Antelope Canyon Tours from Las Vegas

Upper, Lower or Canyon X

Upper Antelope Canyon has no ladders. The sightseeing tour is about three-quarters of a mile of walking on soft sand with some stairs, about 30-40 minutes inside, and it is the canyon where the famous overhead light beams appear, in the midday slots when the sun is high.

Lower Antelope Canyon runs 50-60 minutes with up to 15 people per group. The floor is mostly flat but you climb moderately steep ladders and stairs with minimal help, which the listings state plainly.

Antelope Canyon X is a separate slot canyon run only by Taadidiin Tours. The hike is 1.5 hours, entered on stairs made of railroad ties with no ropes or ladders, and no bags of any kind are allowed inside, not even clear ones.

Every visit is guided because the canyons sit on Navajo Nation land. The figures below are the canyon tour alone, as the local operators publish them, before any transport from Las Vegas and before the $15 per person Navajo fee.

Which Tours Go Where

Lower Antelope is the most common ticket: Jupiter Legend, MaxTour, Fun Group and the MaxTour two-day trip all include it. Upper Antelope is its own day with National Park Express at $259, and you pick Upper or Lower on the private tour.

The $160 point matters most. Jupiter Legend's $160 includes Lower Antelope, while National Park Express's $160 includes Antelope Canyon X with Upper or Lower as paid upgrades, so the same money buys different canyons. Empire Vacations decides Upper, Lower or Canyon X on the day, and the Marvit van defaults to Canyon X with Lower as an option. For the full trade, read Upper vs Lower and Antelope Canyon X.

The Drive and the Clock

Page, Arizona is about 272 miles (438 km) from Las Vegas. A routing engine gives about 5 hours 22 minutes with no traffic, and the tours budget 4.5-5 hours each way. Pickups run between 4 and 7 AM, which makes a 13-16 hour day, and the Grand Canyon sunrise day stretches to 18 hours with a pickup between 10 PM and 1 AM. For roughly 1-1.5 hours in the canyon you also get Horseshoe Bend, a 1.5-mile round-trip walk.

One detail catches everyone out: the canyon runs on Navajo time, one hour ahead of Las Vegas all year. Page stays on Mountain Standard Time through the year, but the Navajo Nation observes daylight saving while Las Vegas is on Pacific time. On a tour the driver handles it. Driving yourself, it is the most common way to miss a slot. The full logistics are in getting from Las Vegas to Antelope Canyon.

The Walk at Horseshoe Bend

It is a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) round-trip walk on a hardened path to an overlook about 1,000 ft above a 270-degree bend of the Colorado River. Much of the rim has no railing, there is no water on the trail and very little shade, and the National Park Service advises avoiding the hottest part of the day. It is open sunrise to sunset.

Parking is charged by the City of Page, $10 per car, and national park passes do not cover it. Every tour here includes the Horseshoe Bend fee in the price. More detail is in the Horseshoe Bend guide.

What the Other Tours Add

Glen Canyon Dam, which holds back Lake Powell just outside Page, is 710 ft high, and several tours stop at an overlook or pass it on the way. The Lake Powell day adds a 20-minute stop on the lake shore with lunch in Page, and the sunrise day adds 20 minutes at Lake Powell after the Grand Canyon.

MaxTour's small-group day takes a different road home, up the Virgin River Gorge into Utah with a stop in Kanab. Empire Vacations starts with a breakfast stop in St. George, Utah, at your own cost.

Four Ways to Page

The table below shows how each tour travels, where it leaves from and how big the group is, taken from the listings themselves.

What the Transport Choice Costs

The coach is the cheapest way out: $160 for the two big-coach days at the base of the range. The smaller-vehicle days to Antelope and Horseshoe Bend alone cost $189 to $249.99, with smaller groups. Pickup differs: the Marvit van collects from about 200 hotels, MaxTour meets at Paris Las Vegas and Empire at the Luxor.

The plane is the outlier at $769 and cuts the day to 9 hours, back by mid-afternoon, flying from Boulder City over Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell. The Antelope Canyon flight from Las Vegas page has the full day.

The Drive

Las Vegas to Page, Arizona is about 272 miles (438 km) by road. A routing engine gives about 5 hours 22 minutes with no stops. Add the canyon walk, Horseshoe Bend and the return, and a same-day DIY run means more than 10 hours of driving on top of everything else. Splitting it over two days is the realistic way to do it, and it puts you near Page the night before your slot instead of leaving Las Vegas at 4 AM.

The second trap is the clock. Page stays on Mountain Standard Time all year, but the Navajo Nation, where the canyon lies, observes daylight saving, and Las Vegas is on Pacific time. The result: the canyon clock is one hour ahead of Las Vegas all year. A driver who forgets it arrives an hour late for a slot that was printed in canyon time. Set your watch to the canyon time before you leave.

The canyon walks and how to book them are in the Antelope Canyon tickets guide. Every canyon requires a Navajo-authorized guide, so a DIY trip means buying a guided walk, not just a park entry.

What It Costs

These are the published walk-in figures for the canyon tours and the fees around them, each charged separately. The Navajo Nation Tribal Park entry fee is $15 per person per location per day, so two canyons means two fees, and the Horseshoe Bend parking is charged by the City of Page and not covered by national park passes. The full route and the booking steps are in Las Vegas to Antelope Canyon.

The Bag Rule

The Las Vegas operators tell you to leave every bag on the coach. On top of that, Upper Antelope Canyon allows only clear bags inside, and Antelope Canyon X bans every bag including clear ones. Bring a pocket for your phone and leave the backpack at the hotel or in the coach.

The detail sits in Antelope Canyon tickets. It catches people because the drive is long and the day bag feels essential. Water, sunscreen and a jacket for the air-conditioned coach can all wait on your seat.

The canyon walk itself is about an hour, and at Horseshoe Bend, where bags are allowed, you will want the water.

Cameras and Clothing

Phones and small hand-held cameras are fine. Tripods, monopods, selfie sticks, GoPros and video recording are banned on the standard tours, and on the flight day the same ban applies in and around the aircraft. One operator adds that skirts and dresses are not allowed inside the canyon: wear trousers or shorts with closed-toe shoes.

Walking aids and wheelchairs are not allowed in the canyon. Lower Antelope means climbing moderately steep ladders with minimal help, so hands need to be free.

Children

Rules differ by tour. On the Jupiter Legend day children 6 and under need a car seat, which you bring or arrange with the operator. On the MaxTour small-group day children under 6 are not accepted.

The flight requires passengers to be 8 or over with proof of age, and passengers are weighed at check-in. Infants ride on an adult's lap on the National Park Express days. For a family, the Upper Antelope day avoids the ladders of Lower, and the 13-hour Lake Powell day is the shortest of the coach days.

The Light Beams

The beams in the famous photos are an Upper Antelope Canyon effect: direct sun reaching down through the narrow slot. They need the sun high overhead, so they belong to the midday slots and the summer months. A late-afternoon visit or a winter visit will not show them.

No operator publishes an exact calendar of when the beams appear, so treat any claimed beam time with care. The full comparison is in Upper vs Lower Antelope Canyon, and the golden hour day tour times the canyon for the softer late light instead.

Monsoon and Flash Floods

Monsoon storms run from about mid-June through September and are most active July to September. The canyons close for flash-flood risk, and operators cancel tours even at midday when storms upstream threaten the slot. The closure decision is made by the Navajo operators and Navajo Parks and Recreation, not by the Las Vegas tour company.

On 12 August 1997 a flash flood killed 11 hikers in Lower Antelope Canyon. The canyon reopened with guided-only access and fixed metal stairways, which is why every visit today is with a Navajo guide.

If Your Canyon Closes

The day still runs. When the canyon closes, the tours go to Horseshoe Bend anyway, and the Jupiter Legend day also covers the Glen Canyon Dam area and refunds the canyon portion minus processing fees. The tribal park itself closes on Thanksgiving Day, the day after, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, so no tour runs into the canyon on those dates.

Book nothing time-sensitive for the evening of your tour, because several listings say so in capitals.