Travel Tuesday – Local Edition: Family-Friendly Alcatraz Night Tour

Joanne May 8, 2018

Happy Tuesday!

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I ventured out to Alcatraz. We missed a few people, but there were a total of 11 of us and while a few have gone before, it was a first for most of us who have lived in California our whole lives. I guess visiting Alcatraz isn’t normally something you do on a weekend if you’re a local, but after having some discussion at a family potluck, we decided to try to go all together.

We bought tickets well in advanced, in February to be exact, for the night tour, so we knew we were going to go rain or shine. We started our local tourist day at the busiest tourist attraction of all, Pier 39. I, of course, had to get some of Trish’s Mini Donuts to go. Then, we got a bike ride to the Ferry Building, one of my favorite San Francisco places to see and eat. Here, we met up with most of my family to eat at Gott’s Roadside Burger. They have yummy food to choose from to cater to all diets.

(Tickets for the Alcatraz Night Tour were purchased here for Adults and Kids: (kids under 5 are free) https://www.alcatrazislandtickets.com/tickets/)

After our meal, we headed back to the the Alcatraz Landing where you can also sneak in a picture of Coit Tower just across the way. At Alcatraz Landing, you need to line up about 30 minutes before you start boarding the boat so we hung out here just before doing so. They also have a cafe/gift shop you can go to if you get hungry or want to get your souvenirs early.

While boarding the boat, we were stopped by a photographer for what I call a tourist trap, but our photo came out great and was worth the purchase 🙂 (Thanks, Deb!) This is the photo we got at the end of our trip!

All aboard! It was time to board the boat and I’d say if you get seasick, you definitely can’t trust the Bay water so plan accordingly by using what you can for motion sickness.

After a 15 to 20 minute boat ride, we landed on ‘The Rock.’ And yes, it was what I expected as the sun was setting; eerie yet intriguing.

We were met by a tour guide who let us know a bit about the island and who occupied it when it was running as a prison. This was all information I’d never known especially regarding the families that actually worked and lived there.

The tour guide was funny and engaging and before we knew it, we had made our trip to the top of the rock where the maximum security prison building was. He had asked where people had come from that were visiting and surprisingly, we were the only ones from the actually Bay Area visiting. Everyone else was coming from out of state or out of the country! He also let us know what our options would be as we walked inside the prison. We then headed inside to collect our audio guides. It was great to hear voices and stories of what actually went down from the prisoners to the guards and everyone in between.

Communal showers. Prisoners were allowed to shower once a week.

Dahlia inside one of the more secured cells.

After our audio guided tour, what’s special about the night tour is that they have additional talks where employees take you to various parts of the prison and discuss specific events that happened at the prison. These talks also happen as the sun sets and the darkness rises, an experience I will not forget.

You have a couple of options for talks and can stay on the Rock until the last boat leaves, but we opted for the earlier boat since we needed to get back to our civilization (the garages were going to close with our cars in them.)

Overall, we had a great historic look back at the no longer suspicious island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. I can now check it off my Bucket List along with the other tourists that flock this unique destination. So, if you have a free day in San Francisco, I highly recommend the Alcatraz night tour for a fun family outing and you might leave with a souvenir cup like we all did. 🙂

Happy Traveling!