Manuel Antonio National Park Tickets: Fees, Hours And Booking

Manuel Antonio National Park does not sell a single ticket at its gate. Every visitor, foreign or resident, buys online in advance through the official SINAC portal, shows an identity document at the entrance, and uses the ticket exactly once. That single rule reshapes how you plan the whole visit: you pick a date before you leave the hotel, you skip the counter entirely, and you build your day around a 7:00 am to 3:00 pm window that disappears every Tuesday.

The money side is simple once you see it written down. Foreign adults pay $16 plus IVA, which works out to $18.08, children aged 2 to 12 pay $5.65 with tax included, and children under 2 enter free. Costa Rican nationals and residents pay 1,600 colones for adults and 500 colones for children 6 to 12, with over 65s free with ID. None of this is negotiable at the door, and none of it can be paid there, because there is no door sales point at all.

What trips most visitors up is not the fee but the sequencing. Several guided tours on this site include the entrance ticket in their price, while just as many deliberately exclude it, expecting you to have bought your own on the SINAC site first. Pick the wrong combination and you are standing at the gate with a guide, a spotting scope and no legal way in. This guide walks through the fee, the booking system, the hours, the closed day, the packing rules, and how to match a tour to the ticket you already hold. If you are still weighing whether a guide adds anything, the broader rundown of Manuel Antonio day tours covers the full catalogue.

How Much Are Manuel Antonio National Park Tickets?

A foreign adult ticket costs $18.08 including IVA, which is the $16 base fee plus 13 percent tax, and it is sold only online in advance. Children aged 2 to 12 pay $5.65 including IVA, and children under 2 enter free. Costa Rican nationals and residents pay lower rates in colones, set by the same official SINAC fee schedule.

The fee structure comes straight from the park's official page on the SINAC website, and it is worth reading the fine print on your own booking screen before you pay. The ticket is tied to the identity document you register, it is valid for a single entry only, and it cannot be transferred to another person or another day. If your plans shift, you are buying a new ticket, not amending the old one.

Here is the full fee schedule in one place, exactly as the official page states it.

A practical note on family budgets: the child rate stops at 12, so a 13-year-old pays the full adult $18.08 even if you still think of them as a kid.

The other cost that catches drivers is parking. The park has no vehicle parking inside, and the single road from Quepos to Manuel Antonio gets very busy in high season, so the official guidance is effectively that you should not plan to drive yourself to the gate. The main entrance sits 7 km, about 4.34 miles, east of Quepos, and the park itself is 157 km south of San Jose. The guide on getting from San Jose to Manuel Antonio covers the bus, shuttle and flight options that end without a parking problem.

Where Do You Buy Manuel Antonio National Park Tickets?

Tickets are sold exclusively through the official SINAC online portal, with no on-site sales at the park entrance. You register your identity document with the purchase, show that same document at the gate, and the ticket is valid once. There is no ticket office, no cash window and no walk-up purchase of any kind.

The portal lives at serviciosenlinea.sinac.go.cr. This is the single most important logistical fact about the park, and the official SINAC page for Manuel Antonio National Park states it plainly. Book from your phone or hotel computer the evening before, at the latest, and bring the passport or ID card you registered.

A few practical habits make the booking smoother. Use the exact name as printed on your passport, because the gate check matches document to ticket. Screenshot or print the confirmation, since signal at the entrance can be weak. And pick your date knowing the park's calendar: it opens at 7:00 am and closes at 3:00 pm, Wednesday through Monday, and it is closed all day every Tuesday.

Guided tours change this equation in one specific way: some of them include the ticket. The ticket-included guided tour, rated 4.8 from 590 reviews, priced from $23 per person and capped at 12 guests, the cheapest ticket-included listing on this site, folds park admission into the booking, so one transaction covers guide, group and gate. The entrance-fee-option tour does the same for certain options, from $25 per person, rated 4.8 from 2,229 reviews, though its budget option excludes admission.

Tours that do not include the ticket will say so explicitly, and they expect you to arrive with your SINAC purchase already made. The nature-specialist park tour, from $49 per person and the most reviewed listing anywhere on this site at 4.8 from 4,590 reviews, excludes the park ticket by design. That is not a hidden charge, it is a listed exclusion, and it rewards travelers who booked their admission early.

For a wider comparison of what guides actually add, the dedicated page on Manuel Antonio National Park guided tours breaks down durations, group sizes and spotting-scope inclusions across the whole set.

Can You Visit Manuel Antonio Park Without Booking Ahead?

No. Because SINAC sells tickets only online, a visitor without a pre-purchased ticket cannot enter, and there is no cash desk at the gate to fix it on the spot. The workaround is either booking through the portal in advance or choosing a guided tour whose listing states the ticket is included.

The busy hours are predictable: the official park page notes that September and October see fewer visitors because of rain, and advises arriving early in any month.

The naturalist-guided tour with photos, from $25 per person and rated 4.9 from 1,519 reviews, states on its listing that the entrance fee must be purchased before the tour unless you select an option that handles it. That sentence pattern repeats across the category. Read the includes and excludes lines before you book anything, because they are the contract.

If your date is flexible, the weather file adds a planning angle. The national meteorological institute's outlook put the Central Pacific dry-season start in mid-to-late November, with dry conditions roughly December to April and the green season May to November. Rain matters here mainly because the park closes at 3:00 pm and afternoon storms in the green season can eat your last trail hours. The month-by-month weather guide has the rainfall and sea-temperature tables.

What Hours Does The Park Keep And Which Day Is It Closed?

Manuel Antonio National Park is open 7:00 am to 3:00 pm, Wednesday through Monday, and closed every Tuesday. The closing time is a hard gate time, and food is only allowed in the designated eating area between 7:30 am and 3:30 pm, so most of a visit happens in the morning whether you like it or not. If you're still sorting out when to arrive, the guide to Manuel Antonio park hours and closed days covers the best entry windows and which guided tours fit each one.

The Tuesday closure is permanent in the weekly schedule and applies year-round, high season or green. It exists to give the park a rest day, and no tour operator can route around it. If your itinerary has you in Quepos for a single day and that day is a Tuesday, the park is simply not available, and the right move is a mangrove, beach or adventure listing instead.

The guide association at the entrance runs guided tours from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm, with afternoon tours at 3:30 pm on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and night tours at 5:30 pm Wednesday to Friday only in special seasons, November to April.

Inside those hours, the beaches are part of the ticket. Playa Manuel Antonio has snorkeling at its sides, Playa Espadilla Sur is wider at low tide and less crowded, and Playa Gemelas is split in two by a rock formation. One caution from the official page: the manzanillo tree on the beach is toxic, so do not touch it or eat anything from it. The beaches guide covers which sand suits which kind of day.

What Can You Not Bring Into Manuel Antonio National Park?

No food or beverages of any kind enter the park beyond the designated eating area rules, no feeding of animals, no pets, no alcohol, no smoking or drugs, no fires, weapons, fishing or hunting, and no umbrellas, balls, tents or hammocks. Soap and shampoo are not permitted in the showers, and proper footwear is expected, with sandals not recommended.

The food rule is the one that actually removes items from daypacks. Eat before you enter or plan around the designated area, and do not stash snacks for the trail. The no-feeding rule protects the titi monkeys, the park's emblem species, from becoming dependent on visitors, and the recorded species list, roughly 352 birds, 109 mammals and 346 plants, is the reason the rangers enforce it strictly.

Footwear deserves a real sentence. The trails include a former island joined to the mainland by a tombolo, and the official page notes that the Punta Catedral trail is temporarily closed, so ask at the entrance which loops are open rather than planning a route around it. Drinking-water fountains sit on the Perezoso vehicle trail and the beach trails, which softens the no-beverage rule for the walk itself. The what to bring guide has the full packing list, including the footwear call.

Do You Need A Guide If You Already Have A Ticket?

A ticket gets you through the gate, but it does not get you a spotting scope, a certified naturalist or anyone who can find a still sloth in the canopy, which is the difference most visitors notice on guided walks. Guided tours on this site run from $23 to $49 per person, and every one of them lists free cancellation.

The honest framing is this: the park is walkable alone on wide, clear trails, and plenty of people do it. What a guide sells is detection. The two-toed and three-toed sloths, capuchins, howlers and squirrel monkeys are routinely reported on guided tours, and a guide with a high-definition scope turns a green wall into a wildlife viewing session. The dedicated do I need a guide article weighs the question in full.

On price, the spread is narrower than most people expect. The small-group ticket-included tour at from $23 per person is under five dollars more than the raw $18.08 ticket, and it includes admission, a certified guide and a scope, capped at 12 guests. The full comparison sits in the tour prices guide, which prices every category from park walks to rafting.

For visitors who want the deepest version, the naturalist option, from $25 per person and rated 4.9 from 1,519 reviews, includes professional pictures taken by your guide and premium scope use, with the ticket purchased in advance or bundled by option. And travelers with a full day can pair a morning park walk with an afternoon on the water, since the sailing trip with lunch and open drinks, from $95 per person and rated 4.7 from 653 reviews, lists hotel pickup from the Quepos and Manuel Antonio hotel zone.

What Happens If Something Goes Wrong With Your Booking?

A mismatched name, a Tuesday arrival or an unlisted ticket exclusion all have fixes, but none of them are fixed at the gate: the portal rebooking, a different day or a ticket-included tour are the working solutions. Tours listing free cancellation can be dropped without the ticket-money question, because their refund terms sit on the listing.

Booking the night before, from wifi, beats booking from the parking area.

The Tuesday problem has a good answer because the region does not stop on Tuesdays. The Damas Island mangrove boat tour with lunch, from $75 per person and rated 4.9 from 2,910 reviews, lists a full meal, and it runs on the water rather than inside the park. The twin zip line canopy tour, from $95 per person and rated 5.0 from 1,685 reviews, lists lunch too. Either turns a dead Tuesday into the better story of the trip.

For ticket-excluded tours, the fix is sequencing, not money. Book the SINAC ticket first, confirm the date, then book the tour against that date, not the other way round. The two-hour wildlife and beaches walk, from $27 per person and rated 4.9 from 1,164 reviews, states outright that beach-option guests must buy separate SINAC tickets, with instructions on the listing, and that transparency is the norm across the category.

Every listing on Manuel Antonio Costa Rica Tours states its inclusions and exclusions in the same place, so the ticket question never has to be a guess. The catalogue's cheapest firm park-walk price sits at from $23 per person with the ticket included, and the most reviewed listing, the 4-hour nature-specialist tour at 4.8 from 4,590 reviews, is the one that asks you to bring your own admission. Both are honest structures; they just need different planning from you.

Common Questions About Manuel Antonio National Park Tickets