Maid of the Mist

The Maid of the Mist boat tour is the essential Niagara Falls experience. You board a flat-bottomed tour boat at the base of the gorge, are handed a blue poncho, and cruise directly into the spray at the base of the American Falls and then into the boiling mist at the foot of the Horseshoe Falls. At close range, the scale of the falls becomes physical rather than visual — the noise, the force of the air, the soaking spray, the sense of the sheer volume of water. The poncho is not sufficient.

The boats run from late April through early November. Lines can be long at peak times; arriving early or late in the afternoon helps. Tickets are purchased at the dock, which is reached by elevator from Prospect Point in the state park. The tour takes about 20 minutes.

things to do sight
A story
Maid of the Mist is one of the oldest tourist operations in North America, having run since 1846. The first boats were steam-powered wooden ferry craft originally used to cross the gorge before a bridge was built. The service carried its most famous passenger in 1860 when the French acrobat Charles Blondin — who had already walked a tightrope across the gorge — crossed the gorge again, this time carrying his manager on his back, and then descended to the boat for a handshake.