Hudson Yards & the Vessel

Exploring New York City's newest playground.

Hudson Yards is the city’s newest neighborhood with multitudes of high-rise buildings, shops, restaurants, the Vessel, an art center with much more to come. With all the buzz around it, everyone was looking forward to a visit to explore. Neil and I took a quick trip alone days after opening to ensure a wheelchair experience would be enjoyable.

SO.. here’s our experience with the Vessel. Free tickets, which are required for entry, are available online 8am EST two weeks prior to visiting. Same day tickets are available 9:30am EST on a first-come, first-serve basis for various time slots during the day. I tried booking online tickets several days in a row without much luck and finally decided to email them with screenshots of my various issues. They extended 6 VIP tickets to us meaning we weren’t constrained to a specific date or time which is great when we need to consider the weather in our outdoor planning.

Feeling fortunate we were excited for our venture! The day of our visit, we explored the mall area then went over to the Vessel to embark on what was supposed to be the highlight of our day. I went up to one of the staffs asking where the entry was to the ramp and explained we had a wheelchair user in our party. She pointed it out so I called the rest of the family over where another staff scanned our tickets for entry clearly seeing we have a wheelchair with us. Once inside, we made our way to the elevator for the big surprise, the elevator was down for more than five hours already that day! The staff manning the elevator told us we can try to wait and see if it gets fixed since the techs were working on it all day.

Can you imagine our shock at their disconnect of not saying anything to us about the elevator prior our entry ? We certainly would not have wasted our tickets knowing Annie wasn't getting the full experience that day. We also learnt the elevator only goes to the top of the Vessel, not every landing, which means only one limited vantage point for a wheelchair user. Disappointed to say the least, we stayed put taking selfies and people watch while Neil took Rayan and Diya up the stairs for their visit. There were no other wheelchair user for the 20 minutes we were around however at least 5 elderly asked about the elevator status. Did we enjoy our visit? Not really because only half of us got the full experience.

The stores at Hudson Yards are mostly on the high end side with a handful that is low-mid range. There is no public seating in the mall however the few stores we visited had small seating areas. Restaurants vary in cuisine and price range, spacing and seating appear to be poorly designed for a wheelchair. Coupled with long waiting lines mealtime, we purposely did not make dinner plans at Hudson Yards.

Suggested Duration: 2-3 hours (30 minutes is plenty of time to explore the Vessel itself)

Important Tips & Accessibility:
- Best to contact them on the day of visiting to find out the elevator status. If you have tickets for a specific day/time and there are elevator issues, ask them to honor your tickets for another time that works to your convenience.
- Wheelchair accessible by elevator which only stops at the top floor with a limited area to wheel around.
- Guide dogs are welcome.
- It’s Free to visit, however tickets are required. Advance tickets can be booked two weeks prior online each day at 8am EST. Same day tickets are available 9:30am EST on a first-come, first-serve basis for various time slots during the day. C lick here for the link .
- The Vessel is New York City newest public structure making it quite popular. While the area around is crowded, the Vessel itself is not, however this may change during the warmer months.

Location:
10 Hudson Yards (34th Street & 10th Ave)
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 332-204-8500
  https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com

Email: vessel@hudsonyardsnewyork.com

Schedule: 10am-9pm daily

Tickets: Free

Dining: We only snacked here and found the food court area to be accessible. Click here to view more information on Hudson Yard's Dining website.

Public Transportation: The M34-SBS, M12 & M11 bus lines stop nearby.

Important: Information is subject to change, please visit www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/ for the most up to date details.
Sep 2024