Blue Mountains day tour price from Sydney: all 12 listings compared

The group size. Most of the spread between $149 and $255 is the vehicle: a coach of forty-odd people or a minibus of ten to twenty. A minibus parks at lookouts a coach cannot reach, walks a rainforest track, and gets everybody off and on again in three minutes rather than fifteen. Over a ten-hour day that is worth more than it sounds.

What is included. The Scenic World rides are in the price on most listings here, and a wildlife park entry on most. Lunch is included on some and left as free time on others. A steam train ride is included on one. Every one of those is stated on the listing, and we print it on every card.

Whether it is private. The single biggest jump on the table. Every Blue Mountains tour under $255 is a shared day with a fixed route; the four above $757 give you a driver, a vehicle and your own list, and the price is for the car.

Notice what is on every list: the Three Sisters. Every day on this page stops at Echo Point, and the view across the Jamison Valley costs the same on all of them.

Divide the fare by the hours and the table stops being confusing. $142 for ten hours door to door works out at about $14 an hour, with the rides and the ferry inside it. $150 for ten and a half hours is about $14 an hour as well, which is why the two sit side by side as our top pick and our best value.

The private listings sit between $76 and $139 an hour for the vehicle. Divide by four people and the most expensive private day comes to about $35 an hour a head, which is a fair number and a misleading one: nobody buys a private day by the hour. They buy Wentworth Falls, a lunch in Leura that runs long, and a driver who waits.

Which is the real lesson of this table. Compare shared Blue Mountains tour listings against each other on group size and what is included, compare the private days against each other on who is driving and where, and never compare across the line.

$142. The floor, and one of the best-evidenced Blue Mountains tours from Sydney: 1,688 reviews at 4.8, small group, rides included, ferry home.

$150. Our top pick. Echo Point, all three rides, Sydney Zoo and a koala photo, 2,885 reviews at 4.8.

$757. Where the private days start. Above this line a Blue Mountains tour stops being a seat on a bus and becomes a car with your name on it.

Everything else on the table sits between those three points, and every jump is caused by group size, a meal or a private vehicle — never by a better view.

Pay $142 for the best value Blue Mountains tour from Sydney: a small group, the rides, and a ferry home.

Pay $150 if a zoo and a koala photo on the way are worth eight dollars to you, and they usually are.

Pay $757 or more only if you are four or more, or if Wentworth Falls and a route of your own are the point of the day.

It is worth saying plainly, because the price table makes it look otherwise: the Three Sisters from Echo Point, the Jamison Valley from the Skyway, the drop of the Scenic Railway and the koala at the wildlife park are the same on the $142 day as on the $1,109 one. The sandstone does not know what you paid.

What the money changes is everything around the view: how many people stand at the lookout with you, whether somebody is waiting with the ticket at the Scenic World gate, whether lunch is a table or a queue, whether the day ends on a motorway or a ferry, and whether the driver stops when you ask. Those are real things and they are worth money. They are not more mountain.

So read the table for what each fare adds around the view, decide which of those additions you would actually notice at four in the afternoon on a full day, and pay for those. On this page that usually lands on $142 or $150, and the two sit eight dollars apart.