Valley of the Kings tour reviews: what the customers actually praise
There are 51 reviews across the six tours this site lists. Forty-seven of them name a person — a guide, a driver, a tour leader — by name, usually in the first sentence or two. Four do not. Nobody was asked to do this. On a site whose argument is that the tomb tickets are a separate purchase you make at a window, the reviews answer the question that follows: what a tour sells is a person, and the customers say so before they say anything else.
Forty-seven reviews, forty-seven names
Three, from three different tours, chosen because they are typical rather than because they are the best written:
“Mena Oweda was a great live guide during these visits to the Valley of the Kings and Queens. We highly recommend him.”
“The tour guide, Mahmoud Essa, was great and fun. He explained everything to me in detail and in a very enjoyable way. I highly recommend him.”
“Maria was an excellent tour guide - friendly and well informed. She can also read hieroglyphics!”
Read a hundred hotel reviews and you get the room. Read these and you get a person, and usually a second one behind the wheel. That is not sentiment, it is a description of what the money buys. The tombs are fixed, the prices are set by the Ministry, and the thing that varies between a good day and a wasted one is who walks you round. It is also the thing no listing can promise you, which is the uncomfortable half of the finding.
The four that name nobody are worth as much as the forty-seven. Two of them are on the long day trip from the Red Sea coast, one is on the private tour, and the fourth is the single written review on the ticket-only product further down this page. One of the two from the Red Sea coast explains why:
“The tour guide was great at providing information ahead of time, but we were often left alone at the actual sites to navigate them ourselves and recall everything we’d been told. If feasible, having the guide accompany the group throughout the sites would be a big improvement.”
“Great experience overall for our family! A special thanks to our guide, who was incredibly attentive, professional, and so kind to our children throughout the day.”
“Guide and driver were wonderful. The food was good. A great experience.”
Gareth’s review is cut where his second point begins, which is about drivers asking for a tip at the end of the day and asking again when they had it. His first half is the one that matters most for planning: a guide who briefs you in the minibus and then waits outside is a different purchase from one who walks the site with you. Whether that was his day or the arrangement is not something the listing settles, and this site is not going to decide it for him.
Six products, and the sample size next to every score
Sorted by the number of reviews behind the rating, largest first, which is not the order any booking site would put them in:
| Product | Score | Reviews behind it | Quotes I can read | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luxor: Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple Day Tour | 4.5 | 1,891 | 10 | US$50 |
| Hurghada: Luxor Tour with Valley of Kings, Karnak & Tut Tomb | 4.6 | 1,474 | 10 | US$63.05 |
| Luxor: Valley of the Kings and Queens Guided Tour with Lunch | 4.5 | 468 | 10 | US$40 |
| Luxor: West Bank Kings and Queens All-Inclusive Tour & Lunch | 4.6 | 330 | 10 | US$74 |
| Private Full Day West Bank: Valley of kings Hatshepsut &More | 4.9 | 74 | 10 | US$70 |
| Luxor: King Tutankhamun Tomb Skip-The-Line Ticket | 4.4 | 3 | 1 | US$95 |
The highest score on the list sits on the second-smallest sample. The largest sample carries the joint-lowest score. Neither of those is a coincidence and neither is a criticism: a rating drifts downwards as it collects the ordinary bad mornings that every operation has, and a product with 74 reviews has had fewer chances to collect one than a product with 1,891.
Here is the sum that makes it concrete. One more one-star review would take the 4.9 on the private tour to 4.8. To move the 4.5 on the day tour by the same tenth of a point you would need 28 of them. Same arithmetic, two very different things being measured.
One caveat on that sum. A published average is rounded to one decimal place, so the true total behind it is not knowable from the outside and these figures treat the rounded number as exact. The direction is what survives the caveat: a small base moves under one bad morning and a large one does not.
Three customers describe the three-tomb rule without being asked
This is the most useful thing in the pool, and none of it was solicited. Three reviewers on three different products, one of them writing it as the single downside of a five-star day:
“Salma was excellent. Very passionate about the subject matter. The only downside is that the tombs you see are pre-decided for you, and there wasn’t any option to visit additional tombs if you wanted.”
“The tour was very well organized. The 3 included tumbs were nice. The Seti I tumb added with supplement was a must.”
“At the Valley of the Kings, she provided excellent recommendations on which tombs to visit, helping us make the most of our limited entries.”
Read those three together. Franck describes three included tombs and Seti I bought as a supplement on top, which is the ticket structure this whole site exists to explain, written by a customer who had just walked through it. Tom describes a guide spending her expertise on which three to use. Adia describes the version where the choice is made for you and the paid tombs are not offered at all.
The structure they are all circling is set out on what the ticket actually admits you to: EGP 750 buys three tombs from those open on the day, and Tutankhamun at EGP 700 or Seti I at EGP 2,000 are separate tickets that do not use up one of the three. Which three to spend is on choosing your three tombs. Whether Seti I is worth what Franck paid is on the tomb of Seti I.
Adia’s sentence is the one to carry into a booking. She is not describing a rip-off; she gave the day five stars and praised her guide by name. She is describing a group itinerary, where the three tombs are chosen once for everybody. If the tomb you came for is a paid one, that is the sentence that decides whether a tour suits you.
The heat, mentioned by people nobody asked about the heat
Seven reviewers raise the temperature unprompted, and another five volunteer that the car had air conditioning. Nobody asks a customer about the weather in a review form:
“Adam, our live guide, was exceptional! Despite the intense heat that day, he demonstrated true professionalism and made our visit a very enjoyable experience.”
“Our guide, Mina, explained the history before we explored each site and was very punctual. Since it was a very hot day, the efficient itinerary made it easy to enjoy the sights.”
“Mohamed gave a lot of explanations, and I enjoyed seeing the sights. We were able to visit two archaeological sites while it was still cool, so we enjoyed it efficiently.”
eli’s is the practical one. “While it was still cool” is a customer describing an early start and giving it as the reason the morning worked. Guides and experienced visitors have said the same thing for years, and the numbers behind it are plain: Luxor’s mean daily maximum is 41.4 °C in July and 41.2 °C in June and August. The valley opens at 6:00 AM. That page is when to visit, and the heat, and what to carry is on what to bring — including the rule that food and water may not go into the tombs with you.
The same names turn up under different listings
Reading all six pools in one sitting, several first names appear in the reviews of more than one product. Mina, Manal, Salma Khairt, Alaa Hassan, Mahmoud Essa and Maria each appear in reviews left on two different listings, and a driver called Amr appears in three reviews of the private tour alongside more than one guide.
What that means is not something anything published will tell you, so this page will not guess. It could be one guide working across several operations, or it could be common names in a city where guiding is a licensed profession with a finite number of people in it. What it does mean for a reader is narrower and safer: the guide you get is not decided by which listing you click. None of these products sells you a named person, and none of them can. If you have read a review here and hoped for the guide in it, hope is all it is.
The US$95 product, and why it has no review page
The Luxor: King Tutankhamun Tomb Skip-The-Line Ticket is listed at US$95. Tutankhamun’s tomb costs EGP 700 at the window, which at roughly 50 EGP to the dollar, read on 16–17 August 2026, is about US$14.
That is not a scam and this site does not call it one. The product’s own page says it includes a guide, fast-track entry and the visitor centre, and those are real things that cost real money to provide. The difference between the two numbers is guiding, transport and convenience. It is not the ticket. A visitor who can reach the window buys the same tomb for EGP 700, and what is in it — the mummy, in a climate-controlled case, since 2007 — is on Tutankhamun’s tomb.
What the US$95 buys beyond that cannot be stated here, because the listing itself does not state it. Its description offers an “Optional Visit to Additional Tombs – Depending on your ticket type”, and this site does not assert what a product includes past its own words.
There is no review page for it because there is nothing to review. It carries 3 ratings. One of them has any text at all. A 4.4 from 3 ratings is not a rating, it is three people, and building a page on it would be building a page on nothing. Here is the one review in full, and it is the most honest thing on this page:
“This was an incredible activity. We were met on time from our hotel and driven to the valley of the Kings where we met our guide. He took us to the Valley of the Kings and gave us our general entry ticket and our specific one for the tomb of Tutankhamun. Guides aren’t allowed in the tombs themselves, so our guide gave us a talk outside and showed us a booklet of postcards we could buy if we wanted to. King Tutankhamun’s tomb is amazing, but small, so we made sure we got to see two other larger tombs before we left. Our guide wanted to take us to a workshop where ornaments and souvenirs are made from alabaster, granite and other stones that they say are mined from the Valley of the Kings. We were given a theatrical performance of how this is done by some locals and then invited to buy something. We didn’t want anything, so could have done without this part of the Guided Tour of the Valley of the Kings. Overall it was worth it, but I might just hire a driver and pay for entry in future.”
Two things in there are the reviewer’s account of their own day and are not confirmed anywhere this site can check: that guides are not allowed inside the tombs, and that this traveller was handed both tickets. Neither is stated as fact here, and the second in particular cannot be generalised to your booking, because the listing does not promise it in those words.
The last sentence needs no help from me. “I might just hire a driver and pay for entry in future” is the argument of this entire site, written by the only person who left any words at all on the product that would earn this site the most. What the day costs assembled from its parts is on what a day in the valley costs.
The three products with enough reviews to write about
Luxor: Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple Day Tour
The biggest sample on the site by a distance, and the reviewer who wrote down the ticket structure without meaning to.
from US$50Read the review ›
Luxor: West Bank Kings and Queens All-Inclusive Tour & Lunch
Ten reviews, ten different guides named, and two of them contradict each other about who chooses your tombs.
from US$74Read the review ›
Private Full Day West Bank: Valley of kings Hatshepsut &More
The highest score here, on the second-smallest sample, and six of ten reviews describing the same guide.
from US$70Read the review ›The two products without a page of their own are the US$40 Kings and Queens guided day, which carries 4.5 from 468 reviews and is the cheapest guided day here, and the Hurghada trip at US$63.05, which carries 4.6 from 1,474. Both are on every tour listed. The Hurghada one is a coach day from the Red Sea coast rather than a Luxor tour, and how long a valley visit actually takes is on how much time you need.
What no review here tells you
Not one of the fifty-one reviews mentions the price of a ticket, in any currency. People rate the day and the person who ran it. They do not write down what they paid at the window, and they do not say whether their tour price covered it.
So this site will not tell you either. A tour price includes what the product’s own inclusions list says it includes and nothing more, that list sits on the booking panel, and it is worth reading twice before you pay. The reason it matters is the whole argument of this site: general entry is EGP 750 and it admits you to three tombs of your choice, while Tutankhamun at EGP 700, Seti I at EGP 2,000 and Ramses V and VI at EGP 220 are each bought on top. The full grid is on every published ticket price. Entry is paid by card only; carry cash for the EGP 20 tram.
What I cannot check
I do not choose which reviews the platform surfaces. Ten per product is what is shown, and on a listing with 1,891 reviews behind it that is a sample of a sample, chosen by somebody whose interests are not identical to yours. Every one of the ten I can read on that tour is five stars, and ten five-star reviews cannot average 4.5. The reviews that pull it down are in the part I cannot see.
I also cannot verify that a reviewer went, that a name is spelled the way its owner spells it, or that two reviews naming the same person mean the same person. Where a page here says something is uncertain, that is the reason. Nothing on these pages is solicited, no operator has seen a page before it published, and how this site earns is on the affiliate disclosure.
Every quote on this page was read off the product’s own GetYourGuide page, with the first name and star rating as published and the spelling, punctuation and complaints left as the reviewer typed them. Where a quote is cut to a clause the cut is marked. Scores, review counts and prices are live figures that move; read the current ones in the booking panel before you pay.
Frequently asked questions
Which Valley of the Kings tour has the most reviews?
The Luxor: Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut Temple Day Tour, with 1,891 reviews behind a 4.5 rating. That is by far the largest sample on this site; the next is 1,474, and the smallest is 3.
Is a higher-rated tour the better tour?
Only if the samples are comparable, and here they are not. The 4.9 rests on 74 reviews and the 4.5 on 1,891. One more one-star review would take the first to 4.8; it would take 28 of them to move the second by the same tenth of a point.
What do reviewers of Valley of the Kings tours praise most?
The guide, overwhelmingly. Of the 51 reviews across the six products listed here, 47 name a guide, a driver or a tour leader by name, usually in the first sentence or two. Almost nobody writes about the tombs themselves in any detail.
Do the reviews say whether a tour includes your tomb tickets?
No. Not one of the 51 mentions a ticket price in any currency. One reviewer describes being handed a general ticket and a Tutankhamun ticket on the day, and another describes paying a supplement for Seti I, which are two different arrangements. Read the inclusions on the booking panel: general entry is EGP 750 and the famous tombs are bought on top of it.
Why is there no review of the Tutankhamun ticket product?
Because it carries 3 ratings and only one of them has any text at all. 4.4 from 3 ratings is three people rather than a rating. The count, the two prices side by side and the one written review are on the reviews hub instead of being spread into a page.