Grand Canyon Skywalk is a dud

On a weekend trip with my family to Las Vegas, we decided to take an afternoon to go see the Skywalk at "Grand Canyon West." The Skywalk is a structure that extends out over the Grand Canyon and it has a glass floor, so that you can see all the way down to the bottom of the canyon. Although this is a part of the famous Grand Canyon, it is not at the National Park, and so supposedly much closer to Las Vegas. After driving out on the freeway to the middle of nowhere, we made a left turn on to a road that seemed to go on forever through a town that I cannot imagine people actally live in (where they get their groceries is beyond me...). We followed the directions to this Skywalk place and came to a dirt road. Well, it was more of a gravel road with lots of dust, and it was definitely a rough ride. Because we could only go about 20mph, it took us an hour on this awful road just to get to the Grand Canyon West.

Come to find out, the parking lot with the gift shop/ticket booth was not actually the Skywalk. In order to get the Skywalk, you have to hop on a shuttle bus and stop at other locations on the way to the Skywalk (who knows how long that is!).

So, we went inside to try and figure out what to do and how to get tickets for those of us who wanted to go out onto the Skywalk structure. I wanted to get some food too. Well, inside there was a bathroom, 2 gift shops, and a ticket booth...nothing else. So, we looked at the packages and the different pricings. Keep in mind, all we wanted to do was look at the Grand Canyon and a few people in our group wanted to pay to go out onto the Skywalk. The brochure was very confusing, so we asked the lady at the ticket booth to clarify, which she did. In order to just get on the shuttle bus and go up to the Skywalk cost $43 per person. Once you were up there, you had the option of paying an additional $30 per person to go out onto the Skywalk! Oh, and you could not take your camera out onto the Skywalk, but don't worry...there would be someone there taking your picture, which you could then purchase afterwards.

Well, needless to say, we were all really angry that we had driven 2 1/2 hours out into the middle of nowhere in the desert in Arizona, and ruined our cars on that atrocious road for a RIP-OFF!!! We could not get off that place fast enough and we were not going to give them $1 of our money.

Moral of the story: If you're thinking of going the the "Grand Canyon West Skywalk," save your time and money and just go to the Grand Canyon National Park.

Apparently, this is what the structure looks like, although I didn't actually see it, and I will never go back to that place!