Antelope Canyon- Our Full Review of Upper and Lower Canyons

We just spent a thousand dollars taking our family of six on both the upper and lower Antelope Canyon hikes. We're Matt and Cheryl from We're in the Rockies and on our channel we try to help give you tips to have a great vacation out west. So in this video we're going to talk about the Antelope Canyon tours which is one of the biggest questions I had before I visited Antelope Canyon is should I go on a tour and which tour should I go on? Behind us here is Lake Powell so we are in Page Arizona and yesterday we did two tours at Antelope Canyon. Antelope Canyon is a famous slot canyon in northern Arizona on the east side of the Grand Canyon near Page Arizona but confusingly Antelope Canyon is not one continuous canyon. There are actually five different places called Antelope Canyon. Four of these are connected by the Antelope Wash, a mostly dry riverbed that occasionally floods and has carved separate and distinct canyons into the rock. The most famous are Upper Antelope and Lower Antelope Canyons which are named after their elevation not their direction. These are the most famous canyons here but I'm not sure if that's because they are the best or simply due to better advertising. You must book a tour for either one and tours range about $50 to $90 per person. These are the two that we did on our recent trip so we could provide an informative review for you. Antelope X also requires a tour. It is supposedly less crowded and much cheaper than Upper and Lower. At least based on the photos it looks quite similar. It's also possible to access Antelope Canyon from the water by kayak or jet ski which you can rent in Page. If you do this you don't have to pay to enter the canyon. I haven't done this but based on the photos I've seen it does not really resemble the famous views found in Upper, Lower and X. Finally you can book a tour of Secret Canyon as well. This doesn't appear to be part of the same Antelope Wash as the others but from pictures I've seen seems to offer similar views. The tour is more expensive than the others but also offers a visit to a more secluded view of nearby Horseshoe Bend. Horseshoe Bend is a crowded national park site anyone can visit for a small parking fee. By the way all these canyons are operated by different tour companies. Instagram has made this thing explode. Something that's pretty famous is a photograph called The Phantom sold for 6.5 million dollars. That's like the big draw of Antelope Canyon is photography. People really want to get those special photos and honestly every corner you turn it's just a picture. It's like a photographer's paradise. It's gorgeous in there. Now the canyons are only accessible by tour guide. You pay a national park like a Navajo national park fee with your ticket. It's about eight dollars in addition to what your tour costs. The other thing to know about this is that the time of day and the time of year does matter when you go to these. This is not the type of tour you'd want to go take at sunrise or sunset. These are slot canyons. The openings above are really narrow and so light there's very limited light in these canyons and so they say you know 11 to 12 or 11 to 1 depending on the time of year is the best time to book your tour regardless of the canyon you're going to because that's when they do get their sunlight. They say that lower canyon and I from our observation lower canyon does have more sunlight in it than upper. Yeah so that would be more doable on the beginning or ending of the day. That'd be a little bit more doable. The upper one you want to be there kind of middle of the day although we were there at like two o'clock and we loved it. It was great. It didn't have the beams of light that a lot of people want to see when they go to the upper canyon but it was still beautiful. Okay so the other thing to know is that both of the tours are fairly short. They're about an hour long. One of them you actually have to drive on the tour bus to get there so it takes a little bit longer. We'll kind of go into detail on these in just a moment but the bottom line is they're kind of short tours and they're just taking a lot of people through those canyons all at one time basically like the one the lower antelope canyon we went through they said there were 1500 people that went through that canyon that day and so just through one tour group like one company through one company through one canyon so they there's a lot of people that are moving through there. Now I'd heard they just shove you through like cattle but and they do kind of do that but actually it's kind of slow going because there's so many people that gets backed up and you'll go stand there in an area for a little while before you move on to the next one so those are some similarities between the tours anyway. One other thing to know about both these tours is neither of them are like handicap accessible. Both of them especially the lower canyon it requires some pretty rigorous going down some steep stairs that are almost like a ladder and then climbing out and then they recently changed the upper canyon to where it's a one-way canyon now it used to be people going back and forth I don't know how they did that but but when you exit the canyon you do have to go up a like climb up a pretty steep rock on a you know on a trail like a metal trail thing and then climb some stairs down and so you know just realize that there will be some climbing involved when you go there. All right so let's talk about let's talk about our experiences with both of them. Okay so first of all we did the lower antelope canyon now from my understanding there are only two tour companies that give tours at the lower antelope canyon. There's Ken's Tours and then Dixie Tours or something like that and they're actually are right next to each other and actually owned by the same family from my understanding. Yeah they're a brother and sister. Now on the Navajo Nation website they have it broken down who the authorized tour guides are for each canyon so you can actually go look at them and like I say I believe for the lower canyon there's two authorized tour guides and for the other one there's like five. In this case in the lower antelope canyon we went to Ken's Tours again the choices are quite limited there and the experience is the same there those are both located right next to the canyon so you just pull up and park at their business you check in they will then walk you down to the canyon which again is located right by their business they'll walk you down to one end of the canyon and then you drop down underground like when you're there you don't even know it's a canyon really it's just kind of hidden underneath the ground and then you drop down underground you go through the canyon and come back up on the other side right by their their place of business that's kind of how that works. And just some things to know so it's a big dirt parking lot the restroom facilities are outhouses like the honey buckets I think there might be some plushies somewhere else but most people have to use the plushies you know one thing I did not mention is that if you struggle with claustrophobia this probably isn't the thing for you to go do especially the lower one the lower one it's a lot narrower so the lower one is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom and what that means is that you are kind of snaking around some walls that are pretty tight you are climbing up some stairs and some ladders and there's a little bit of scrambling around there's kind of a fun house atmosphere to that one our kids liked it more because there was a little bit more scrambling you know you're kind of you know a new surprise around every turn it wasn't as tall so I didn't really feel like it was quite as majestic as some of the red rock country that I've seen around here but you know that was fun for that scrambling aspect but again if you're like if you're a little more immobile that one probably is not the one for you because the stairs are very steep going down and and small like the stairs are steep and small and so that one's a little bit more tricky to navigate but it was more fun for our kids but I want you to think about that this is only 1100 feet like this canyon so it's short but it does take an hour to go through there and the reason why is because you stop probably every 100 feet and I'm not exaggerating to take pictures and they they lead groups in and 10 at a time but they have to take everyone's picture and the tour guide was great in that she would point out like she she'd gone in the best time of day and taking photos for everyone so she was air dropping them to everybody if like they weren't getting the photo they wanted but it was kind of funny because I think a lot of photographers come there and they're wanting to take their own photos but the tour guide's kind of like oh I got this hold on and she'll just snap it because she knows the settings she knows how she wants to do it and the other thing is I felt like I was in kind of one of those 3d like those those magic 3d pictures like they'll be like oh yeah if you look at the light up here this looks like a fish or this looks like a bear and I'm like oh I don't see it I'm like trying to cross my eyes I could see the ones that they would talk about with the rocks but as far as like looking up at the ceiling and the light unless you're standing in like the exact right spot it's really hard to see those features the other thing I noticed on this was that I mean okay we love Instagram and we hate Instagram Instagram can make something really boring look amazing and I'm not saying out of a canyon is boring but you know we're in the canyon and we take our pictures with our special vivid filter on it and I look at the picture and I'm like right standing right there I'm like that's the one I'm looking at this looks completely different yeah so I mean that's true that's the way it is yeah and I will say it was nice to the tour guide knew the settings they were very good with the cameras they could do these panoramic stuff and they were you know most people go in there with cell phones they just take it for you and after a while it was like here just take my camera and take the photo yeah because it was just every run every turn it was like here let me get the photo for you and uh so I don't know in a way it was like well maybe if you're a real really into photography but we're not super into photography and it was just it's nice that we have some photos from it but we weren't dying to stop every turn it was I'm telling that you're familiar with the wonderful movie a Christmas story I felt like Ralphie in line to visit Santa like you know it was kind of like some grouchy elves trying to move you along and you're just waiting waiting waiting it's not like you're walking through this canyon having I think that might be why I didn't like this so much as I'm not a photographer and I just like to hike and I wanted to look at things and instead I was just stuck standing in the canyon for an hour and get to move once in a while and then we finally get to the spot and they're like okay here's your picture move along and I thought that with that tour group the guides were younger what I noticed is that all the tour guides were younger and there was maybe just a little bit of a lack of kind of knowing how to deal with people okay they were fine tour guides but but maybe they didn't have some of those soft people skills quite like the other tour did and the reason why is that they were younger is because they didn't have to drive you out to the canyon it's just right there at the building and so you know they can just walk out to the canyon so the younger tour guides were just fine plus there's more scrambling so over at the other one there was an older tour guide and I noticed all the tour guides were older because we'll get to that in a minute but I thought they had more people skills over there yes for sure and I was gonna say as far as the lower canyons concerned it was a one that our children enjoyed the most they thought it was super cool I mean I was I was kind of surprised so our children range in ages from 9 to 16 so just you're bringing kids and thinking about it we have three boys and a daughter and they liked it they didn't really seem to mind and our teenagers thought the pictures were pretty cool and like they they didn't seem to mind the way I think I think maybe Matt and I were kind of the ones that were boobing about it a little bit but but yeah that our kids our kids actually did enjoy and I would say appreciated that so that's something good to know real quick the lower antelope canyon was $70 per adult the kids were a little cheaper and then I think our wait were the younger two three no they they charged if you were older over three years okay so the adults were like 70 the kids were a little cheaper 46 or something like for family of six it came out to like $380 or something like yeah I mean yeah and again for you know a one hour tour of this canyon beautiful canyon but a little expensive okay upper tour I'm excited to talk about this because this one did include a pretty adventurous little ride there are again there's like five different tour companies that give tours of the upper antelope canyon so that we're just giving our experience which was with the roger eckes tour I think is how you say it all these are I believe navajo owned and operated I think I saw a sign that said that but some of them meet at different places so I think I saw one that was pretty close to the canyon ours was located in page that's where their office was and so we met at the strip mall in page arizona which is the nearest big city and then they put us on a truck and took us out to the canyon yes exactly and the truck was it was funny because sometimes sometimes you know when you go on a tour they start going into a lot of details about make sure to wear your seat belt and secure your items and we're like blah blah blah we're in a car no this is serious I mean like you know when you go on like a wild roller coaster and they're like saying secure your cell phone keep your hands and items inside the car they're not messing around on this one I mean my butt got some major air time on this we had to drive out and like the the sand was like two feet deep and it I felt like we were dune racing there were like all these other like tours coming out there and I mean you knew the guy was getting serious and we were in this old truck too like when we get ready to go in the stopped went out and I don't know if he put his chains on or if he had to manually switch the truck in the four-wheel drive but that's when it got real and we were flying and we were sliding drifting bouncing it was I mean that was pretty exciting that was that was actually my favorite part it wasn't very and I never I nobody had ever told me that from what I had read but that was a pretty wild part of the tour and I was thinking the upper antelope canyon is better for you if you're elderly or immobile or something like that because there are fewer stairs and less scrambling but you do but then I thought okay all that bouncing on that truck you know you need to be okay with that because that was kind of a wild ride it was a wild ride and then and that's about I think it's about a 20 minute ride and some of it is on a road but some of it is I mean you are it was an off-roading experience it was pretty fun we were all of us on the truck we were looking at itself looking at each other saying did you know this was going to be part of the tour it's kind of funny we're like no so actually again it was pretty fun our kids liked the ride and so just know what you're getting into is what we're trying to get there yes and then once you get there you know that's pretty dusty by the way so if you do that you know wear your glasses wear your mask if you want might keep the dirt out of your teeth um but then once you get there you go on the tour and and this canyon is half the size of the first of lower and but it still takes the same amount of time to go through it I felt like we stopped a lot for pictures and our guide was really great I really liked him he had some fun pictures and like that was saying he was a little more personable and of course any tour you go on you know you can get a different guide you just never know what you're gonna get it's kind of a little luck of the drop but I really liked our guide he was he was just very warm and personable and yeah it was great and the canyon was taller the other nice thing to know about this one is you don't climb down into it it's flat you just walk right into it and one thing we forgot to mention about the lower one is that that lower one floods all the time and they have to go in and they have to clean all the debris out and and like get the water doesn't go away by itself they have to suck the water out and I thought that was kind of interesting because I thought that you know it's nature antelope canyon but there's actually a lot of man-made things they've had to do in that canyon to keep it so people can keep going into it we even went through a hole like and that was new like a week old because of what had come through and wash some of the canyon away so that's right the upper canyon though it also floods it just doesn't stay in there for very long because again it's up on the riverbed level so it drains a lot easier than the lower than the lower canyon so the other thing about the upper canyon this is the famous canyon that has the light beams so there's you'll see very many famous images online of these two canyons but one of them you'll see with light beams shining down and so that's this one because it is wider at the bottom narrower at the top and so it's at midday basically between like 12 and 1 the guy said you'll get these light beams that shine down through the canyon he said it only happens during the summer you know if you're like wanting to get those light beams you got to plan your tour at the right time we did ours at two o'clock and it was kind of dark in there yeah yeah it's kind of dark in there it's darker than the other one because there's not as much light coming through i thought this one was more majestic it was taller i kind of liked that it was wider at the bottom i don't know why i just kind of liked you know the the angle of looking up at the canyon a little bit better so and i liked that it wasn't so claustrophobic this tour didn't seem like on lower canyon i mean you were always with other tour groups like you know a single file just people standing and waiting the whole way through this one we kind of stood and waited in a group the tour groups were a little bigger there were 14 people in our group but um but yeah i liked this canyon though had some wider spaces to stand and wait for your picture and it was cooler in there um quite a bit cooler i was actually quite hot in lower canyon and it was pretty miserable beautiful being stuck sandwiched between people with your mask on in the heat like it and it was it was 102 degrees yesterday and i'm not saying it was 102 degrees in the canyon on either one of them but the the upper one was quite i was really cool and comfortable in that one where the other one it was pretty hot but yeah i'd say one thing that wasn't quite as good was how dark it was like not kind of like that but i thought the lighting in the in the lower canyon was better um because the arbitrary i had to get the flashlight out quite often to show us things in there so it was a little bit like being in a cave but still a lot lighter and you still could see those really pretty formations depending on who you talk to some people say they liked one better than the other so that's really just a matter of preference just wanted to let you know just pros and cons there basically we liked our tour better on the upper again we had that older tour guide and i don't know the company just seemed at least a little more personable at least like a little more like they appreciated us being there where we did not really get that feeling at all at the lower canyon tour but the upper canyon one was more money it was 90 dollars per person like no discount for our children i mean holy sticker shock yeah 586 dollars to take our family in there for one hour like yeah that was that was crazy so yeah um so what let's talk about our final takeaways yeah final verdict what it kind of felt like to me was these were two unbelievable hikes that have been now put behind a paywall and an expensive pay wall at that you know um there's amazing hikes all over these places in fact just this morning i was looking at spooky canyon it's up in escalante grand staircase escalante national monument in utah like there's amazing slot canyons all over i know that these are unique and they're special and all that but being put behind this super expensive paywall was quite a bit of a turnoff for both of us especially just considering there's so much incredible nature around us you're paying about a dollar a yard for every yard you walk head through that canyon my point here is i don't think this is an absolute must do you know once in a lifetime type of a thing that if you decide it's a little you're a little tight on money and you can't afford to do it then i don't think you should feel bad about missing out now granted we have a family of six so that was really expensive for us if you're a couple and you're paying 150 bucks for that experience maybe the sticker shock isn't as bad but i guess our point is it's not like the ultimate must do you know where you have to spend all that money to do it it's interesting doing a travel business like we do like this is matt's full-time job is to sell guides to the west and help people have a good trip and but we're also you know entrepreneurs and we know that a bad review can be harmful and so we are always so hesitant to say anything that's not positive about another business now we don't take free tours we buy we pay for things on our own dime because our our loyalty is to you and we and we want you to have the best trip out here but so you know we we paid a thousand dollars because we wanted to be able to have a good recommendation when we make our guides out here to the west you know we have them for all of utah and a lot of other places and so we want to make sure that our guides give the best information and provide just the best experience and i actually would not recommend this at all um i i would recommend it if you are a photographer if photography is a passion of yours that this is a great opportunity for you to get some good photos but go there keeping in mind that i like for us walkers and hikers we felt like we were just going so slow through both of these tours like it was kind of boring because we want to just hike and see stuff but i think it could be frustrating for a photographer who was trying to get just the right shot they probably do feel rushed like it's probably really hard for the tour companies to find a balance between the hikers and the photographers this gave me such an appreciation for why we have national parks i mean i feel like just the beauty around us that god created should be accessible to everybody and putting something like that behind a 90 paywall i just oh it does not sit well with me because i'm like this should not be just for the rich and and it was very obvious to me that at least the two companies that we use they're not interested in repeat customers i did the math for the lower canyon if they're charging 70 per person and they had 1500 people there they were taking in over 90 000 that day alone i think they can afford to put in some toilets just saying or pave their parking lot they're just there to get you in get you out and get your money i don't really feel like they're about the experience for the the customer and i guess the other thing is just that our national parks provide so much other beauty i mean maybe you have to hike a little bit more into a slot canyon in escalante to see something similar now i've antelope canyon is unique i've never seen anything like it anywhere else so i will give it that but have i seen things just as beautiful as it absolutely and you can too and so i guess my takeaway on that is i'm gonna say just say no like just say no to paying that much money for something like that it's rude to be profiting so much money off of something that is just a creation of god is my opinion about that there you go now if you're looking at maybe not as harsh because you know i think like when i went to italy it was like you had to do the tour of the vatican right everybody said you have to do the tour of the vatican it's just something you have to do so i did it was a lot of money i actually didn't love it i like the sistine chapel and all that but i didn't really love the tour um and so you know for a lot of people it's like you're going to page or you're going to the grand canyon like you have to do the tour at antelope canyon okay we just want to give you the information so that you know what to expect and so that you know it's not all it's not all bull cherries i didn't think okay and then the other thing is if if you think okay well what else could i do in the area well there's a lot there's horseshoe bend there's lee's ferry and navajo bridge gorgeous areas the vermilion cliffs around here um glen canyon dam provides wonderful views of lake powell canyon there there's uh as you go out towards the east there's navajo national monument monument valley that's where we came from on this trip is just spectacular and so there's just red rock country is just full of amazing sites so and we've made a whole video of our four day trip out through the monument valley area that shows all the fun things we did whether they were tours that cost some money or some free things we did you ought to check it out thanks for watching until next time go west young traveler