What the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Cost, End to End

This is a free attraction with an expensive access problem. Everything below is the cost of solving that problem, and the honest answer changes with how many of you there are.

What the lights themselves cost

Nothing. No ticket, no gate, no donation expected. Some households run a charity box and several sell hot chocolate from their driveways, and both are optional. Twenty dollars in cash covers anything you might want on the blocks.

Anything advertising a ticket price for the display is selling transport. That is a useful thing to buy and it is not admission — the visiting page sets out the difference.

The four ways to pay, side by side

Subway fares are approximate and the coach column uses the $45 floor. The car is one number however many of you there are.

Doing it yourself: about six dollars a head

Two subway fares each way is genuinely the cheapest way to see the Dyker Heights Christmas lights, and for two people staying in Manhattan it is hard to argue with. What it costs instead is time: forty-five to fifty-five minutes on the train from Times Square and ten to fifteen minutes walking, uphill, at each end.

The wrinkle is the journey home. At nine o'clock on a December Saturday you are walking back to the station in the cold with several thousand other people. Plenty of visitors do exactly that and enjoy it. Getting there has both station walks, and going without a tour argues the case properly.

A coach seat: $45 to $95 a person

Seven coaches run from Midtown. The cheapest is forty-five dollars and is guided in Portuguese and Spanish; the cheapest English departure is fifty-five, and the widest circuit is ninety-five and adds four Manhattan stops around the hour in Brooklyn.

What the fare buys beyond the ride is judgement. Coaches cannot enter the display streets, so a guide walks your group to the two best blocks and orients you, which is the part that is genuinely hard to get right alone on a first visit. The bus tours page compares all seven, and a Dyker Heights Christmas Lights bus tour is the most-booked of them.

A private car: $399 to $999 for the vehicle

Three private vehicles run to these blocks. The prices are per car and not per person: $399 for up to six, $649 for up to five, $999 for a limousine, SUV or van seating six. Two include a licensed guide who walks the neighbourhood with you; the third excludes a guide altogether and gives you a chauffeur.

The arithmetic is simple. At two people a car costs four times the coach seats. At six it costs about twenty-two dollars a head more, and it collects you from your door and can drive the streets so nobody has to walk. The private tours page does the sum at every party size.

What is never included, whatever you pay

• Gratuities. Excluded on every listing here, and tipping a guide is customary in New York.
• Food and drink. Excluded on all the coaches. Bring cash.
• Hotel pickup. Excluded on every coach; only the private cars collect you.
• Admission. Because there is none, on anything.

What else the same evening could cost you

It is worth pricing this against the alternative. A December evening in Manhattan is rarely a cheap one: a rink session, a show, or dinner somewhere with a tree in the window will all take more than a coach seat, and none of them involves eighty households competing to out-decorate each other for free.

Several of the departures also finish somewhere useful rather than back where they started — at a Midtown winter market with a free-admission rink, or beside the Rockefeller Center tree. That turns a four-hour tour into most of an evening, which changes what the fare is really buying. The holiday markets page has which ends where.

Where the money in a coach fare actually goes

Return coach travel from Midtown, a guide for the hour on the ground, and the operator's costs in between. That is it. There is no admission to pay onward, no entry fee held back and nothing collected on the night, because there is nothing to collect for.

What is never in the fare is worth repeating: gratuities, on all eleven listings, and food and drink on every coach. Hotel pickup is excluded on every coach as well — only the private cars collect you. The bus tours page sets out what each of the seven covers.

The cheapest mistake to make

Booking on price alone and finding out on the night that your departure runs in a language you do not speak. A pair of these products are guided in Portuguese and Spanish with no English departure, and one of them is the forty-five dollar floor that makes every price comparison look impressive.

The second cheapest mistake is booking a seven o'clock departure with a small child, and the third is assuming there will be a toilet. All three are avoidable in the two minutes it takes to read a listing properly. The dates page lists every start time side by side.

The one cost nobody prices in

Time. Doing it yourself from Midtown is about three hours door to door once you count the train, the walk, the hour on the blocks and the journey home. A coach is three and a half to four, and it removes all the navigation. A private car is three and a half and removes the walking as well.

On a short trip to New York that difference is worth putting a number on, because the evening you save is an evening you spend somewhere else. The cheapest option is rarely the one that costs the least.

So what should you actually book?

One or two people, budget matters: the subway, and read the route page first.
One or two people, first visit to New York: a coach seat. The guide is worth the money the first time.
A family of four: a coach, unless somebody cannot walk for an hour.
Five or six people: price the car. It is usually within a few dollars a head and it is a completely different evening.
Anyone with mobility difficulties: the car, at any party size. It is the only option that does not require the walk.

The lights are free; what you are really pricing is the hour either side of them. Every departure is on Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Tours.