Buy Alcatraz Night Tour Tickets

Visiting Alcatraz Island is one of the most rewarding experiences of any trip to San Francisco. However, visitors who wish to visit the prison and island grounds must secure reservations. For over a decade, the National Park Service has implemented a reservation system, which is much different from the ways past generations accessed the Alcatraz Island. The National Park Service strongly recommends making advanced ticket reservations. Reservations secured far enough in advance allow visitors to visit and also eliminate the need to wait in line to purchase tickets.Alcatraz tickets are all inclusive. The ticket price includes the ferry transportation service provided by Alcatraz City Cruises, the cellhouse audio tour provided by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, and the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act fee. For additional information on schedules, prices, and to purchase tickets in advance (tickets are made available about 90 days in advance) please visit the Alcatraz City Cruises.The cellhouse audio tour is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Mandarin. It is also available in Braille in English. If you would like to bypass the audio tour experience, please contact a supervisor in the cellhouse bookstore for a refund.

buy alcatraz night tour tickets

Alcatraz night tour + Silicon Valley tourYou visit Alcatraz Island at night and the next morning you explore the offices of Google, Apple and Facebook. It costs USD 209, including transport.

Alcatraz night visit + Yosemite ParkThis tour costs USD 269, which includes transport. Besides Alcatraz, you get to witness Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite Falls and hike in Yosemite Valley for 4 hours.

Simply amazing! The audio tour was awesome, esp. listening to former wardens and prisoners caught my heart. Recommend the night tour so u can watch the sunset. The best viewpoint is from the entrance to the courtyard Completely worth of money, highly recommended. DominikaSVK

The Alcatraz night tour offers a more personalized option for visiting this top San Francisco attraction. This is also a great option for anyone who has already visited during the day and is looking to experience something a little different.

After you get off the ferry at Pier 33, the Alcatraz night tour starts with a brief overview of what to expect given a park ranger. This is the same as during the day but includes information on additional things to do that evening.

On the Alcatraz Island night tour, you will explore this former federal prison to see what it was like to be a prisoner here. You will walk past and get the chance to enter a few of their solitary confinement cells.

During my last Alcatraz night tour, they opened some of the rooms in the medical area upstairs, where many prisoners stayed when they were ill. Rangers were also on hand to answer questions and provide additional information about these areas.

Not only do they run on a limited schedule, but they also only allow around 300 people per tour. This creates a more intimate visiting experience, but it also creates a high demand for these tickets.

They will tell you all of this when you arrive, so you don't have to worry about writing it all down or bringing it with you. I just want to give you an idea of how long you get to stay on the island during the Alcatraz night tour.

In addition to the Alcatraz night tour tickets, you will also find these other official ticket options. You can purchase all of these directly through the official website for Alcatraz City Cruises. There are some retailers that are also allowed to sell Alcatraz combo tickets that I explain in the section below.

Day Tours: The day tour is the most popular Alcatraz cell house tour. They run daily (except on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day. Several tickets are available each day. All Alcatraz Prison tickets include roundtrip ferry transportation. Learn more about this tour here.

Note: I get questions all the time about purchasing Alcatraz day and night tours from other venues. There are a handful of designated resellers that will allow you to find tickets when they are sold out (a few are recommended below). However, not all tickets are legitimate. If you are unsure, please reach out to me and I'll help you decide if where you plan to buy is offering real tickets. I usually answer back within 24 hours.

If you find that the Alcatraz night tour is booked or you would prefer to go during the day, then check out some of the great combo tour tickets available. These are also great for last minute purchases or if the day tours are sold out as well.

The one I recommend often is the one through GetYourGuide. This Alcatraz tour package includes the day trip to Alcatraz as well as a 1-day ticket for their Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour. You can see several of our most popular attractions with the ease of their bus tour that takes you right to each one. Find out more about the tickets on GetYourGuide.

Other combo tickets are available on GetYourGuide. They've created a round-up of the best offerings from agencies all around town. Some include a visit to Alcatraz as well as a ferry ride to Sausalito, a wine tour, or a bike ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. Find their ticket selection here.

COVID situation: Alcatraz Island is open again. They are selling tickets for the day tours, night tours and behind the scenes tours only. The Cell Block is also now open for the audio tour.

The official website for Alcatraz tour tickets, cityexperiences.com, adds back the canceled tickets to their online ticket sales. The customer service rep told me they update these several times a day, so keep checking for the days you want.

There are also many other companies that sell tickets to Alcatraz in combination with their other tours. If you don't mind paying more and just not doing the other tour, or if it's OK to do the other tour(s) as well, it's worth looking into some of the combination tours for availability.

Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour + Alcatraz. Get Alcatraz tickets plus a 2-day pass on the double-decker tour bus, with stops at many of San Francisco's attractions. Bus tours include a City Tour, City Night Tour, and a Sausalito Tour. Plus a walking tour of Chinatown, ticket for Madam Tussauds's, and more. $139.99. ($10 off if booked online). See Hop On Hop Off & Alcatraz for info and booking.

During the high season, when they are running two evening sailings out to the island, they have about 20 standby tickets for sale (and around 10 tickets during the winter when there is only one evening tour).

Another way of getting Night Tour tickets. Now you can also find tours combining other attractions with the Alcatraz Night Tour. When the night tour is sold out, which it often is, you can check out some of the combo tours for night tour availability.

Note: Need tickets within the next four days? The tour companies that book the combination tours have to give CityExperiences the names of visitors at least four days before the scheduled tour.

The hardest time to get Alcatraz tickets is during the summer tourist season: June, July and August. The Day Tours are usually booked up two months in advance, and the Night Tour and Behind the Scenes Tour are booked up even farther out. It's crucial to book the Alcatraz tours well in advance if you want to visit in summer.

In winter, you may get same-day tickets online or in person, depending on how early you start trying, but you can usually get tickets for most or all of the day tours for the next day, including the coveted Early Bird tour.

Even in winter, there's still a wait to get tickets for the night tours and the Behind the Scenes tours. The Night Tours tend to be sold out about 6 weeks in advance even in the slow season, and the Behind the Scenes tours about 2 weeks in advance.

Generally no. There is an evening tour of Alcatraz, but you are not permitted to stay overnight. However, each year several hundred people are allowed to stay overnight at Alcatraz after having applied for a permit and been granted one.

There are pros and cons of taking a Alcatraz Night Tour over a Day Tour. Some pros for taking a night tour are there are fewer people, you get great views as the sun is setting, you get a free brochure, and there is extra programming available in the evening that is not available during the day. It is also perhaps easier to appreciate the isolated and eerie nature of the prison in the dark than during the day.

While the night tour has a lot of benefits over the day tour, I do wish we had had more time to explore other parts of the island. We would have liked to see more of the museum displays, seen more of the buildings, and hiked some of the short trails to see more of the plants and gardens on the island. Part of the issue is a lack of time as coming over for the evening tour you must leave when the last boat leaves, but the other issue is that some areas are closed during the evening that are open during the day.

The Alcatraz Landing area is well marked and hard to miss. We collected our tickets and met up with our group before getting into the line. They begin allowing people onto the boat about 10 minutes prior to departure and the line moves somewhat slowly as they take pictures of each person or group before they board (photos are available for purchase after the tour).

**Disclaimer: As travel writers, we were provided free tickets from Alcatraz Cruises to review the cruise and tour; however, this article contains only our own honest thoughts and opinions. We did not receive any financial compensation for the writing of this post, do not work for Alcatraz Cruises, and receive no commission for any sales of these tours.**

Sausalito Commuter Ferry - For the real frugal backpacker experience, try the commuter ferry to Sausalito. Again you will get a passing view of Alcatraz and you'll save yourself about 30 bucks. That'll nearly let you stay another night at Pacific Tradewinds Hostel. As of this writing, tickets on the Sausalito Ferry are $8. 041b061a72