Is A New York State Lifetime Parks Pass Worth It?

Back in December, we made our annual 6 hour Christmastime sojourn to spend time with family in far western New York. We ended up stopping only once at a rest area to stretch our legs. You just never know what you’re going to find in these places.

Did you know that New York State Thruway rest areas sometimes have a Zoltar fortune telling machine, as seen in the movie Big? I didn’t. I didn’t find out my fortune, but I did see a couple of fully grown adults playing the claw game around midnight. Pity, they didn’t win anything.

I looked through the display of tourist brochures advertising whitewater rafting, roadside attractions and historic homes. And one in particular caught my eye:

A brochure for lifetime New York State hunting and fishing licenses, and parks passes.

A New York Adventure license? Literally a License to Have Adventures?? Sign me up!

I’m aware of the annual New York State parks passes. In fact, we’ve gotten them as Christmas presents in the past. So, the alarm bells go off in my head. A lifetime pass?? Meaning, you pay it once and it’s done? That’s pretty incredible. Rarely do you see a lifetime pass for anything.

Like other personal finance bloggers, Marge and I strategically buy things in the largest size possible to save money, and sometimes bring this strategy to its logical conclusion. I make an annual trip to BJ’s using a free membership offer in the mail so I can buy a year’s worth of toothpaste, toilet paper, etc. And Marge has been told that she’s the only person who buys an 18-month membership at her gym. It’s worth it because the price per month is so low, much cheaper than if you were paying month-to-month. A month-to-month plan would work if you plan on giving up like a punk. But Marge has been going a few times a week for a few years now.If it’s something you’re going to use, it’s usually worth signing up for the longest possible timeframe.

So what about our state parks? Well, hiking and exploring has been a part of our relationship since the beginning. In 2004, thanks to a massively delayed flight, I got a free ticket to anywhere Spirit Airline flew. The most interesting place to fly seemed like Denver, so we bought Marge a ticket and right after we graduated college, we hopped on a plane to Colorado. Mainly we went to see the Rocky Mountains.

Cub Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park

Even as far back as spring 2001 we visited Thacher Park (one of the New York state parks covered by the pass) on what might’ve been my first trip to the Albany area.

Thacher Park overlook, spring 2001

Since then we’ve done a lot of camping around New York, done hikes looking for letterboxes around New York, gone snow-shoeing in New York state parks, go sun-bathing at our only local beaches, those at New York state park lakes, and even had our “engagement photos” (actually just photos pasted onto customized Jones Soda bottles as wedding favors) taken at a New York state park.

Here’s a painting Marge made of a view from our state park campsite in the Thousand Islands.

We  love the New York State Parks system. I’d go to more if I had the time, but right now we at least go camping once a year, and also make it out to a few other state parks during the year either for hiking or beachgoing.  We do enough of this that sometimes Marge and I will get a New York State annual park pass for Christmas. This is a sticker you put on your car that lets you enter any state park for free. Entry fees usually range from $6-$8, so that adds up after a while.

Maeby enjoying a local state park

But this was the first time I’ve ever heard of a LIFETIME pass. Instead of a sticker on your car, it’s a logo on your drivers license. That way, it goes with the person instead of the car, which seems fair enough, and there’s no extra paper or license to carry. What if your family has two cars? You can’t move the sticker from car to car. I assume that as long as someone in the car has the lifetime pass, the rest of the people in the vehicle are free.

Quiet time snowshoeing

So what does it all cost?

A  lifetime pass is $750. But you also get a $100 State Parks gift card. We’d definitely use that for our camping trip. So the price of the Lifetime pass is actually $650. For comparison, an annual pass is $65, so it’s about ten years’ worth of annual passes.

Assuming that an average park entance fee is $6.50 (for simplicity’s sake!) it would take 100 day trips to state parks to make up the cost over a lifetime, assuming the average park entrance fee doesn’t increase, which I assume it would eventually, so it would probably be less than 100 visits to make up the lifetime cost.

Park pavaillion in the Thousand Islands

One  hundred hiking and beach trips sounds like a lot, but remember, that’s over a lifetime. The best time to get the lifetime pass would be as soon as you get a driver’s license at age 16 or 17. Then you’d literally have a lifetime of free park visits in front of you.

Kayaking on Paradox Lake, another NYS park

Being in our early 30’s, I hope Marge and I still have a lot of lifetime ahead of us. And after retiring, I hope to have a lot more time for hobbies like hiking, kayaking, snow-shoeing, etc. Assuming we retire early, there could be a lot more time to make those one hundred park visits.

The major problem with a lifetime pass is that we only live very near to one park, Peebles Island State Park. And since they only charge to park from from April to October, when I go snow-shoeing, I don’t have to pay anyway.

Grizzle Ocean, a hike from Putnam Pond NYS Park, 2005

One thing that could really make a lifetime pass a waste of money is if we made a major move and didn’t live anywhere near New York state. Then it would never get used! But it’s hard to predict something like that. Maybe if we plan to move out of state, we could rush and get all of our one hundred visits in before we leave!

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Addendum! 

Adding a kink to our assessment, I’ve found out that New York State lets anyone 62 years old and older enter state parks for free. They call it the Golden Park Program.  So there is a specific end to the useful life of a lifetime pass: Age 62. Since we are 33 years old now, we have 29 years worth of potential usage of the lifetime pass. One hundred park visits divided by 29 years is 3.4 visits per year. Basically, we’d have to visit 4 state parks per year to make this pass worth it.

Should I buy it? Do you think a lifetime parks pass is worth it? Have you ever heard of such a thing?

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