look at the machine). I kept telling him about it but they reply the same thing "just put your bag on there!" The other worker said the same thing also (they still didnt even bother to look what was wrong with the machine) so I was annoyed at that point so I followed what they said. After I received my bag, I heard the same guy say "its so easy a caveman could do it". I felt offended because I just told them a bag was stuck in the machine and they didnt even helped. Afterwards, we went to go get our tickets for general admission, the line was even worse. We were there for 10 minutes and didnt move not even an inch. By this rate, we wouldve miss the fireworks. So we ended up leaving, we passed by the security check and there was only 2 people in the security line. We wasted about an hour (trying to find parking, finding the entrance, etc.) and $22 (for the parking garage) for an attraction that we didnt even attend to.