The Yosemite Valley Floor Tram Tour: A Review
If you want a quick, easy way to learn about Yosemite Valley without having to worry about driving, the Yosemite Valley Floor Tram Tour needs to be added to your itinerary.
These 2-hour tours don’t require a big commitment, but they’re excellent for visitors who want to learn about the park’s history, most famous sites, and geological features.
The tours run year round, and include live commentary for a complete experience.
Below, I’m sharing everything you need to know about these tours to see if they fit your family’s needs for your time in Yosemite National Park, as well as our honest thoughts now that we’ve taken the tram tour with our kids.
Passengers ride through the valley on the open air tram | source
This post contains affiliates. If you purchase through the links below, I will receive a commission at no charge to you.
What is the Yosemite Valley Floor Tour?
The Yosemite Valley Floor Tour is an overview tour through the main area of Yosemite National Park. It’s run by a ranger, who provides live commentary on history, wildlife, geology, and important sites throughout the valley.
Guests meet at the Yosemite Valley Lodge to join their tour, then do a loop of Northside and Southside Drive.
There are two stops along the way for guests to get out, stretch their legs, and use the restroom. The first is at an overlook near El Capitan that’s right on the Merced River, and the other is at the Tunnel View overlook.
The Camping Kiddos family at the Tunnel View overlook, one of the stops on the tram tour
In between stops, the ranger guide will take questions, walk guests through major points in the park’s history (both recent and ancient), and do his or her best to provide a complete overview of this beautiful area of the park.
Keep in mind that the tour runs throughout the year, though it looks different depending on the time of the year.
In the summer, the tram is open area and pulled with a tractor trailer-style cab. In the winter, you’ll board an enclosed bus in order to stay warm.
Both of these tours follow the route mentioned above, so you’re essentially getting the same tour just with a different vehicle for the comfort of the passengers.
How do I get tickets?
While you could technically walk up to the ticket desk and buy a spot on any of the tours, I don’t recommend it.
These tram tours, especially in the late spring, summer, and fall, are very popular, and they definitely sell out regularly.
You can’t really make more room on a tram or a bus, so do your self a favor and get one of the tickets beforehand on the Travel Yosemite website (the only official site for the ranger-led tours).
We booked our tickets online about 6 weeks ahead of our trip, which was taking place just after Memorial Day when the park attendance was seriously picking up steam for the summer season.
When I was looking to book our tickets, I wanted the first time slot of the day, but there were only 2 tickets left on that one. We ultimately chose the second time slot of the day, which was around 11:30 AM.
But, I was SO surprised to see that the tours were already close to selling out that far in advance.
(Though, maybe I shouldn’t have been as I’d had to book our stay at nearby Curry Village 6 months in advance and still had to make accommodations based on the very limited nights that were available!)
Where does the tour start from?
You’ll meet your ranger guide and your tour driver outside of the lobby of the Yosemite Valley Lodge.
The lobby is located towards the back of the hotel complex.
You’ll know you’re in the right place when you see a building with a portico on one side.
Make sure to check in at the tour counter just inside of the lobby and to the right of the hotel check-in desk. This is where you’ll get your physical tickets if you booked online.
Just have your name and the number of people in your party at hand for a quicker check-in.
More to see and do in California:
FREE Yosemite National Park Travel Resources!
Your Yosemite National Park planning is just starting. Get everything you need for the perfect visit from camping suggestions to complete itineraries on my Yosemite National Park planning page.
Who is this experience best for?
In general, this tour is great for anyone who wants to take in the breath-taking beauty of Yosemite Valley while someone else worries about driving.
That’s honestly enough of a reason for me, right there, as you just don’t get the same experience when you’re worried about running off the road or into a tree while simultaneously trying to gawk at the waterfalls, granite cliffs, and wildflowers in the valley.
Beyond that, there’s a lot more to recommend the tour.
You’ll get a quick but workable overview of Yosemite’s journey towards becoming a national park, the climbers who’ve made famous ascents of El Capitan, the complicated relationship between this delicate ecosystem and people throughout history, and much more.
We also did a little wildlife viewing while we were on the tram and spotted a couple of turkeys, a hawk, several song birds, and a deer. You might also see bears, too, so keep a lookout throughout the valley!
Is this Yosemite tour good for kids?
My daughter enjoying the tram tour
I think this tour is good for older kids because there’s not a lot to keep younger visitors truly engaged for the entire 2 hour tour.
At the time of taking the Yosemite Valley tram tour, my kids were 9 and 13, and my 13 year old loved it from beginning to end.
My 9 year old was about 80% interested, but the length of the tour and the fact that we were mostly riding around (and not hiking) had him ready to go by the end of the experience.
That being said, even my 9 year old enjoyed getting out at the overlooks, asking questions of the ranger, learning about the death-defying climbs that have been done in the park, and seeing the wildlife.
You know your kids best, so you’ll need to determine if your younger kids can handle 2 hours of almost non-stop driving and listening to a ranger talk.
How else can I explore Yosemite Valley?
If the tour timing doesn’t work out or if you can’t get tickets while you’re visiting the park, you can always do a self-guided tour through the valley.
The key to doing so successfully is by using the Yosemite National Park GuideAlong self-guided tour while you’re driving.
These inexpensive tours are fantastic. We have used them at many of the national parks and scenic byways that we’ve visited, including at Yosemite National Park, and I always find them to be a great value for the money.
Even if you are doing the ranger-led tram tour, I still recommend getting the Yosemite GuideAlong as the two tours don’t have much overlap, if at all.
If you’d rather get out of the car and see this part of Yosemite on foot, you can explore the Valley Loop Trail, which covers 11.5 miles and largely parallels Northside and Southside Drives.
Don’t let the total distance intimidate you. If you want to do a shorter portion of the Valley Loop Trail, there are multiple trailheads throughout the valley.
For biking enthusiasts, you can ride the multi-use trail that runs from Swinging Bridge Picnic Area south of Yosemite Valley Lodge to near Curry Village.
This trail doesn’t cover everything that you’ll see on the tram tour, on a self-guided tour or on the Valley Loop Trail, but it does pass by several of the valley highlights, including Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite Falls, and Yosemite Village.
Rent a manual bike at one of the kiosks near Curry Village or the Ahwahnee Lodge, or rent an e-bike from Pedal Forward in Oakhurst, California, near the park’s southern entrance and bring it into the park for your riding adventure.
The Yosemite Valley Floor Tram Tour: A Review
The driver was kind enough to take a photo of us before we left the Yosemite Valley Lodge
Our 3 day stay at Yosemite National Park was part of a longer 2 week road through the central California, so we needed to make the most of our limited time at this stop.
We decided that a guided tour would be the most effective way to see as much of Yosemite Valley as possible, while still learning about the most popular sites and the park’s history.
Plus, I’m always looking to balance our time hiking on these trips with various activities so that our kids stay engaged and the entire vacation doesn’t feel like one long hiking expedition.
The Yosemite Valley Floor Tram Tour checked all of those boxes, so I added it to our itinerary and began researching how to book it.
Booking the Tour
The tour is actually run through Travel Yosemite, which is a concessionaire that works closely with the NPS. This isn’t an usual arrangement, and you’ll see similar situations in places like Glacier National Park, where you can take a boat and hiking tour of Grinnell Lake through the Glacier Boat Company concessionaire.
The Travel Yosemite website is nicely laid out, so that it is easy to see all of the tours that they offer and then find the tram tour within those.
As I mentioned above, I was surprised to see that several of the slots were filled or nearly filled even though I was booking more than a month out.
That being said, I shouldn’t have been surprised after visiting more than 29 national parks and seeing just how many people want to explore them at peak times.
While my first choice for the timed tram tour only had spots for 2 of the 4 of us, I did grab my second choice on the same day.
We wanted a late morning tram tour as we were planning to also have breakfast at the Ahwahnee Lodge that same day. (Eating pancakes there while looking at Yosemite Falls is the only memory I have of my first visit to Yosemite with I was 6, and I wanted to recreate that with my own kids!)
Finding the Tour Meeting Spot
Weeks later, we left our cabin at Curry Village with our booking in hand and made our way over to the Yosemite Valley Lodge via the park’s free shuttle buses.
There was a sandwich board-style sign out in front of the Lodge’s lobby that helped us know that we were in the right place.
However, the ticket desk inside of the lobby isn’t particularly well marked, and I am sure that many people accidentally go to the check-in desk right next to it instead.
The check-in desk had 2 employees staffing it, and while they weren’t the most welcoming of folks, they were efficient in finding my reservation and giving me directions.
We had some downtime between our check-in and the start of the tram, so we wandered the lodge. There is a convenience store behind the lobby where you can get snacks, drinks, and souvenirs, and a large courtyard with benches if it is a nice day.
You can’t take anything but water on the tram, so this is a good time to have some food if you think you’ll be hungry later.
Boarding the Tram
Tour guests start lining up near the lobby entrance around 15-20 minutes before the tour starts, which clogs up this area of the lodge a good bit.
In theory, the first people in line would then get first pick of where to sit on the tram, but that didn’t work out in practice. The park employees began checking tickets from the front of the line, but then decided to break into 2 and check from the front and the middle of the line.
So, even though we were towards the front of the line, we ended up getting seats right in front of the ranger.
There aren’t assigned seats, and getting everyone onto the tram was a bit of a free for all as everyone rushed for the “best” seats (which is a bit of a misnomer as they’re all great seats).
Keep in mind that each bench can seat up to 5 guests. On a fully booked tour, that means that parties will have to be broken up in order to fit everyone.
If you’re worried about that, come early and lay claim to one of the spots where your entire party can fit.
Our tour was nearly full, so a couple of the parties running late did have to get split up.
Starting the Tour
Once the tour was underway, the open air tram provided incredible views of the park and were even better than what we could see in our rental Jeep even with the windows and convertible top rolled down.
Our ranger, who had previously been a high school history teacher, did a great job at keeping our interest throughout the 2 hour tour. As one could imagine, she leaned heavily into the park’s history, which I enjoyed.
My husband, who loves seeing and learning about wildlife on our national park trips, wished that there had been more variety in her tour focus to include more about the different species in the park and where to view them.
I liked that there were two stops along the way so that the sitting and listening portions were broken up a little.
Making the First Stop
From Yosemite Valley Lodge, you’ll turn onto Northside Drive and pass by both the Three Brothers and El Capitan rock formations.
If there are climbers on the face of El Cap while you’re passing by, the driver will pull over for a moment so that you can marvel at the people who are working their way up the granite cliff.
The first stop was at the gorgeous Valley View scenic viewpoint.
Here, you’ll walk along the banks of the Merced River to see El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls all in one incredible setting.
The beautiful Valley View scenic overlook
It’s also really obvious here that Yosemite Valley is a glacially-carved valley, as the U-shape associated with that geological formation can be seen easily here.
Another point of interest here is the high water mark from a flood in 1997, which was the worst in the park’s recorded history. Look for that near the end of the parking lot not far from where the front of the tram will be stopped.
We had the opportunity to use the bathroom at the very rustic vault toilet across the street before boarding the tram again.
This stop seemed to take a little longer than was necessary, but it is a good time to chat with others on the tram and share tips for visiting the park.
The tram driver will also bring around cups of cold water if you want a quick refresher.
Visiting Tunnel View
With the Camping Kiddos at the Tunnel View overlook
From Valley View, the tram then climbs to Tunnel View, so you get a comparison between the lower viewpoints and the higher one.
This scenic stop stays busy, but your tram driver will ensure that the tram gets one of the bus spots.
Just be careful crossing the parking lot as vehicles are in and out of here constantly.
From the paved viewpoint area, you’ll get to take in one of the prettiest perspectives in the entire valley.
Since you’re higher up and looking down on the valley, you can see everything. It was fun to compare what you could see at Valley View to the views here!
Once you take a few photos and admire the view, you’ll make your way back to the tram.
The driver will have another round of water cups available before he does a headcount and starts back down onto the valley floor again.
On the return trip to the Yosemite Lodge, you’ll pass the meadow where John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt once camped.
The famous meadow where Muir and Roosevelt camped
This camping trip was a catalyst for Roosevelt’s push for more protection of America’s natural resources, so it’s a fun piece of history to drive buy.
The tour returns you to the Yosemite Valley Lodge where you started, and, from there, it is an easy walk to Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Village.
Tips for Take the Valley Floor Tour
Go to the bathroom before you start.
While you do have the option of the vault toilet at the first stop, I know that’s no one’s first choice for a bathroom break.
Do yourself a favor and use the restroom (especially if you have younger kids) before you board the tram.
There are bathrooms in the main lobby of the Yosemite Lodge near the back entrance to courtyard.
P.S. Don’t guzzle water before this tour, as that vault toilet is going to be your one and only option. There aren’t any bathrooms at the Tunnel View overlook, and the tram isn’t going to stop just because you have to pee.
If you only have 1 day in Yosemite National Park, this provides a great overview.
I know that many first time guests are making a running start through Yosemite National Park and don’t have time to do a long hike, leisurely cruise through the valley, or a longer tour.
If you’re limited on time, this tour makes for an awesome way to take in the park’s history in an easily digestible package.
Plus, the start and stop location of the tram tour is very convenient to anything else you might be doing during your short time in the park, including Yosemite Falls, Cook’s Meadow, Ahwahee Lodge, and Yosemite Village.
Arrive to the tour desk about 45 minutes ahead of time.
This isn’t one of those situations where you wait until the time listed on your ticket and then decide to show up.
If you do that, you run the very real risk of having the tram leave without you.
As I mentioned before, these tours are popular, and the ranger and driver have the entire schedule down to a science.
By arriving early, you won’t be rushed through the check-in process and you have a better chance of getting your entire party together on the tram.
Bring a water bottle, binoculars and sunscreen.
To make the most of your tour, bring a couple of things with you.
My husband uses his Vortex binoculars to spot something along the tour route
A water bottle will keep you hydrated throughout the tour. This is especially important if you’re doing the tour during the warmer months when you’re on the open air tram.
While the tour driver will have water available, the water cups are only distributed at the 2 stops on the route.
We also brought along our binoculars which we thought was very helpful. We have a pair of Vortex binoculars that have been with us on multiple trips across many years, and they are still going strong.
Plus, the Vortex warranty is one of the best in the outdoor industry, which gives us peace of mind should something happen while we’re using them.
On this tour, the binoculars are great for spotting the climbers on the face of El Capitan, as well as any wildlife you’ll encounter on the way.
Finally, during the summer, you’re going to want to have sunscreen (and preferably a hat, too) as the open air tram is very open air without any covering.
When we went in early June, the weather was warm and sunny, but I could see the heat being a much more pressing issue just a little later in the summer season.
No one likes nursing a sunburn on vacation, so do yourself a favor and bring along sun protection in one form or another.
Final Thoughts on the Yosemite Valley Tram Tour
Overall, I thought that the tour was well worth the $120 or so that we paid.
The ranger kept up a complete commentary throughout the entire 2 hour tour, and I know how hard that can be from personal experience teaching!
She also spent the breaks answering questions from guests and pointing out additional areas of interest.
The tram driver also worked incredibly hard throughout, ensuring guest safety through careful driving and vigilence while we were stopped.
He also hustled at each stop to set out water cups with fresh, cold water, check with guests, and then clean up before leaving.
The tour allowed us all to focus on the beauty and history of this park completely for 2 hours. I loved that neither my husband nor I had to miss anything since we weren’t driving!
While the tour might be a bit much for younger kids, I highly recommend it for older kids, history buffs, and any visitor looking for a quick but thorough overview of Yosemite Valley.
