Krakow Zakopane Tour

The Krakow to Zakopane tour is an 11-hour day: pickup in Kraków, the wooden village of Chochołów with a cheese and vodka tasting, free time on Krupówki, the Gubałówka funicular, and three hours in the pools of Chochołowskie Termy. The full day, with the funicular and baths tickets included, cost €90.41 a person from a central meeting point and €97.21 with hotel pickup on Thousand Miles Cracow Adventure Company’s Krakow–Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka, for Tuesday 24 November 2026 (read November 2026). The listing’s “from” figure of €22 is the lowest price it shows on any date and option, not what a typical day costs.

The “from” price and the full day

Almost every Zakopane day tour from Kraków on GetYourGuide shows a “from” price of about €22, and almost none of them sells the full day for that. On the listings we opened, the low figure belongs to a transfer-only option (the trip and the guide, with the funicular and the baths paid on the spot) or to a version that starts in Zakopane. The day most people mean, with both tickets in the price, costs about four times as much:

Prices per adult for Tuesday 24 November 2026, read on the listings’ booking calendars in November 2026. GetYourGuide showed most of them as reductions from a higher list price, and the same options cost more on some dates: Best Krakow’s meeting-point day was €104.37 for Saturday 16 January 2027.

Best Krakow’s day bathes at Terma Bania in Białka Tatrzańska, east of Zakopane, for 2.5 hours; the other three use Chochołowskie Termy. What the full option buys is the round-trip Gubałówka funicular ticket and a three-hour pool ticket at Chochołowskie Termy, on top of the minibus, the guide and the tasting. Bought on the day, the funicular costs 42 złoty return at the ticket office (37 złoty online) and three hours in the pools 95 złoty Monday to Thursday or 115 złoty Friday to Sunday (PKL and Chochołowskie Termy price lists, November 2026). At the European Central Bank’s rate of 2 November 2026, 4.4185 złoty to the euro, that is about €31 to €36 of tickets. What the Krakow Zakopane tour costs sets out every option.

Which day to book

Prices, ratings and review counts from the listings (GetYourGuide checked November 2026). The card prices are each listing’s lowest option; the full-day prices are in the table above. Operators price by date and season, so treat the figures as the shape of the market, not a quote.

Thousand Miles Cracow Adventure Company’s day is the most-reviewed Zakopane day trip from Krakow on GetYourGuide (11,406 reviews, checked November 2026), and ExploreCracow.com’s day carries 4,752. The two run the same stops in nearly the same order. ExploreCracow.com gives 2.5 hours of free time in Zakopane against two, and its guides add Spanish on some days each week; Thousand Miles lists 30 minutes at the top of Gubałówka and a printed guidebook in more than 20 languages.

The day, stop by stop

Pickups run from about 07:30 to 09:00, and the driver confirms the exact time by message the evening before. The minibus heads south for about an hour and a half to Chochołów, a village of log houses listed as a whole on Poland’s heritage register since 1965, for a short walk and a tasting of smoked highland cheese and vodka in a wooden hut. Zakopane comes next: free time on Krupówki, the town’s main street, and the Gubałówka funicular, 1,301 metres of track to the top station at 1,123 metres, three and a half minutes each way. The afternoon is three hours at Chochołowskie Termy, Chochołów 400, before the drive back to Kraków, about 11 hours after pickup. The itinerary hour by hour has the timings of both tours.

Check dates for the Zakopane day

The route

Zakopane is about 107 kilometres by road from the centre of Kraków (plac Jana Matejki to the Gubałówka funicular’s lower station), and the drive takes about an hour and three quarters without traffic. The road south, the Zakopianka (DK7), had roadworks and turn closures at Libertów in November 2026, so allow for slow stretches. If you would rather go on your own, the train or the bus to Zakopane take two to two and a half hours each way.

The thermal pools

Chochołowskie Termy calls itself the largest thermal baths in Poland: almost 4,500 square metres of water in 52 pools fed with mineral-rich water, indoors and out, with a therapeutic zone, a children’s zone and slides. The pools open Sunday to Thursday from 09:00 to 22:00 and Friday and Saturday to 23:00. A pool ticket covers the pool, therapy, children’s and quiet zones; the saunas are a 40-złoty supplement and the separate swimming pool 15 złoty. Bring swimwear, a towel (or hire one for 10 złoty) and flip-flops. Checked on 2 November 2026, the complex was open with its normal hours after building work, and only its panoramic sauna was shut. Chocholow thermal baths covers tickets, hours and the other baths near Zakopane.

Winter and summer

The day runs all year, but the season changes it.

Snow and cold. Zakopane is a mountain town, colder than Kraków, and from November the Tatras above it are under snow with avalanche danger declared by the Tatra National Park. None of the tour’s stops is on a mountain trail; dress for snow on Krupówki and at the top of Gubałówka.

The funicular. Gubałówka was running, 09:00 to 20:00, on 2 November 2026, with no autumn closure announced. The Kasprowy Wierch cable car, which is not part of this tour, was closed for its annual inspection from 19 October to 6 November 2026. Zakopane’s cable cars has both.

The cheese. Oscypek, the spindle-shaped smoked sheep’s cheese of the Tatras, is protected by the EU, and its specification says it is made only from May to September. A tasting from October to April is smoked highland cheese, often oscypek from the summer or similar smoked cheeses, not freshly made oscypek.

The baths are at their best in the cold: the outdoor pools steam against the snow. The baths’ low-season prices run to 24 December 2026 and the funicular’s to 18 December; check both again for a later date.

Doing it yourself

You can. Koleje Małopolskie’s Luxtorpeda train leaves Kraków Główny at 06:16 and reaches Zakopane at 08:48 for 26.50 złoty (timetable valid to 12 December 2026), and Szwagropol’s buses take about two hours ten minutes for 37 złoty, with about fifteen departures a day. Add the funicular (37 złoty return, bought online) and three hours in the pools, and with the bus both ways the tickets come to about 206 złoty (about €47) on a weekday, before local transport between Zakopane and Chochołów, which is 17.8 kilometres by road from Krupówki. The tour’s price buys the door-to-door minibus, the guide, the tasting and not having to time two connections in the dark. Krakow to Zakopane by train or bus has the timetables.

In which language

Both tours run with an English-speaking guide (and Polish). Thousand Miles Cracow Adventure Company hands guests of other languages a printed booklet of the day in more than 20 languages; ExploreCracow.com has Spanish-speaking guides on selected days of the week, and its private option offers a guide speaking English, Spanish, Polish or Portuguese.

Other days out of Kraków

Morskie Oko, the largest lake in the Tatras, is a separate day: Morskie Oko from Kraków explains why it does not fit into the Zakopane-and-baths tour. The other long day trip from Kraków, to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, is set out by auschwitztourfromkrakow.com, including the Museum’s free entry pass and reservation rules.