Booking Manuel Antonio National Park means two separate bookings, not one. The park entrance ticket is sold only by the Costa Rican government through SINAC, online, and the window opens exactly two months before your visit date. The guide is booked separately, directly with an operator like us. Nobody sells you both in one government transaction, and no ticket is sold at the gate.
Message us on WhatsApp (+506 8514-1361) with your dates and we tell you, in the same conversation, whether the ticket window for your date is already open and whether we still have a guide free.
You make two bookings: the SINAC entrance ticket online, and the guide with a tour operator.
The order matters. The guide has no power over the ticket: park capacity is controlled by SINAC, and a guide with a free slot cannot create space inside the park for you. So the sequence that works is (1) pick your date and check it is not a Tuesday, (2) hold the guide, (3) buy the entrance ticket the day your two-month window opens, or ask us to buy it for you on the tiers where it is included. If you arrive at the entrance without a valid ticket the tour cannot run, and in that case it is non-refundable.
Exactly two months before the visit date, through the official SINAC online system, and not a day earlier.
It is a rolling window, not a season opening. For a visit on 1 December 2026 the tickets appear on 1 October 2026. For Christmas week 2026 they appear around 25 October 2026. There is no waiting list and no pre-sale: the date simply becomes bookable at the two-month mark and, in high season, starts emptying from that morning.
18.30 US dollars for visitors aged 13 and over, and 5.65 US dollars for children aged 2 to 12; under 2 enter free.
Those are the rates set by SINAC and they are subject to change, so confirm the figure in the official system at the moment you pay. This entrance fee is never part of a guide fee: on our Classic Group and Classic Private tiers you buy it yourself, and on Premium and V.I.P. Private we buy it for you and it is inside the price you already paid.
No. There is no ticket counter at the park entrance and there has not been one for years.
Every entrance ticket is bought online in advance through SINAC. Arriving at the entrance hoping to pay in cash is the single most expensive mistake a traveller can make in Manuel Antonio, because on a high-season day there may be nothing left to buy even if you are standing there with money in your hand.
Only on two of our four tiers: Premium and V.I.P. Private include the park entrance; Classic Group and Classic Private do not.
This is worth reading twice, because it is where most price comparisons between operators go wrong. A cheaper tour that excludes the entrance is not cheaper once you add 18.30 dollars per adult. On Premium and V.I.P. Private we reserve your entrance ticket for your date as soon as the two-month window opens, which also means you are not the one setting an alarm for it.
From 30 US dollars per person for the Classic Group, up to 100 US dollars per person for V.I.P. Private. The prices are the same in December as in any other month.
| Tour | Price per person | Park entrance | Hotel transport |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic Group (shared, max 10) | 30 USD | Not included | Not included |
| Premium (shared, max 10) | 65 USD | Included | Round-trip included |
| Classic Private | 69 USD | Not included | Not included |
| V.I.P. Private | 100 USD | Included | Private round-trip included |
Every tier includes an ICT-certified bilingual naturalist guide, a Swarovski spotting scope and your 4K photos and video. The full breakdown of what each tier includes is on the Manuel Antonio National Park guided tour page.
Every Tuesday. In December 2026 that is the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th; in January 2027 it is the 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.
Across those two months there are 62 calendar days and 53 of them are open days. On the open days the park runs 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Costa Rica time, which is the schedule SINAC publishes on its official park page; several ticket resellers still print 4:00 p.m., so plan around 3:00 p.m. You can check the current status any day on is Manuel Antonio National Park open today.
The date is gone and no operator can reopen it, but there are three real moves left: shift the day, shift the park, or shift the hour.
The park works with a daily visitor cap, and from December to April dates fill weeks ahead. If your date shows nothing available: (1) try the day before or after, since Wednesdays and Thursdays clear faster than weekends, (2) do the mangrove or the Damas Island tour on that day and move the park to another day of your stay, or (3) if only late slots remain, take them, because the park is quieter after 11 a.m. even if the wildlife activity is lower. What we will not do is tell you we can get you in. We cannot, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something else.
Departures run from 7:00 a.m., with the last one at 12:30 p.m., and the earliest slot is the one with the most wildlife activity.
Animals in Manuel Antonio are most active in the cooler first hours, which is why the 7:00 a.m. departures sell first. If you are arriving from San Jose the same morning, or flying out that afternoon, an afternoon start is the safer booking even though the forest is quieter. Tell us your flight number if the tour is on a travel day.
Yes, and in high season that means weeks, not days.
There are only so many ICT-certified guides working the park on any given morning, and the same December dates that empty the ticket system also empty the guide calendars. Booking in advance also gets you the things a roadside arrangement never does: a written price, a named guide, a meeting point and a receipt. Negotiating at 7 a.m. at the entrance with your family waiting behind you is the worst possible position to buy from.
Entrance tickets come only from the SINAC government system; anything else selling an entrance ticket is a reseller or a look-alike.
Several sites are dressed up to look like the official park page and are really marketing companies. Three checks that cost nothing: the guide operator should show an ICT certification (Instituto Costarricense de Turismo), the price and what it includes should be in writing before you pay, and reviews should exist on more than one platform with guide names in them. If a site sells you the entrance ticket and the guide as one government ticket, that is not how the park works.
Tours between 15 December and 15 January are not refundable at any time. Outside that window you get a full refund if you cancel 72 hours or more before the tour.
We say it plainly instead of burying it, because the holiday block is the part people get wrong. The SINAC entrance ticket follows the government system rules, not ours, and it is not something we can refund on your behalf. Date changes outside the holiday block are usually possible if we still have a guide free on the new date, so ask early rather than late.
Send your date, how many people and which tier to +506 8514-1361 on WhatsApp and you get a straight yes or no on availability in the same conversation.
A person answers, not a bot menu. Include your hotel if you want Premium or V.I.P. Private, because those include hotel transport in Quepos and Manuel Antonio. If your trip falls in December or January, start at the December 2026 and January 2027 booking page, which lists the open dates one by one.
Four things: your exact date, the number of travellers with the ages of any children, your hotel, and the passport names as they appear on the documents.
The ages matter because the entrance fee changes at 2 and at 13. Passport names matter because the SINAC ticket is issued per person and is checked at the entrance. The hotel matters only for the tiers with transport. With those four things a booking takes one WhatsApp exchange; without them it takes four.
Ready to book? WhatsApp +506 8514-1361 for availability, or see the December and January open dates.
Prices and park rules on this page were checked against SINAC and our own published rates on 25 September 2026. The entrance fee is set by SINAC and can change; confirm it when you pay.