On my return trip to NYC this May, I'd like to take one of the evening cruises to see the lights at night. Does anyone have experience with any of them? Is one tour group better than another?

Seeing the lights at night was one of my favorite experiences and I think it'd be a great view from the harbor.

Thanks,
Barb

I took the New York Circle Line 2-hour Harbor Lights Cruise when I was in NYC the end of May. It was beautiful and an interesting and new ay to see several different parts of the city. Heads up, it was COLD on the boat and I suggest bringing something warmer than what you might be wearing around the city. By the end of the cruise I was freezing. Our tour guide guy was pretty full of interesting facts and a great asset to our trip.
We got to cruise past Lady Liberty, he showed us where the Towers would have been standing, and my favorite part was being able to sail under several of the bridges, where else do you get that view? They are amazing.
My only complaint? It was a harbor lights cruise but we didn't see much of the night portion of it. We did get to see the sunset (again, beautiful) but since we started to sail kind of early, the lights seemed only to turn on and it start to get dark when shortly after that we were getting off the boat. This may be because it's hard to always be able to time that stuff perfectly, but this didn't take from the overall beauty.

Overall - I loved it, I think it's a great experience and definitely breathtaking.

Thank you, that's very useful. We'll need to remember to bundle up!

Thanks,
Barb

I've taken the harbor lights cruise twice (Circleline). It was really nice, and although the commentator was a little corny at times, he was a lot of fun and he told us stuff about NYC that I never knew, pointed out the who's who and what's what of the buildings we sailed by and included the condos/apartment buildings of present day actors as well as buildings of historical significance. The only draw back on the second cruise was a group of older children and adults sitting together who absolutely refused to shut up, they talked the entire time and I think if you asked them about anything they saw they couldn't tell you because they were not paying a bit of attention. The commentator does ask several times though his spiel to refrain from conversation but apparently these people felt the rules didn't apply to them! The last cruise we were on was in August and it was dark when we came back so we really got the effect of the beautiful NYC skyline at night.

we took the circle line harbor tour ("city lights" for nighttime tour) and it was breathtaking. great service.

if you buy the City Pass, a pass is included to do circle line boat tour. picks up around pier 42?