We decided to go on a weekday because we figured the crowds would be easier to handle - and while we were probably right in some regard, we made the sore mistake of choosing a weekday in June. Anyone with any experience with public schools in North Jersey will know that there are a few places notorious for being the destination of many schools' end-of-the-year field trip, and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island is one of them. (Various resorts in the Poconos are other top choices, as are art museums in the city and historic Philadelphia - and once I even went on a June field trip to Amish Country [Lancaster County, Pennsylvania], which was definitely the best end-of-the-year field trip ever.)
So while we missed the weekend crowds, we were inundated with hordes (no, seriously - hordes) of middle-school-age kids bouncing off the walls, screaming, running back and forth, and generally being obnoxious and terrible. I can understand the impulse of taking kids that age to Ellis Island, but you really would be better off taking kids of a high school age to the site - they would probably understand it better and actually read the trillions of text-based exhibits. The kids who were there seemed to have been given a scavenger hunt to find facts and information around the site, but they seemed to better enjoy running from clue to clue than actually learning about what they were finding.
That being said, the first two hours of our jaunt into the river was pretty rough, but once the school kids cleared out just after lunch time, things quieted down and we were left with mostly fellow adult tourists, which I can deal with much easier.
A few words to the wise about visiting the Statue of Liberty (which I always want to call "Shashoo Liberty" for some reason) - book your ferry tickets early, your pedestal tickets earlier, and your crown tickets months in advance.
You must take a ferry to get to Liberty and Ellis Islands, of course, but many people (including me!) don't realize that you need to advance-purchase tickets to the observation pedestal under the statue (they are typically sold out one to two weeks in advance), and if you want to climb all the way up to the statue's crown, those tickets need to be bought three to six months in advance. Crazy! I don't know why I didn't realize these things, but at least we were able to get ferry tickets online ahead of time.
So, without further a-blah-blah, here come some pictures. I am starting out with pictures from the visit my dad, Patrick and I took to Liberty State Park the day Patrick arrived in New Jersey.
I like this one.
26 more images below; click any one to make it bigger in Photobucket.
