Every park is bookable. Not every park day is worth it.
Which Yala jeep gets to the leopard first. What the Plitvice boardwalk ticket actually covers. Whether the Grand Canyon runs from Vegas beat driving yourself. Reviews of national park tours in 107 countries.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · Bryce Canyon & Zion National Park from Las Vegas with Lunch, WiFi
An airboat, a cloud forest, a granite valley and a leopard.
Four park days that carry more travellers than anything else on the site. What each one costs and what it actually gets you past the gate.
01The Florida wetlandEverglades National Park Airboat Tour & Wildlife ShowSixty minutes of sawgrass at speed, then the alligator pens on shore. Take an early run before the afternoon storms build.
02The Thai cloud forestDoi Inthanon National Park Eco-Friendly TourThe highest ground in Thailand, a twin-pagoda ridge and two waterfalls. Bring a fleece — it is fifteen degrees cooler up there.
03The granite valleyYosemite Highlights & Giant Sequoias Day Tour from San FranciscoA long day out of San Francisco for Yosemite Valley and the sequoias. The bus leaves before dawn and it is still the cheap way in.
04The leopard driveYALA National Park Safari Tour : Half day or Full day TourYala block one at first light. Half day or full day, jeep and tracker included, and the odds are genuinely good.
Six countries that sell more park days than the rest put together.
Rim roads through the American desert, a Sri Lankan jeep block at dawn, the Kenyan short-grass plains, Croatian travertine terraces, a Canary volcano and a tropical north full of crocodiles. Six places to start, and the best day out in each.
The park day changes completely depending on which continent you are on.
A US park day is a long drive to a viewpoint. A Sri Lankan one is three hours in an open jeep. A Kenyan one starts before the gate opens. Three ways the day is sold, and what it costs to be on it.
Day trip, game drive or a week under canvas.
Same parks, four completely different days. A coach day trip gets you to the famous viewpoint. A game drive gets you to the animals. A trek gets you past both. A multi-day run gets you the dawn and the dusk, which is when parks are worth being in.
No park day on the site gets booked more than these eight.
Every park tour we have reviewed →Ranked the only way that means anything: how many people have actually been on them and come back to say so.
1
Everglades National Park Airboat Tour & Wildlife Show
At Gator Park, you’ll take a 35 to 40-minute narrated airboat ride through Everglades National Park, then watch a 30-minute alligator and wildlife show. Guides such as Cody, John, Tom, and Anthony are known for mixing facts with humor. The $42 price excludes the $8 park fee and transportation.
From · $42
Read our review →
2
Doi Inthanon National Park Eco-Friendly Tour
from $46
3
Clear Kayak Tour of Shell Key Preserve and Tampa Bay Area
from $79
4
Mt. Rainier National Park Highlights Tour
from $150
5
Grand Canyon National Park South Rim Bus Tour from Las Vegas
from $71
6
Wilderness, Wildlife, Glacier Experience from Anchorage
from $199
7
Bryce Canyon & Zion National Park from Las Vegas with Lunch, WiFi
from $169
8
Krka National Park Tour
from $31
The Colorado Plateau is five headline parks inside one long weekend.
Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands and the Grand Canyon sit within a day of each other, and almost every tour sold runs out of Las Vegas, Moab or the South Rim. The difference between them is how many hours you spend on the coach and how close you get to the edge.
Every American park day →
A game drive is not a tour with animals in it.
Reserves run on gate times, block rotations and vehicle limits, and the good sightings happen in the first ninety minutes and the last. What you are paying for is the driver who knows which waterhole the herd used yesterday.
What you actually pay to spend a day inside the fence.
Every park day on the site, grouped by price. Entry tickets and boardwalk days sit at one end; the multi-day camps and private vehicles sit at the other, and the gap between them is mostly transport.
Gate tickets, boardwalk circuits and the short jeep blocks in Sri Lanka and Sharm.
The standard full day: coach to the rim, a Krka boat, a Teide sunset, a Nairobi game drive.
Long-haul days out of a city, glacier cruises, private 4x4s and the multi-day camps.
Three park days that exist nowhere else on earth.
Waterfalls and viewpoints are everywhere. Sixteen lakes falling into each other over travertine dams, a volcano cone above the cloud deck, and a leopard density no other reserve comes close to are not.
Plitvice and Krka
Sixteen terraced lakes spill into one another over travertine dams that are still growing, a few millimetres a year, out of moss and lime. The whole park is walked on boardwalks inches above the water, which is why swimming is banned at Plitvice and why the ticket is timed. Krka, an hour south, is the looser one: a single enormous cascade you can stand almost underneath.
- 1Krka National Park Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,359 reviews
- 2Plitvice Lakes National Park Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,355 reviews
- 3Krka Waterfalls Trip with Boat Cruise and Swimming★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,710 reviews
Teide, Tenerife
The cone tops out at 3,715 metres, which puts the crater floor above the trade-wind cloud deck for most of the year. Days here are a lava-field drive and a cable car; nights are the reason people come, because the same inversion that traps the cloud below also kills the light pollution. The upper trail to the summit needs a free permit booked well in advance.
- 1Teide National Park Full-Day Tour with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,613 reviews
- 2Quad Adventure Tour in Teide National Park★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,492 reviews
- 3Teide National Park Guided Buggy Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 609 reviews
Yala, Sri Lanka
Block one holds the densest leopard population measured anywhere, in scrub and lagoon country you can actually see through. Jeeps enter in timed blocks from first light, and the park closes entirely for the dry September weeks. Half a day is enough to see elephants and buffalo; the leopard usually costs you the full one.
- 1Yala National Park Safari Tours: Morning/Evening/Full Day★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 818 reviews
- 2Full day Safari – Yala National Park – 04.30 am to 06.00 pm with – Janaka safari★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 603 reviews
- 3Yala National Park Wildlife Safari/ Game Drive – by Ajith Safari★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 351 reviews
Four park days that run on somebody else's calendar.
Most of this can be arranged the night before from a guesthouse balcony. These four cannot: they run on daily permit caps, timed entry slots and gates that close on the season, none of which care when your flight lands.
- 013 Day Gorilla Trek at Bwindi National Park via KigaliGorilla trekking runs on a hard daily permit cap per habituated family, sold months ahead. No permit, no walk — there is no gate queue to join.
- 02Plitvice Lakes National Park Guided TourPlitvice sells timed entry with a cap on each slot. Summer mornings, the only hours the boardwalks are walkable, go first.
- 03Yala National Park Safari Tours: Morning/Evening/Full DayYala jeeps enter in fixed blocks from first light, and the park shuts completely for the dry weeks around September.
- 04Teide National Park Full-Day Tour with PickupSunset and stargazing runs go out on one nightly departure, and the road to the crater closes outright when snow falls on it.
Fees, permits, seasons and the vehicle decide more than the price does.
Park entry is almost never in the tour price — check whether the fee is collected at the gate in cash. Then check the vehicle: an open jeep and an air-conditioned coach see completely different amounts of the same reserve. Then the season, because half these parks shut roads for rain, snow or drought. And then the altitude, which is what actually ruins a Teide or a Rocky Mountain morning.
By country — where the gate is
By kind of day — drive, drift, walk or camp
Las Vegas to the Rockies: five parks almost everybody does first.
Las Vegas
Zion & Bryce
Moab
Rocky MountainPark days we have just finished going through.
Everything else we have just been through →
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Timanfaya National Park: Evening Tour with Volcano Dinner
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From Zanzibar: Nyerere National Park Game Drive with Lunch
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Jasper: Winter Wildlife Bus Tour in Jasper National Park
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