What Is NOT Included in a Chichen Itza Tour

Not Included in This Tour

This tour's exclusion list is settled, and it is short. Three items, and the discipline of this page is that nothing may be added to it here:

• Drinks. Anything you drink on the day, on the road, at lunch, at the cenote, is bought by you. Drinks are the one everyday cost this tour leaves entirely in your hands, so the planner below treats them as an unpriced cash line: no reliable figure exists, and none is invented.
• Tips. The guide's and the driver's tips are not in the price, as on every tour in this market. They are expected per person and voluntary in principle; the attributed ranges are set out in the tips section below.
• Personal spending. Souvenirs, crafts and clothes; snacks outside the meal; and any other activity you choose at the ruins, in Valladolid or at the cenote. What you buy for yourself is yours to pay for, the tour neither bundles it nor marks it up.

Read the list as a boundary, not just a warning. A tour whose not-included list is three named items cannot produce a fourth operator charge, the one gate charge that remains is the site's own video-camera fee, which no operator controls; it sits in Group A below and in the planner. And if anything about your specific booking differs, it will be in your written confirmation, because that is where this operator settles things. What the $130 does cover is the subject of the next section, and it covers the two items the market most often leaves out.

En español: en este tour no se incluyen las bebidas, las propinas ni los gastos personales: recuerdos, artesanías, ropa, snacks fuera de la comida y otras actividades. La lista completa, en cuatro grupos, está en la sección de preguntas frecuentes.

Confirmed in Writing Before You Pay

Three things about this tour are not printed as yes or no on this page, because printing a guess would be worse than printing nothing. Instead, each is confirmed in writing for your booking, before you pay the 30% advance, in the same WhatsApp confirmation that settles your date, party, pickup point and total. They are:

• Whether a certified guide is included. Market context, attributed: if you were visiting independently, guides hire at the gate for roughly 600 to 1,200 MXN per group: Tripadvisor reports around 600 MXN, Reddit reports 800–1,200 MXN, and chichen-itzatours.com around 1,000 MXN per group. Those figures price hiring your own guide; they say nothing about this tour, which is why this tour's position is stated in your confirmation instead.
• Whether lunch is included. If it is not confirmed for your booking, the separate buy is known and priced: the buffet at Cenote Ik Kil is 530 MXN per adult and 280 MXN per child on Ik Kil's own site (November 2026). The planner below carries it as an optional line, it only becomes a cost if your confirmation says lunch is not included.
• The life-jacket and locker arrangement at Ik Kil. The cenote's own entry ticket, 240 MXN, includes a life jacket, a locker and parking, for independent visitors buying at the cenote. How the arrangement works for guests arriving on this tour is the operator's to state, and it is stated in your confirmation, not assumed from the cenote's ticket.

Why written confirmation, rather than a confident line on a web page? Because the market's own pages show what confident lines are worth. On chichenitza.com's Tour Plus page, the life jacket appears twice, contradicting itself: in the inclusions, as "provided on site… additional cost of $4", and again under Not Included, as "rental of lockers, life jacket or towels". One operator, one page, two opposite answers. A customer who booked on the first line meets the second at the cenote. This operator's answer to that failure is procedural: the three items above are settled per booking, in writing, before money moves, and the contact page sets out exactly what to ask in your first message so the confirmation covers them.

Drinks and Food on the Day

"Are drinks included?" is really three questions wearing one coat, because the market sells drinks in three different places. Untangling them explains most of the fine print you will read anywhere:

• Drinks on the bus. On higher-priced tiers, some tours advertise unlimited drinks on board. On standard tiers, and on this tour, bus drinks are not an inclusion.
• Drinks at lunch. Some tiers include exactly one drink with the meal. That single drink is a tier mechanic, not a market norm: the same operator's lower tier excludes it.
• The buffet upsell. At cenote stops, a buffet is commonly sold as the day's meal option, at Ik Kil, the buffet is 530 MXN per adult and 280 MXN per child on the cenote's own site.

On this tour the position is simple and split exactly along this page's groups. Drinks are not included: Group B, settled, bring cash. Lunch sits in Group D: confirmed in writing for your booking before the advance is paid. And if your confirmation says lunch is not included, the Ik Kil buffet above is the known, priced alternative, which is why it appears in the planner as an optional line rather than a surprise. Food beyond the meal, snacks at the ruins, anything in Valladolid, is personal spending, in Group B and Group A alike.

Souvenirs and the Vendors Inside the Ruins

The ruins are lined with vendors, and this is the one part of the day where your spending is entirely your own, personal spending sits in both Group A and Group B for a reason. No souvenir prices are published on this page, because none could be reliably sourced; what can be published is how the buying works, as reported:

• Cash only. The vendors inside the ruins take cash. Combined with card machines at the site reported as often out of order, cash in small notes is the working plan.
• The "one dollar" opening. Vendors commonly open with a "one dollar" call, a documented tactic, attributed in traveller reporting: the opening price is an invitation to a negotiation, not the price of the piece in your hand.
• Inside costs more than outside. Prices inside the ruins are reported higher than outside the gates, the same crafts, priced for a captive walkway.
• Haggling is normal. It is the expected shape of the transaction, conducted in cash, at whatever pace you set. Walking away is also normal, and the clearest price signal there is.

None of this is a reason to skip the vendors, the crafts are real, and for many visitors this is the day's most enjoyable spending. It is a reason to decide your souvenir cash before the gate, as part of the planner's unpriced buffer, rather than discovering the cash-only rule with a hammock already over your arm.