Affiliate disclosure
This site earns in one way: commission from GetYourGuide when a reader books a tour through a link here. It earns nothing on the Lincoln Memorial, because the memorial is free. It earns nothing when you book an undercroft ticket yourself, which is the route this site puts first and explains step by step.
What we earn on
Every tour card, comparison table and booking widget on this site links to GetYourGuide with our partner code attached. If you book after clicking one, GetYourGuide pays us a percentage of what you paid. You pay exactly what you would pay going to GetYourGuide directly, because the commission comes out of their margin rather than your booking. Those links are marked nofollow, so they pass no search ranking to anybody.
What we do not earn on, which is most of this site
The Lincoln Memorial is free. There is no entry fee, no ticket, no queue-jump product and no commission to be made on walking up the steps at any hour of the day or night.
The undercroft museum needs a timed ticket, and the National Park Service does not charge for it. Recreation.gov applies a $1 non-refundable service charge per advance ticket, and walk-up tickets, handed out from 8:45 a.m. at the Korean War Veterans Memorial kiosk, cost nothing at all. We are paid nothing on either route, and both are written out in full on the tickets page, which is the most linked page here.
The conflict, stated plainly
One product in our catalogue resells exactly that free ticket, and we earn a commission if you buy it. Its own listing says: “The National Park Service does not charge for these tickets, though they do apply a $1 reservation fee, which is included in your convenience package.” We quote that sentence on the tickets page and in our review of the product, next to the free alternatives, because a reader who buys it should be buying convenience with their eyes open rather than buying an entry they thought was compulsory. Plenty of people will pay it gladly on their one morning in Washington. That decision belongs to them, with the facts in front of them.
What commission does not buy
No operator has paid for a place on this site, for a review, for a rating or for a position in a table. Nobody outside has seen a page before it was published. The ratings and review counts printed here are the ones on the GetYourGuide listings on the day we checked them, and not one has been rounded up: a tour with four reviews is described as a tour with four reviews, and a tour with none is described as having none. Where a product is worse value than doing the same thing yourself, the page says so — which is the only reason to believe the pages where it says the opposite.
Who we are not
Not the National Park Service, not Recreation.gov, and not a tour operator. This is an independent guide written by a licensed DC guide; see about. Questions about any of this: get in touch.