Blue Mountains Tours from Sydney

What is included, and what is not

The road trip and the Three Sisters come with every tour. Almost everything else depends on the listing, and the difference is often the reason to pick one over another.

Usually included

• Return transport from central Sydney, from selected hotels or a fixed meeting point
• A driver who guides, with live commentary
• National park fees
• The Echo Point stop for the Three Sisters
• At least one more lookout and time in Katoomba or Leura

Often not included

• Scenic World rides. Tours 1, 2, 4 and 5 include them. Tour 3’s listing says included in one place and not included in another, so ask. Tours 6 to 12 do not ride, or charge it as an extra
• Lunch. Included on tours 6, 7, 10 and 12, and on the all-inclusive option of tours 1 and 2. On tours 3, 4, 5 and 8 you pay for your own in Leura or Katoomba
• A zoo or wildlife park. Sydney Zoo on tours 2, 3, 5 and 7, Featherdale on tours 4 and 11, either on tour 1, a working farm on tour 8
• The ferry home. Included on tours 1, 2, 3 and 11. Tour 4’s listing says the ferry ticket is at your own expense
• Hotel pickup. Tours 2, 5 and 6 meet at a fixed point instead
• Tips for the guide

Check the inclusions list on the Viator listing before you pay. Several of these listings contradict themselves between the inclusions and the itinerary, and the word inclusive is used loosely. Where a listing disagrees with itself, message the operator through Viator and keep the reply.

One trade-off is worth knowing. A wildlife park stop adds about an hour of animals and takes about an hour away from the mountains. Neither is wrong, but you cannot have both in 10 hours.

What a day trip looks like

Most tours in this group run 9.5 to 10.8 hours. The order of stops changes by operator, and the voucher gives the exact times, but the shape of the day is close to this.

• 6:40am to 8:10am. Pickup from a central Sydney hotel or meeting point. Tours that loop several hotels spend the first 30 to 60 minutes collecting people.
• About 8:30am. Zoo or wildlife park stop, on the tours that include one: Sydney Zoo or Featherdale Wildlife Park, both on the way west. Listings give it 1 to 1.5 hours.
• About 9:30am. First lookout or a waterfall walk, usually at Wentworth Falls. Tours stop here for 45 minutes to an hour; the walk-focused tour spends 2.5 hours, including a 90 minute walk.
• About 10:30am. Echo Point and the Three Sisters, for 15 to 45 minutes. Every tour stops here, and this is where the buses bunch up. Jamie Does Life filmed it busy with tour groups, and on an earlier visit found the view hidden by cloud for about 10 minutes before it cleared.
• About 11:30am. Scenic World, on tours that include it, for 1 to 2 hours. Aquarius Traveller needed 2 to 3 hours to do every ride and the boardwalk, so a tour gives you the highlights.
• About 1:00pm. Lunch in Katoomba or Leura. Some tours bring it; on others you buy your own.
• About 2:30pm. Leura village, another lookout or a short walk. A few tours head north to Govetts Leap at Blackheath, which Aquarius Traveller rates the best lookout after Echo Point.
• About 3:30pm. Leave the mountains.
• 5:00pm to 6:30pm. Back in the city. Tours 1, 2, 3 and 11 swap the last stretch of road for a ferry into Circular Quay.

Sunset tours run the same road later in the day. They leave between 9:30am and 12:30pm depending on the season, reach the lookouts in the afternoon and get back to Sydney after dark, as late as 10pm in midsummer.

What the train version looks like, for comparison: Josh Goes Slow left Central at 6:50am and was home at 6:20pm, nine and a half hours door to door. Jamie Does Life spent just over 4 hours on the ground in Katoomba. A tour covers more stops than either of them managed, because it drives between them.

Pickup and getting there

Every day trip on this page starts in central Sydney, but not all of them collect from your hotel. Some run a loop of named hotels in Darling Harbour, The Rocks, Circular Quay and around Pitt Street. Others meet at one fixed point, such as the coach bays at Central Station or a corner of George Street near Haymarket. The voucher names yours.

Several operators confirm the exact pickup time by text or email the day before. Be outside the hotel or at the stop 5 to 10 minutes before it. Buses run a fixed loop and do not wait long.

Missing the pickup is the easiest way to lose the day. A tour cannot come back for you once it is on the motorway. If you are running late, ring the operator’s number on the voucher before the pickup time, not after. One operator also refuses meeting point changes inside 24 hours of the tour.

Private tours work differently. The driver collects you from your hotel or address at a time you choose, and the day bends around you.

Ferry tours end somewhere else. You leave by road and come back on the water into Circular Quay, so plan dinner or the trip to your hotel from there.

Going on your own instead? Katoomba is roughly 2 hours by train from Central, and Jamie Does Life left from platform 5. The guide page has the full train plan, with return times and how to get around once you arrive.

What to bring

Katoomba sits at about 1,000 m. It is colder than Sydney.

• A warm layer and a wind jacket. Jamie Does Life arrived to a cold, gusty morning and kept saying so on camera. Echo Point is exposed, and the wind comes straight up the valley.
• Walking shoes with grip. Jamie Does Life measured the walk from Katoomba Falls to the Three Sisters at about 1.6 to 2 km with a few steep sections and steps, and wet sandstone is slippery.
• Water and a snack. Lookouts have no shops. Scenic World has cafes, and Josh Goes Slow warns the food inside costs more because there is nowhere else to buy it.
• Sunscreen and a hat in summer. UV is strong at altitude even on mild days.
• A card or cash for extras. Scenic World tickets, the koala photo and lunch are extras on some tours. The listing says which.
• A torch, if your tour stays after dark. Aquarius Traveller heard from a local that the lights on the Katoomba Falls night walk are often broken.

Leave large bags at the hotel. Several operators do not allow luggage, prams or wheelchairs on board, and you carry everything on every walk.

How to choose

We compared 98 day trips, 44 private tours and 8 sunset tours that leave Sydney for the mountains. They fall into six kinds.

What the dearer trips add is mostly control. A smaller group gets through Echo Point faster and fits narrower tracks. Included entries mean nobody queues at the Scenic World desk while the bus waits. Private tours add the one thing group tours cannot, which is staying at a lookout until the cloud lifts.

Want more time on foot? Blue Mountains hiking tours are built around a longer walk rather than the lookout circuit. Canyoning, with ropes and wetsuits, gets its own page later.

Pick a tour if

• You have one day and no car
• You want three or four lookouts, not one, and someone else to drive between them
• Scenic World or a wildlife park is part of the plan and you want it booked
• You are travelling in winter, when short days make the train plan tight

Skip it if

• You only want the Three Sisters and a coffee in Katoomba. The train from Central does that for the price of a fare, and Jamie Does Life called it a really good day out.
• You want a long bush walk. Day tours give you up to 90 minutes on a track, not a 3 to 4 hour loop like the Grand Canyon track.

The free alternative is set out in full on the guide to things to do in the Blue Mountains.

Season and timing

Day trips run all year. The mountains are a different place in each season, though, and the season changes which tour makes sense.

Waterfalls depend on recent rain more than on the month. Aquarius Traveller found a thin flow at Wentworth Falls after a few dry days, and Jamie Does Life found the same at Witches Leap.

The time of day matters more than the season at Echo Point. Late morning is when the tour buses arrive together. Arriving early, or late enough to catch the sunset glow on the cliffs, gives you a quieter lookout and the light both Aquarius Traveller and the Sydney tourism channel point to.

Cloud is the one thing nobody can book around. It can sit in the Jamison Valley for an hour, or clear in 10 minutes as it did for Jamie Does Life. A small group or private guide can rearrange the day around it; a coach mostly cannot.

What’s on in the mountains, from festivals to Scenic World events, is listed on the Blue Mountains visitor information site.

FAQ

Not set on the mountains? See every Sydney tour we compare.