grand avenue tour

This tour works well as a duo with the Historic tour as it takes you into a different part of the cave than the Historic tour. This one is longer and a bit more strenuous at 4 miles/4 hours. But while it claims to be the most strenuous tour outside of the wild cave tour, it really isn't bad. Lots of downhill walking and steps that while easy, made my calves a little sore the next day. If you're claustrophobic, which I am a bit, this tour is pretty open - just one relatively narrow canyon to walk through, but other than that nothing to worry about. Ranger Sue was great as she was very informative and passionate about the cave. The grand finale was fantastic as you end with beautiful stalagmite formations. You get a lot of bang for your buck on this tour as it encompasses the Frozen Niagara route, Domes and Dripstones route and the Snowball route. So lots to see in one all inclusive trip.A few notes: You can't have any other liquid besides clear water in a clear bottle, no flash photography is allowed, no backpacks allowed - if you have one you'll have to rent a locker to store it, and there currently isn't lunch being served along this route - though that might change in the future, but for now its closed. Also the cave temperature stays around 54 degrees at all times, so wear pants and maybe a long sleeve shirt - I saw a lot of people with just shorts and a t-shirt on which could get very chilly. Also wear good shoes, if you wear flip-flops you'll regret it.The only negative I have for this tour is the large group size. I think there were about 60+ people on this tour, and there were 120 on the Historic tour. Just way too many, not great for asking questions and took forever to get to stopping points. Plus some people were pretty rude talking while the ranger was talking. A smaller size group would make the tour much more enjoyable.

My husband and I visited with our son, who is getting ready to deploy for Okinawa in 3 days, and his girlfriend. We were "clowning" in the back of the tour and Ranger Sue decided I was having a hard time going downhill. In spite of my objections and, though I tried to provide my side, she insisted that I move to the front of the tour "for the next 3 hills." I was separated from my family for an extended period and have sent a message to Mammoth Cave reiterating that. Ranger Thomas was excellent and, if given the chance, he would make your tour exceptional!

This 4 hour tour of Mammoth Cave does a great job of showing you several different aspects of the cave within one tour. If you have limited time in which to enjoy the cave, this tour is a great option to see a little sampling of everything in one tour. The tour is rated as "strenuous," and although there were some steep inclines to trudge up, the difficulty level is really nothing to fear. We had people of all ages and sizes on our tour and everyone kept up just fine. Some descriptions of this tour will mention that there is a stop for lunch and the option to buy food in the Snowball Room, but food is no longer offered on this tour so do make sure that you eat breakfast beforehand! (The tour does still stop at this area for a restroom break, however.) The "grand finale" of this tour does feature a trip through an area of the cave with stalactites, which was really incredible. Overall, very pleased with this tour.

Unfortunately, many reviewers tell the story of their Grand Avenue tour in the general section about the Mammoth Cave and it gets lost there among information about other tours. So you may want to search there too for other information.We had only one day to visit Mammoth Cave so we had to make a choice. There are many tours usually available so the challenge is getting to see as much as possible. The difficultyis that some tours are offered only once a day and also some tours are overlapping and you can only get to see one of them.The Grand Avenue Tour was a great choice because it completely included the Snowball Tourand the Frozen Niagara Tour and also a portion of the New Entrance Tour. As a result, the Grand Avenue tour takes you through sections of the cave that actually look and feel different. It shows you multiple faces of the cave. It starts in a wide corridor that vaguely resembles a flattened lava tube, then the tour goes through narrower corridors and finally gets to thevery interesting Frozen Niagara formation. The cave is not known for its formations, the onlyone that is interesting is the Frozen Niagara which comes at the end of the Grand Avenue tourand makes it an impressive finale.Our guide, a local teacher was amazing and made the tour incredibly fun and interesting. He was giving us various piece of information. For example, how people were visiting the cave at the beginning of the last century, how business men at the time were fighting to get tourists to visit their own cave, how hard is to cope with the silence in the cave for long periods, how the cave became the longest in the world when a connection was found between two existing caves, etc.Some other pieces of information. The Tour includes a 20min or so stop at the Snowball Room, a large room were there is food for purchase and there are also restrooms. Of course, you can bring your own food if you want. The tour does not start at the visitor center, the group will get on a bus and there is a 10min drive to the entrance of the cave. Overall the walk did not feel particularly strenuous. I understand that the Historic Tour is a very nice complement to the Grand Avenue tour as it takes you through a different part of the cave with a different look and feel.