La Fortuna and Arenal: What Each Thing Costs and When It Opens

Verified on 26 August 2026, on SINAC’s official park pages and on each operator’s own rate page or booking engine. Every fee, rate and opening-hours figure was re-checked at source on 24 September 2026; SINAC’s 2025 management plan and 2015 brochure were not re-read that day.

Arenal Volcano National Park costs USD 16.95 for a non-resident adult and USD 5.65 for a non-resident child. It opens every day, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Tickets are sold only at the park ticket booth, on the day of the visit, and only by credit or debit card — SINAC’s own page states that cash is not accepted and there is no online sale for this park. La Fortuna Waterfall is USD 20.00 for foreigners. Hot-springs day passes run from CRC 16,500 at Los Lagos to USD 115.00 at Tabacón.

The publicly run attractions here are cheap and priced by decree; the private ones cost several times more. And of the five best-known hot springs, only two put a rate on their own website — the other three show you one only once you open the booking system their own site links to. Leaving town afterwards carries its own fares: the jeep-boat-jeep crossing to Monteverde is priced separately.

What each thing costs

All figures checked 26 August 2026 and re-checked 24 September 2026. A dash means the figure was not on the pages we read.

La Fortuna Waterfall charges Costa Rican nationals USD 10.00. Baldi’s national rates are also lower, from USD 34.00 for pools only; children under 5 enter free at Baldi, to a maximum of five per group, and children of 11 and over pay the adult rate. Los Lagos gives the same CRC 10,000 rate to over-65s and lets 2- to 5-year-olds in free. Those cut-offs are set property by property and do not line up; the ones we could source across operators are on our Costa Rica with kids page.

Buying an Arenal ticket works the opposite way to Manuel Antonio

SINAC’s purchase page for Arenal Volcano National Park states that tickets are bought “directamente en la boletería del parque, el mismo día de la visita” — at the booth, on the day — and that “No se recibe efectivo, Solamente se puede hacer la compra con Tarjeta de Crédito o Débito.” No cash. Card only.

Two SINAC sources agree on this. The park’s own purchase page says it outright, and Arenal is absent from SINAC’s list of the 12 protected areas that require an advance online reservation. That list — Chirripó (three sectors), Volcán Poás, Tortuguero, Isla San Lucas, Volcán Irazú, Manuel Antonio, Braulio Carrillo (Sector Volcán Barva), Tapantí, Volcán Tenorio, Carara, Rincón de la Vieja and Los Quetzales — does not include it. SINAC publishes a second, shorter list and we are printing both: the SICORE portal’s own FAQ names 11 areas sold through it, the same set minus Los Quetzales. Both pages leave the difference unexplained. It makes no difference to Arenal, which is on neither.

So an itinerary covering both Arenal and Manuel Antonio needs two opposite behaviours: book Manuel Antonio online in advance and turn up at Arenal with a card. Arriving at Arenal with only colones in cash does not get you in; trying to pre-book Arenal online finds no such system.

Which hot springs will tell you the price

We read the public pages of five La Fortuna hot-springs operators on 26 August 2026, opened the booking system each of those sites links to, and re-read all of them on 24 September 2026. Two publish a rate table on their own website, and three publish a rate only inside the booking system their own website links to.

Published: Baldi Hot Springs, at baldihotsprings.cr/day-pass/ — USD 51.00 adult / USD 38.00 child for pools only, USD 75.00 / USD 56.00 with lunch or dinner, USD 99.00 / USD 74.00 with both. Baldi states that these rates are valid until 10 December 2026; it had published no rate for the period after that when we checked on 24 September 2026. The same page carries a separate Holy Week rate table. Baldi states that “No prior reservation is required for the Day Pass”, and prices extras separately: towel rental takes a USD 10 refundable cash deposit each, lockers are USD 6.78. Its homepage advertises 25 thermal pools.

Also published: Hotel Los Lagos, at hotelloslagos.com/day-pass/ — CRC 16,500 adult, CRC 27,500 with one meal, CRC 43,500 with two. The pass covers thermal-mineral and cold pools, a viewpoint and a nature trail, a locker and parking; towel rental is CRC 1,000 plus a CRC 5,000 deposit. Los Lagos prices in colones only and publishes no dollar conversion of its own; ours, at a stated rate and date, is below.

Published in the booking system only: Tabacón, Arenal 1968 and EcoTermales. All three omit a day-pass figure from the body of their own websites — but each links out to a booking engine that carries one, and those engines are the operators’ own.

Tabacón Thermal Resort sells a Day Pass — Thermal Hot Springs Access at USD 115.00 for ages 12 and over, and a Day Pass plus lunch or dinner at Ave Restaurant at USD 184.00, in the booking engine linked from tabacon.com/day-pass/. The booking page states the springs-only pass excludes “Food, beverages, spa treatments, and additional services”; tabacon.com/day-pass/ states “Prices are per person in USD and include taxes.” It carries separate rate selectors for children 6–11 and infants 0–5 without printing their prices on the page we read. The same booking page gives the pass’s hours as 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., with entry from 10:00 a.m. and access until closing.

Arenal 1968’s own booking engine prices its volcanic hiking trails at USD 28.00 for an adult and USD 16.00 for the child ticket; a lower adult/child pair circulates in secondary travel writing, and the operator’s own system does not agree with it, so we publish the engine’s figures and not the other pair. The same engine sells the Kuru Natural Springs and Jungle Trail at USD 80.00, marked “Adults Only 18+”, and a Day Pass Arenal 1968 + Kuru Natural Springs and Jungle Trails at USD 99.00 — USD 9.00 less than buying the trails and Kuru separately. Its own tour pages, in Spanish and English, price the night walk at USD 65 per person, starting at 6:00 p.m., with agua dulce and handmade tortillas included — but its booking engine sells a “Night Walk – Arenal 1968 Natural Park” at USD 110.00 (both read 24 September 2026). The operator publishes two prices for what reads as the same walk, and neither page explains the difference; we print both.

EcoTermales Fortuna — corrected 24 September 2026: its own booking engine, linked from ecotermalesfortuna.cr/reservar/, sells a Hot Springs Entrance Fee at USD 49.00 and the entrance fee plus lunch or dinner at USD 81.00. An earlier version of this page said EcoTermales published no rate anywhere; that was wrong. The website itself shows only its two sessions, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. and 5:00–9:45 p.m. The engine states no child rate and no tax treatment.

Comparing them needs an exchange rate, so here is the one we use. Los Lagos prices in colones and everyone else in dollars, and none of the five operators’ pages we read publishes an exchange rate. Rather than quote a ratio without one — a ratio is a conversion — we convert at the Banco Central de Costa Rica reference sell rate of 453.50 colones to the US dollar, dated 26 August 2026, the same rate and date used across this site. At that rate Los Lagos’s CRC 16,500 pool-only pass is about USD 36.38, which makes Baldi’s USD 51.00 roughly 1.4 times it and Tabacón’s USD 115.00 roughly 3.2 times it. Those multiples are ours and they move with the rate; the colón and dollar figures above are the operators’ own and do not.

Tabacón’s reservation-policies page separately gives hot-springs access as 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; that page frames its terms around room stays, so for a day pass we print the 10:00 a.m. opening its own day-pass booking page states.

The waterfall, and the number nobody agrees on

La Fortuna Waterfall is run by ADIFORT, the town’s integral development association, and its FAQ prices entry at USD 20.00 for foreigners, USD 10.00 for nationals, free for children under 8.

The descent is where it gets strange. The operator’s own FAQ says 500 steps and 20 to 30 minutes to get down. The operator’s own homepage says approximately 530. A third source, the shuttle company Interbus, says 480. Three numbers, two of them on the same website. We are not picking one — the people who run the waterfall have published two figures themselves.

Inside the national park

The park has two visitor sectors. Sector Volcán holds the main viewpoint over the cone, Sendero Heliconias, Sendero Las Coladas, Mirador Las Coladas and Sendero El Ceibo. Sector Península holds Sendero Miradores and Sendero Tororoi. The 2025 management plan also lists an entry control booth, restrooms, potable water, parking, signage, a visitor centre, an auditorium and a meeting room, attributing that inventory to SINAC 2015.

Trail lengths, from the SINAC/ICT brochure and repeated on the live park page:

The brochure file carries an InDesign stamp of 14/08/15, so it dates to 2015; the current park page independently repeats all three lengths.

The same brochure records 79 mammal species and 56 amphibian species in the park, and states it is among the 21 most important bird areas in Costa Rica, attributed to BirdLife International 2008. Named birds include the keel-billed motmot, great curassow, bare-necked umbrellabird and three-wattled bellbird.

How big the park is, and how busy the town is

Two SINAC documents give two areas. The 2025 general management plan says 11,945.29 hectares, citing the national territorial information system (SNIT) 2024, and breaks it down by canton: San Ramón 3,324.85 ha (27.86%), San Carlos 6,399.74 ha (53.61%), Tilarán 2,220.71 ha (18.53%). The 2015 brochure says 12,080 ha. Both are SINAC’s own. We are printing both rather than averaging them.

Correction, 24 September 2026: an earlier version of this page gave the park a daily visitor capacity of 1,000, read from SINAC’s consolidated entrance-tariff PDF. Re-read on 24 September 2026, that PDF is a list of hours and fees with no capacity figure; its CRC 1,000 against Arenal is the resident entrance fee before tax — the CRC 1,130 the park page charges residents is that fee with 13% IVA. Neither SINAC’s park page nor that PDF gives a daily capacity for the park (checked 24 September 2026).

• The district of La Fortuna receives about 3,000 tourists a day in high season and has roughly 110 hotels, per the 2025 management plan. That is the town, not the park. Four La Fortuna properties’ own booking engines, and the whole town’s aggregator band, are on our where to stay in La Fortuna page.

The same plan places La Fortuna among the ten most-visited destinations in Costa Rica, attributing that to the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) 2022.

Why USD 15 and USD 16.95 are both published for the same ticket

Both numbers are real and they are the same price. SINAC’s consolidated tariff schedule lists the base tariff for Arenal Volcano National Park at USD 15. The park’s own page shows $16,95, which is 15 × 1.13 with Costa Rica’s 13% IVA applied. SINAC’s English-language page for Manuel Antonio makes the convention explicit by writing its own fee as "$16 + IVA", confirming that SINAC quotes base tariffs exclusive of tax on the schedule and tax-inclusive on the park pages.

You pay USD 16.95. The child rate works the same way: a USD 5 base becomes USD 5.65 at the gate, for ages 2 to under 12.

How far the park is from town

SINAC’s public-use map legend reads “A La Fortuna 16 km” — and “A Tilarán 68 km” in the other direction. Interbus’s destination page instead says the park sits roughly 5 miles from downtown La Fortuna. We are not reconciling those; they are probably not measuring the same two points, and no Costa Rican road authority publishes a figure we could check either against. Shuttles from San José drop in town rather than at the gate — their fares and timetables are set out separately.

What the operators don’t publish

These are gaps in what the operators and the park service themselves put on public pages. We looked and they are not there:

• A day-pass rate in the body of EcoTermales’ own website. The figure exists — USD 49.00 — but only in the booking engine its /reservar/ page links to.
• A day-pass rate in the body of Tabacón’s own website. The figure exists — USD 115.00 — but only inside the booking engine tabacon.com/day-pass/ links to. Its homepage, /hot-springs, /rooms/day-pass/ and its day-pass policies page carry none, and /special-deals-packages/ returns a 404.
• Tabacón’s child and infant day-pass rates. Its booking engine carries selectors for ages 6–11 and 0–5 and did not print a price against either on the page we read.
• Whether Arenal 1968’s unpriced “Pase de un día” and “Pase de 2 días” listings are the same products as the USD 99.00 combined day pass and the USD 261.00 Full Experience 2-Day Pass in its booking engine. The site lists the first pair with no figures, the engine sells the second pair, and neither says they are the same thing.
• A daily visitor capacity for the park. Neither SINAC’s park page nor its tariff PDF gives one (checked 24 September 2026).
• Baldi’s day-pass rates after 10 December 2026, the stated end of the current table.
• Arenal Volcano National Park’s annual visitor count. The 2025 management plan gives revenue figures and no visitor totals.
• A single agreed distance from La Fortuna to the park entrance. SINAC’s own map legend and a shuttle operator’s destination page give different figures, and we found no Costa Rican road authority publishing one to settle them.
• La Fortuna Waterfall’s opening hours. Not on the operator’s FAQ or homepage as we read them on 26 August 2026. Much of that site renders client-side, so this is an absence in what we could read rather than a confirmed absence from the site.

How we researched this

Scope: this page reports source research, not an on-site test. We checked the booking systems, timetables and official sources named below on the date shown; calculations, unresolved disagreements and information we could not verify are labelled explicitly.

On 26 August 2026 we read SINAC’s official pages for Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal — the park page, its purchase page and its national online-reservation list — plus SINAC’s 2025 general management plan for the park, its consolidated entrance-tariff PDF and the SINAC/ICT visitor brochure. Fees, hours and the card-only rule come from those. The waterfall figures come from ADIFORT’s own FAQ and homepage. Hot-springs rates come from each operator’s own rate page, except the Arenal 1968 trail, Kuru and USD 110 night-walk prices, which come from that operator’s own booking engine, and its USD 65 night-walk price, which comes from its own tour pages. The Tabacón day-pass rates and hours come from the booking engine linked from tabacon.com/day-pass/, and the tax wording from that page. The EcoTermales rates come from the booking engine its /reservar/ page links to. On 24 September 2026 we re-read every one of those sources, plus SINAC’s park, purchase and reservation pages and its tariff PDF.

Where two sources disagree, we print both. Where an operator publishes nothing, we say so rather than estimating. The USD 15 / USD 16.95 pair is the one case we do resolve, because it resolves arithmetically and SINAC states the convention itself.

We did not publish a crater height or a lake area for Arenal. The only figures we found for either came from a shuttle operator’s marketing page, and no volcanological or hydrological authority was checked.

Figures on this page labelled our arithmetic are calculated by us from the sourced inputs cited below — comparisons, percentages, multiples, differences, per-night and per-person conversions, running totals and currency conversions. Every other figure is reproduced as its named source published it. Where an operator or authority publishes a per-person or per-night rate directly, that is their figure and it is attributed to them at the point it appears.

Sources

• SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal — the USD 16.95 and USD 5.65 fees, the 8 a.m.–4 p.m. hours, trail lengths.
• SINAC — Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal, “Comprar” — tickets at the booth on the day, card only, no cash, no online sale.
• SINAC — Compra y Reserva en Línea — the list of 12 reservation-required parks, and Arenal’s absence from it.
• SINAC — Sistema de Compra y Reservaciones en Línea (SICORE) — FAQ item 1, the competing 11-area list that omits Los Quetzales, and FAQ item 15 for ticket-office payment everywhere else.
• SINAC — Plan General de Manejo del Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal (2025) — 11,945.29 ha and the canton split, the visitor-infrastructure inventory, 3,000 tourists a day and ~110 hotels in the district, the ICT 2022 top-ten ranking.
• SINAC — Tarifas de ingreso a áreas silvestres protegidas (PDF, no date on its face; file metadata dated 21 December 2018) — the USD 15 base tariff, the CRC 1,000 resident base tariff, and the USD 5 non-resident child base tariff for ages 2 to under 12, all undated; the document carries no capacity figure. Re-read 24 September 2026.
• SINAC / ICT — Brochure Parque Nacional Volcán Arenal — trail terrain detail, 12,080 ha, 79 mammals and 56 amphibians, the BirdLife note, the 16 km map legend.
• SINAC — Manuel Antonio National Park, English page — the “$16 + IVA” wording that establishes how SINAC quotes tariffs with and without tax.
• Catarata La Fortuna — FAQ — USD 20 / USD 10 / free under 8, and the 500-step figure.
• Catarata La Fortuna — homepage — the competing ~530-step figure.
• Baldi Hot Springs — day pass — all Baldi rates and their 10 December 2026 validity date, hours, the no-reservation rule, towel and locker charges.
• Hotel Los Lagos — day pass — all Los Lagos rates, hours and inclusions.
• Tabacón — Day Pass (redirecting to tabacon.com/hot-springs on 24 September 2026) — the “Prices are per person in USD and include taxes” statement and the link to the booking engine.
• Tabacón — day pass in the resort’s own booking engine — USD 115.00 for ages 12 and over, springs only, the exclusion wording and the 10:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m. hours; the meal-inclusive pass at USD 184.00.
• Tabacón — reservation policies — the 8 a.m.–10 p.m. springs access stated for room guests.
• Arenal 1968 — Caminata Nocturna and Night Walk — the USD 65 night walk at 6:00 p.m.
• Arenal 1968 — official booking site — USD 28.00 adult and USD 16.00 child trail admission, USD 80.00 Kuru with its “Adults Only 18+” label, the USD 99.00 combined day pass, the USD 261.00 2-day pass and the USD 110.00 night walk. Re-read at source on 24 September 2026.
• EcoTermales Fortuna — own booking engine — the USD 49.00 entrance fee and USD 81.00 with lunch or dinner.
• Banco Central de Costa Rica — reference sell rate — 453.50 colones to the dollar, dated 2026-08-26, the basis for the colón-to-dollar multiples above.
• EcoTermales Fortuna — reservar — session times, and the link to its booking engine.
• Interbus — La Fortuna de San Carlos / Arenal Volcano — the “roughly 5 miles” distance and the 480-step figure, both cited here only as competing claims.

Last verified: 2026-09-24 for every fee, rate and opening-hours figure; SINAC’s 2025 management plan and 2015 brochure are as read on 2026-08-26. Park fees, hot-springs rates and opening hours change without notice, and Baldi’s current rates carry a stated end date of 10 December 2026.

Written by Estuardo Enriquez. This site is independent, carries no affiliate relationship with any operator named here, and is not connected to any previous owner of this domain.