Mutianyu Great Wall 2026: Tickets, Toboggan & Transport

The wall is open year-round, but the lifts, the toboggan and the buses all keep slightly different schedules. Read the hours section before you fix a start time.

Tickets are sold online and at the visitor centre; bring your passport, because it is checked at the gate and used for online bookings. Prices below are the 2026 rates and are quoted per person.

The cable car and the chairlift are run by two different companies, and that has one practical consequence: a return ticket on one system cannot be used on the other. If you want to go up by cable car to Tower 14 and come down by chairlift or toboggan from Tower 6, you buy two one-way tickets (CNY 100 each) rather than one return. The cleanest combos are:

Book online a day or two ahead in peak season; on-site tickets can sell out on April weekends and public holidays. Tickets are released up to 30 days in advance. Booking through Trip.com lets you pay by international card, which saves the WeChat Pay or Alipay setup that the official mini-program assumes. The postcard version of the entry ticket costs CNY 5 extra and is sold at the manual window.

Group and private day tours from Beijing start at roughly USD 89 for a combined Forbidden City and Mutianyu day, and around USD 449 for a three-day private city tour that includes the wall. They make sense if you have one day in Beijing and no appetite for rural buses; the trade-off is a fixed schedule and, on cheap group tours, souvenir-factory stops. Independent travellers who are comfortable with DiDi will usually spend less and see more.

The wall keeps two seasons, and the lifts follow them closely. In practice the difference matters most in December and January, when the gates open half an hour later and close an hour earlier.

April and May bring peach and plum blossom and 15–20°C afternoons. September and October are the other sweet spot: dry air, clear ridges, and from mid-October the forest turns red and gold. Summer is hot (25–35°C) with no shade on the wall, and winter is cold but quiet, with snow on the battlements and cleared steps.

Two timing rules are worth remembering. First, be at the gate at opening or after 15:00 — tour groups cluster between 09:30 and 14:00. Second, avoid May Day (1–5 May) and National Day (1–7 October), when the shuttle queue alone can eat an hour.

Mutianyu has no metro and no high-speed rail station, so the journey is the part of the day that needs a decision. All four options below end at the same place: the visitor centre car park, where you transfer to the scenic-area shuttle. Beijing itself is easy to move around — see the Beijing destination guide for metro and airport connections.

The direct tourist line leaves from the south gate of Zhengyangmen (Qianmen) between 06:30 and 11:00 and returns from Mutianyu between 13:00 and 16:00; the Dongzhimen departure is a single 09:10 run. Both cost CNY 80 return, take 1.5–2 hours, and drop you close enough to the entrance that some services include the shuttle. They leave when full, so the departure time is indicative rather than guaranteed.

Take Bus 916 Express from Dongzhimen to Huairou North Avenue (about CNY 16, roughly 70–90 minutes, every 10–30 minutes from 05:50 to 20:00), then change to H23, H24, H35 or H36 for Mutianyu Roundabout. The whole trip takes 2–2.5 hours and costs about CNY 16 in total. It is the cheapest way there and the least forgiving: rural buses are crowded, little English is spoken, and the last return connections leave in the late afternoon.

A DiDi or taxi from central Beijing runs CNY 300–400 one way and takes 1.5 hours outside rush hour; a car hired for the day is typically CNY 800–1,200. This is the option to choose with children, luggage or a tight schedule, and the only one that lets you stay for sunset without worrying about the last bus. Parking at the scenic area is CNY 20 per day.

The car park and ticket gates sit about 3 km from the wall base, and walking that road wastes energy you will want on the steps. The shuttle costs CNY 15 return, takes about 7 minutes, and drops you at the point where the cable car, chairlift and hiking trails split. Public-bus arrivals must buy it; some tour buses include it.

Mutianyu's open stretch runs about 2.25 km across roughly 20 watchtowers, split into three natural routes. What you do on the wall depends on which lift you take up, because the cable car lands at Tower 14 and the chairlift at Tower 6.

The Great Wall toboggan is a 1,580-metre metal slide built into the mountainside, starting just below Tower 6 and ending at the base station. You sit in a small sled with a handbrake, control your own speed, and get a view of the wall snaking away above the trees. The descent takes five to ten minutes. Rules are strict: children under 10 ride with an adult, riders over 60 are not allowed, and the toboggan closes in any rain, even a drizzle. Buy the chairlift-up plus toboggan-down combo (CNY 140) rather than two separate tickets.

The enclosed cable car climbs from the north side to Tower 14 in about five minutes, which puts you at the eastern end of the highest, most photographed stretch. From there the wall runs west toward Tower 20 through the Hero Slope. The cable car is the accessible choice: there is a lift at the entrance for wheelchair users and elderly visitors, and the platform at Tower 14 is the furthest point reachable without steps.

The open chairlift on the south side is shorter and more scenic than the cable car, lifting you over the treetops to Tower 6 in about ten minutes. It feeds the eastern route toward Tower 1 and pairs with the toboggan for the descent. On a clear autumn afternoon this is the best ride at Mutianyu, and the one worth queueing for.

The west route is the classic: Tower 14 to Tower 20 and back, 950 metres each way, about 1.5 hours in each direction. The final stretch between Towers 19 and 20 is the Hero Slope, an incline that reaches beyond 70 degrees and is the hardest few minutes on the wall. The reward is the highest point of the section and the panorama that appears on every Mutianyu postcard. Runners-up: the middle route (Tower 14 to Tower 6, flat and quiet, about two hours) and the eastern route (Tower 6 to Tower 1, steep in places, about an hour each way).

Zhengguan Terrace at Tower 4 is three two-storey towers standing side by side, a layout rare on the Great Wall; its ground floor once held up to 200 soldiers. Tower 15 is the only tower visitors can climb to the top floor, and Tower 20 marks the high point. The wall here is 7–8 metres high and 4–5 metres wide, with battlements on both sides and branch walls running down the ridges — details you miss if you only walk and photograph.

Knowing the layout saves twenty minutes of walking in the wrong direction. Everything radiates from the visitor centre at the car park.

From the car park, the shuttle bus runs 3 km to the ticket gates. Behind the gates the site splits: the cable car station is on the north side and rises to Tower 14, while the chairlift and toboggan stations are on the south side at Tower 6. The hiking trails start near the south gate and take 30–40 minutes to reach Towers 6, 8 or 10. The wall then runs east from Tower 6 down to Tower 1 and west from Tower 14 up to Tower 20. There are three check-in counters at the entrance — chairlift, hiking and cable car — so pick the right one before joining a queue.

At the foot of the wall there is a cluster of coffee shops, a Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, buffet restaurants and dumpling houses, with mains around CNY 50–70. Restrooms on the wall are clean but bring tissues. There are no cafés up top, so carry water. At the south ticket gate you can rent "AI Legs" — powered exoskeleton leggings that cut climbing effort by roughly half — for CNY 100 per three hours plus CNY 20 per extra hour. Stray cats are friendly and numerous; sunscreen, a hat and shoes with grip matter more than any gadget.

This is the decision most Beijing visitors actually make, and the honest answer is that the two sections are built for different trips. Badaling is the most famous, the most restored and the easiest to reach; Mutianyu is quieter, greener and has the toboggan.

Badaling is the postcard wall: broad, exposed, dramatic, and busy enough that the photographs rarely come out empty. Mutianyu is narrower and set in dense forest with more than 95% vegetation cover, so the wall appears and disappears between ridges instead of running in a straight line. On a normal weekday Mutianyu feels about half as crowded; on a weekend in October the difference narrows but never disappears.

Badaling wins on access: a high-speed train from Qinghe station takes about 20 minutes to Badaling station at the foot of the scenic area, and Bus 877 from Deshengmen goes there directly. Mutianyu has no train; you rely on the tourist bus, the 916 Express plus a local bus, or a car. Both are roughly 70 km from the city, so the drive times are similar, but Badaling's rail link is far more predictable on a holiday weekend.

Entry is slightly cheaper at Badaling (about CNY 35–40) than at Mutianyu (CNY 45), and both have cable cars in the CNY 100–140 range. The real difference is what the lifts are for. Badaling's cable car exists to save you a long climb; Mutianyu's chairlift plus toboggan exists to make the descent fun. If the toboggan is the reason you are reading this, Badaling does not have an equivalent.

In July and August Mutianyu runs a night session from 17:30 to 21:00, with lighting on the wall from 19:30. The night ticket costs CNY 200 and includes entry, the shuttle and unlimited cable car rides; children under 1.2 m go free. The open stretch for night visits is around Towers 10–15, so it is a short illuminated walk rather than a full traverse — and the cool evening air makes the climb far easier than in daylight.

Outside summer, the appeal is seasonal. Late April brings blossom on the slopes, late October turns the forest red and gold, and a snowfall in January leaves the battlements white with the steps cleared. Staying overnight in Mutianyu village is the only practical way to catch sunrise or sunset on the wall without a car waiting.

Food at the base is tourist-area priced but perfectly edible: Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut for something familiar, dumpling and noodle restaurants for something local, plus buffets aimed at tour groups. Budget CNY 50–70 per person. There is nothing to eat on the wall itself, so buy water and snacks before the shuttle.

Just outside the gates, Mutianyu village has farmhouse restaurants serving grilled trout from the local streams, chestnut dishes in autumn, and country-style stews; expect CNY 60–120 per person. Further out toward Huairou town the choice widens to proper sit-down restaurants, which is worth knowing if you are driving and want dinner after a late descent.

Most visitors day-trip from Beijing, but staying locally turns a rushed coach stop into a sunrise and an empty wall. Three options cover the range.

A design hotel built from a former glazed-tile factory, ten minutes from the ticket gate, with courtyard rooms, a spa and views straight at the wall. It is the most comfortable base for sunrise photography and the one most travellers mean when they search for a Mutianyu Great Wall hotel.

Right by the visitor centre, the Mutianyu Great Wall Hotel is the practical choice for an early start or a night-tour ticket. Village homestays in Mutianyu and Beigou are cheaper, simpler and often include home-cooked dinners.