Affiliate disclosure
Three activities on this site link to GetYourGuide. If you book one of them after following a link from here, GetYourGuide pays me a commission. You pay exactly what you would have paid going direct — the commission comes out of their margin, not your pocket. Fort McHenry’s own admission earns me nothing at all, because the National Park Service sells it at the gate and there is no affiliate link to it.
What earns, and what does not
It is a short list, so here it is in full.
- Earns a commission: the Inner Harbor sightseeing cruise ($34), the helicopter tour over downtown ($78) and the Fells Point culinary food tour ($109), all booked through GetYourGuide.
- Earns nothing: the $15 adult entrance fee, the $45 annual pass, the America the Beautiful pass, and every one of the eight fee-free days in 2026. Those are Park Service transactions and I am not in them.
- Earns nothing: the Fort McHenry Tunnel toll, which is a Maryland Transportation Authority road charge and not a visit to anything.
- Earns nothing: the visitor center, the film, the seawall, the grounds and everything else outside the wooden fence, because they are free. That is most of the site’s traffic, on the page that tells you not to spend money.
The incentives here point the wrong way, and that is deliberate
The most-read pages on this site talk people out of spending: that the flag is in Washington so the drive may not be worth it, that most of the park is free, that the registers open two hours after the gates, that nothing bookable includes admission. None of those earn a cent. If the goal were revenue I would write the opposite of all four, and you would be able to tell.
The commission does not decide the ratings either. The helicopter carries the highest average here and the review says plainly that it rests on 25 reviews. The most expensive of the three is the one flagged hardest as having nothing to do with Fort McHenry. Both of those cost me bookings and both are true. All three, reviewed.
How the links are marked
Every outbound booking link and widget on this site goes to GetYourGuide, opens in a new tab, and carries rel="nofollow noopener". Nothing is disguised as editorial text. If a link leaves this site, the destination is named.
Questions about any of this: get in touch.