Tickets for Wind Cave tours can now be reserved online up to three months before your visit/NPS file
Visitors to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota can now reserve cave tour tickets online up to 120 days in advance. Tickets can be purchased through www.recreation.gov, a website used for reservations at thousands of sites across the country.
“We’re very pleased with the feedback we’ve gotten concerning our reservation system. It eliminated the lines of people waiting to buy tickets that we had last year during spring break,” said Superintendent Leigh Welling. “Half of our tickets will still be available for same day purchase, allowing people on the spur of the moment to tour the cave.”
Tour tickets can be reserved, or canceled, up until three days before the tour. Any unsold tickets would then be available for purchase on the day of the tour. There is no refund for late arrivals or no shows. The park will no longer be taking reservations over the phone for its Candlelight or Wild Cave Tour; they must be made online.
Tours during the summer frequently sell out more than an hour in advance. For more cave tour information, visit: www.nps.gov/wica.
Comments
We did a Candelight tour several years ago and it was well worth it. You carry a "candle bucket" which acts like a flashlight to direct the candlelight to what you want to look at. The group size is small so you get more time interacting with the guide. I would recommend it to anyone who is thinking of taking a tour that is a little different than the typical cave tour.