Las Vegas books out fast. The canyon books out faster.
Which coach actually reaches a canyon rim, what the Skywalk adds, and which residency is worth the seat. Reviews of every tour you can book in Las Vegas.
03A slot canyon, a green river, red sandstone and a wheel over the Strip.
Four bookings a first Las Vegas week gets built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The long day eastLower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend Day Tour with LunchLower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend in one run. Five hours of driving buys the two photographs everyone comes home with.
02The morning on waterHalf-Day Emerald Cave Kayak Tour with Optional Hotel PickupA kayak into Emerald Cave below Hoover Dam, back on the Strip by lunch. The cool half of a summer day.
03The half day westSmall Group: Valley of Fire Half Day Tour from Las VegasValley of Fire, an hour north, where the sandstone folds over on itself. Shorter than the canyon and nearly as strange.
04The one you do on arrivalHigh Roller Wheel Admission Ticket at The LINQHalf an hour of slow rotation over the middle of the Strip. Best after dark, and it is open until midnight.
West Rim, South Rim, or straight over the top in a helicopter.
The Grand Canyon is a day trip from Las Vegas three different ways, and they are not the same day. Two and a half hours of desert to the West Rim and the Skywalk, four and a half to the South Rim and the view off the postcards, or forty minutes of rotor noise to a landing on the canyon floor.
Six ways out of Las Vegas, and the best day in each.
A canyon rim two hours east, a dam holding back the Colorado, red sandstone thirty minutes west, a slot canyon on Navajo land that lights up at noon, a desert cut with quad tracks, and a Strip that only resolves from the air.
Half of what Las Vegas is famous for sits two hours outside it.
Coaches leave the Strip before dawn for the canyon rims, the dam, Antelope Canyon and the Zion to Bryce loop. The desert does the work, the hotel keeps your room, and you are back in time to lose money.
The Las Vegas tours more travellers take than any other.
Every review on the site →The desert days and the tickets that fill months ahead, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk
See Grand Canyon West, Eagle Point, Guano Point, Hoover Dam, and optional Skywalk or helicopter rides on a full-day trip from Las Vegas.
From · $109
Read our review →
2
Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop, Breakfast, Lunch & Skywalk
from $94
3
Half-Day Mojave Desert ATV Tour from Las Vegas
from $100
4
Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk
from $85
5
Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend Day Tour with Lunch
from $160
6
Las Vegas Helicopter Night Strip Flight Tour with Optional Dinner
from $89
7
Grand Canyon + Hoover Dam View + WiFi (Skywalk/lunch options)
from $119
8
Half-Day Emerald Cave Kayak Tour with Optional Hotel Pickup
from $99
Cirque, magicians, mentalists and the tribute circuit.
This city sells more show seats than anywhere else in America, and most of them go before the plane lands. Three worth the ticket, then the rest sorted by the kind of night you want.
What a day out of Las Vegas actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A surprising number of the good ones come in under a Strip dinner.
Observation decks, self-guided audio walks, downtown food crawls and the short runs into the desert.
The full-day standards: the canyon coaches, Hoover Dam, the Emerald Cave paddle and most show seats.
Helicopter landings, Antelope Canyon with Horseshoe Bend, and the exotic-car afternoons.
The Strip reads better from four hundred feet up.
Everything on the Strip →
At street level it is four miles of pavement, a lot of queueing and one pedestrian bridge too few. From the High Roller, the STRAT deck or a helicopter after dark it turns back into the thing people flew in for.
High Roller, or the STRAT deck
Half an hour of slow rotation over the middle of the Strip, with an open-bar cabin if you want one. The STRAT is higher, cheaper, further north, and has three rides bolted to the roof.
The Strip by helicopter
Twelve minutes over the neon from a helipad just off the Boulevard. Short, loud, and the only vantage point that fits the whole city into one frame.
Downtown and Fremont Street
Five blocks of old casinos under a screened canopy, with the shrimp cocktails and the dive bars the Strip priced out. Walk it with a guide, or eat your way down it.
Three things you cannot do anywhere but Las Vegas.
Desert cities are common. A glass floor cantilevered over a canyon rim, a cave you paddle into below a hydroelectric dam, and two acres of dead casino signs are not.
The Skywalk
Seventy feet of horseshoe-shaped glass juts off the West Rim with four thousand feet of nothing underneath it. The land is Hualapai, your own camera stays in a locker, and the shoe covers they hand you are not optional. Every West Rim coach sells it as an add-on, and almost nobody who pays regrets it.
- 1Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19,535 reviews
- 2Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop, Breakfast, Lunch & Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 12,194 reviews
- 3Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 7,224 reviews
Emerald Cave
A few miles downstream of Hoover Dam the Colorado runs cold, clear and improbably green. Paddle into a limestone alcove around mid-morning and the light comes up through the water until the whole cave reads bottle-green. Arrive after lunch and the angle has gone; it is just a cave.
- 1Half-Day Emerald Cave Kayak Tour with Optional Hotel Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,978 reviews
- 2Emerald Cave Kayak Tour: Scenic Paddle with Optional Shuttle★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,858 reviews
- 3Emerald Cave Express Kayak Tour with Scenic & Historic Stops★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,522 reviews
The dead signs
When a casino is imploded the sign usually outlives it. North of Fremont Street two acres hold the Stardust script, the Moulin Rouge letters and a stack of arrows nobody has switched on in forty years. Go at dusk, when the restored ones are relit and the rest are silhouettes.
- 1Mojave Desert, 7 Magic Mountains, Vegas Sign Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 334 reviews
- 2Elvis Wedding with Las Vegas Sign Photos Included★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 180 reviews
- 3California Desert, Seven Magic Mountains and Las Vegas Sign★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 156 reviews
Four Las Vegas bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged from a bar stool an hour beforehand. These four run on tribal permits, daily caps, resident calendars and an aircraft fleet that fills months out.
- 01Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend Day Tour with LunchLower Antelope sits on Navajo land and only licensed guides take groups in. Entry is capped, and the midday hours that produce the light beams go first.
- 02Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and SkywalkThe Skywalk is a timed add-on with a daily cap. Coaches carrying it sell out well ahead of the ones that only stop at the rim.
- 03Grand Canyon Deluxe Helicopter Tour with Landing from Las VegasOnly a fixed number of aircraft may land in the canyon each day. Weekends go first, and a weather cancellation pushes everybody into the next slot.
- 04“O” by Cirque du Soleil at BellagioThe big residencies go dark two nights a week and the calendar moves around the performers. Same-day seats exist. The good ones do not.
When Las Vegas hits 110, the shade stops being optional.
From June the afternoon runs past forty degrees and the canyon coaches leave at five in the morning to get ahead of it. Everything else moves indoors or onto water: the generator floor inside the dam, the cave paddle on the Colorado, an air-conditioned theatre, and the observation decks that stay open until midnight.
Hoover Dam is a day out, not a photo stop.
Most canyon coaches pause on the bypass bridge for eight minutes and call it done. The dam is worth a morning: down the lifts to the generator floor, then onto the green water in Black Canyon and a paddle into Emerald Cave while the light is still coming through it.
- 1Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalkfrom $109
- 2Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop, Breakfast, Lunch & Skywalkfrom $94
- 3Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalkfrom $85
Fremont Street still looks the way Las Vegas is supposed to look.
The Strip went corporate and glass. Five blocks north the old signs are still burning under the canopy, and the tours that go up there are cheaper, shorter and considerably stranger.
Every night out in Las Vegas →
By where the day goes
By kind of night, or kind of drive
The run almost every first Las Vegas trip ends up doing.
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