The Strip is the easy part. The canyons start two hours out.
Which rim you can actually reach and get back from in a day. What the Hoover Dam run costs once lunch is in it. Whether the helicopter is worth four times the coach seat. Reviews of every tour and every show you can book in Las Vegas.
Two hours outThe Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, the Mojave and a Strip marquee.
The four bookings a first Las Vegas week is built around. What each one costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The big day outGrand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and SkywalkGrand Canyon West and a Hoover Dam stop on one run, with the Skywalk as an add-on. The coach leaves before dawn and it is a long day.
02The desert morningHalf-Day Mojave Desert ATV Tour from Las VegasMojave dunes on a quad, an hour from the Strip. Take the first slot: by noon in summer the sand is unusable.
03After darkLas Vegas Helicopter Night Strip Flight Tour with Optional DinnerTwelve minutes over the Strip with the whole thing lit underneath you. The cheapest way to get above Las Vegas.
04The residencyDavid Copperfield at the MGM Grand Hotel and CasinoCopperfield at the MGM Grand, a small theatre and close-up card work nobody has ever explained. The residency that outlasted the rest.
West Rim, South Rim, or the slot canyon over the state line.
Four kinds of canyon day leave Las Vegas every morning. They cost differently, they take differently long, and only one of them gets you back for a dinner reservation.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk
The West Rim dayClosest rim to the city. Skywalk optional, back by evening.
By helicopterOver the dam and down into the canyon, or twelve minutes above the Strip.
Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe BendA long drive into Arizona for the light inside the slot.
Zion and BryceNorth into Utah. The longest day on the list, and the greenest.
All 166 Grand Canyon days out of Las Vegas →
Six day trips out of Las Vegas, and the best version of each.
Two rims of the Grand Canyon, the dam that made the lake, red sandstone twenty minutes from the casinos, a slot canyon over the Arizona line and the fire-coloured valley an hour north. This is where the good days actually go.
Everything within an hour of the Strip is red rock or water.
Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead and the Colorado runs green out of the far side of it. Red Rock Canyon sits twenty minutes west of the casinos, Valley of Fire an hour north. None of it needs a whole day, which is why most people fit two in.
The Strip runs on residencies, and most of them start at seven.
Cirque acrobats in a theatre built for one show, a magician doing close-up card work for twelve hundred people, and comedy rooms where the ticket costs less than the parking. Take the early sitting and the night is still ahead of you.
The Las Vegas days out more travellers take than any other.
Every Las Vegas tour we have reviewed →The same handful of trips sit at the top of every booking window in town. Here is what earns each of them the slot.
1
Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk
Leave Las Vegas early for Grand Canyon West, with direct access to Eagle Point and Guano Point, a Hoover Dam photo stop, snacks, water, and an air-conditioned ride. Add lunch, the glass Skywalk, a helicopter and Colorado River boat ride, or a West Rim airplane flight.
From · $109
Read our review →
2
Half-Day Mojave Desert ATV Tour from Las Vegas
from $100
3
Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk
from $85
4
Ultimate VIP Hoover Dam Tour from Las Vegas with Lunch
from $59
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, Lunch/Skywalk Options, WiFi
from $90
8
Half-Day Emerald Cave Kayak Tour with Optional Hotel Pickup
from $99
The Strip is four miles long and you will walk more of it than you meant to.
Everything on the Strip →
An observation wheel that shows you the shape of the valley, an open-top bus that makes sense of the distances, and the walk down to Fremont Street where the old neon still is. These three carry more travellers than anything else in town.
The High Roller, or the tower
The wheel at the LINQ turns slowly enough to take the whole valley in, and some pods have a bar in them. The Strat is higher, cheaper, and has rides bolted to the roof for anyone who wants the other kind of view.
Fremont Street and the neon
Downtown is where the signs are: the Plaza, the Golden Nugget, the yard of retired marquees that still light up. A different city from the Strip, and a short ride north of it.
Chef rooms, or the downtown crawl
Two food towns share one address. The Strip restaurants with a famous name over the door, and the downtown places that have been feeding people who live here for decades.
What a day out of Las Vegas actually costs.
Every tour and show on the site, grouped by what it costs. More of the good ones than you would expect come in under the price of a Strip breakfast.
Attraction tickets, observation decks, comedy rooms, walking tours and the short runs out to the sign.
The full-day standards: Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam with lunch, the ATV mornings and most of the residencies.
Helicopter landings, Antelope Canyon, the Utah parks, and laps of the speedway in something with a badge.
Las Vegas in July does not really do afternoons.
For four months of the year the valley sits above a hundred degrees, and anything on open rock, sand or asphalt is finished by eleven in the morning. The town is built around that. Everything worth doing between noon and six is indoors, underground or on the water, and the desert comes back at dusk.
Four Las Vegas bookings that will not wait for you to land.
Most of this town can be sorted from a bar stool the night before. These four run on tribal permits, helicopter weight sheets, resident theatre calendars and a shuttle that pulls out at five in the morning.
- 01Lower Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend Day Tour with LunchLower Antelope sits on Navajo land and only permit-holding guides take people in. Entries are sold by the hour and the middle of the day, when the light drops into the slot, goes first.
- 02Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and SkywalkThe Skywalk is a separate ticket from the coach seat and both are capped. Leaving it to the day means taking whatever entry slot is left.
- 03David Copperfield at the MGM Grand Hotel and CasinoResident shows sell by seat, not by night. The affordable tiers go weeks out, and what is left on the day is the front row or the back wall.
- 04Las Vegas Helicopter Night Strip Flight Tour with Optional DinnerHelicopters fly to a weight sheet and a weather window. Sunset seats go first, and a scrubbed flight rebooks to whenever there is space, not to tomorrow.
Three things you can only do from Las Vegas.
Every big city has museums and a rooftop bar. A glass floor hung over the Grand Canyon, seven stacks of painted boulders in open desert, and a walk inside the wall of a dam are harder to arrange elsewhere.
The Skywalk
The horseshoe of glass at Grand Canyon West hangs about seventy feet out from the rim with a very long way down underneath it. It stands on Hualapai land, the tribe built it and runs it, and no cameras or phones go out onto the walkway, which is why every photograph of it was taken by their own staff. Shoe covers on at the door, and most people manage four steps before they look down.
- 1Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19,535 reviews
- 2Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 7,224 reviews
- 3Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Lunch/Skywalk Options, WiFi★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 5,521 reviews
Seven Magic Mountains
Ten miles south of the Strip, seven stacks of limestone boulders painted in fluorescent colours stand in open desert beside Interstate 15. Ugo Rondinone put them up in 2016 as a two-year installation and they are still standing, because nobody could face taking them away. Most Hoover Dam coaches pull in on the way back.
- 1Small Group Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, 7 Magic Mountains VIP Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,964 reviews
- 2Hoover Dam with Walk On Top Tour and Seven Magic Mountains Stop★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 485 reviews
- 3Hoover Dam Walk-On-Top Tour w/ Seven Magic Mountains & Vegas Sign★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 361 reviews
The Hoover Dam power plant
The full dam tour goes down inside the wall, through tunnels bored into the canyon rock and out onto the generator floor where the Nevada turbines run under terrazzo laid in the nineteen-thirties. The cheaper ticket stops at the viewing platform above it. If you want to be inside the dam rather than on top of it, that is the difference to check before you book.
- 1Grand Canyon West, Hoover Dam Stop and Optional Lunch and Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 19,535 reviews
- 2Grand Canyon West Bus Tour with Hoover Dam and Optional Skywalk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 7,224 reviews
- 3Ultimate VIP Hoover Dam Tour from Las Vegas with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,782 reviews
An hour out of Las Vegas the road runs out and the sand starts.
Nellis Dunes and the Mojave flats are open desert with nothing much in them, which is why every machine in the city ends up out there: quads, side-by-sides, trikes, dirt bikes and the occasional Slingshot. Morning runs only through the summer, and they hose you down at the end of it.
- 1Half-Day Mojave Desert ATV Tour from Las Vegasfrom $100
- 2Nellis Dunes ATV Tour from Las Vegasfrom $95
- 3Las Vegas Desert ATV Experiencefrom $109
Fremont Street kept the neon the Strip threw out.
Five blocks under a canopy screen, the oldest casinos in the city, and a yard full of retired signs that still light up after dark. The Arts District is a few blocks south of it and sells almost nothing to tourists.
Every downtown Las Vegas tour →
By where the day goes
By kind of day: canyon, stage, engine or table
Four days in Las Vegas: one canyon, one dam, one desert morning, one stage.
Mojave dunes
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