Machu Picchu now reads the passport you booked with before it reads your ticket, and it is no longer alone. The walk-up visit is being quietly retired at the world's headline sites, and this summer the list that will refuse you without a booked, name-matched, timed slot is long enough to plan a whole trip around.
Treat the ticket like the flight, not the souvenir:
- Book the site before the hotel
- Buy under the exact name on the passport you will carry, because a mismatch is a refused entry
- Read the release date more carefully than the price
- Machu Picchu, Pompeii, the Acropolis, the Louvre in July and August, the Anne Frank House: none a place to walk into on a whim
A cap decides not just how many come but which ones, and that friction lands hardest on the family working around fixed school dates.
