Affiliate disclosure
The short version: some links here earn us a commission, you pay the same either way, and nobody pays to be featured.
Which links are affiliate links
Every "Check availability" button, and every in-text link that opens a sailing's listing, points to GetYourGuide or Viator and carries our partner tag. If you book after clicking one, the platform pays us a share of the commission it already earns from the operator. Your price is identical to the price you would see going straight to that listing, because our cut comes out of the platform's margin and is never added to your ticket.
Those two platforms are the only affiliate relationships on this site. There are no hotel links, no display advertising, no sponsored posts and no paid reviews. The operator videos embedded on the homepage earn us nothing at all. If a third network is ever added, this page and the footer disclosure will name it before the first link goes live, not after.
What it does not change
- Inclusion. Every sailing that clears the tests, real New York Harbor departure, real food or drink service, genuinely bookable by an individual, and a rating on enough reviews to mean something, is here. Twenty-two listings were checked and 19 are shown. The three that dropped out were the same boats sold a second time on the other platform, and counting a vessel twice would have padded the lineup and split its reviews across two cards.
- Ordering. No operator can buy a position and none has been offered one. Where a category page leads with one sailing, that boat is the most-reviewed in its category, a rule you can check yourself against the numbers on the cards.
- What we say about them. The cheapest brunch on the site, at $79, is also the lowest-rated boat here at 3.6 across 33 reviews, and it says so on the card. The two highest-rated sailings, at 5.0 and 4.8, serve no dinner whatsoever, and the pages point that out rather than steering you toward a bigger ticket. Where these boats pass the Statue of Liberty rather than circling it, the copy says pass.
- What we leave out. A handful of real, live harbor listings were read and then dropped: one rated 2.9 across 45 reviews, two at 3.0, several with review samples in the single digits. They pay the same commission as the ones we kept. Sightseeing operators that serve no meal are off-scope entirely, whatever their booking volume.
- Things we earn nothing from. The free view from Hudson River Park, the subway ride to Chelsea Piers, the cheap parking at Liberty State Park and a good restaurant on dry land all pay us zero, and they still get their say wherever they beat a paid ticket.
Ratings, review counts and prices
Every rating and review count on this site is the platform's own published number, read off the live listing and then checked a second time on an independent channel before it was printed. Nothing is averaged across platforms, rounded up or invented, and where the two checks disagreed the figure was left off the page rather than smoothed over. The 19 sailings carry 8,134 traveller reviews between them, and that total is the sum of the real per-listing counts.
Prices are handled the same way and come with a bigger caveat. What you see is a current from-price, the cheapest per-person option on that sailing at the time it was read, running $79 to $175 across the lineup. Fares move with the date, the day of the week, the option you pick and the country you book from, so the live listing is always the authority on what you will actually be charged. A price that reads differently in two places usually means the platform is showing you a localised currency, not that the fare changed.
If you would rather not use our links
Search the operator's name on GetYourGuide or Viator directly, or go to the operator's own website and book there. City Cruises, Classic Harbor Line, NYC Water Cruises and TopView all sell these sailings themselves. We would genuinely rather you got out on the water. The category pages, the FAQ and the guides work exactly as well as research whether or not you ever click a booking link.
Questions about any of this: email us. How the listings are checked in the first place is on the about page.