Affiliate Disclosure

Plainly, and before anything else: Chicago Night Tours may earn a commission when you book through a link on this site, at no extra cost to you.

What that means in practice

The tours listed here are sold through GetYourGuide and Viator. When you follow a link from one of these pages and go on to book, the platform pays us a share of its own commission. You pay the same fare either way; the price on the booking page is the operator's price, not a marked-up one.

What we are not

We are not a tour operator. We do not run any of these tours, employ any of these guides, captains or pilots, or hold your booking. Your contract is with the operator, through the platform.

We have no connection with the City of Chicago, Choose Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Center, or any cruise, tour or flight company.

How tours get listed

Operators cannot pay for placement, position or a badge. A badge on a card is a measured claim: Top rated only on a tour rated 4.9 or higher, Best seller only on the tour with the most reviews, Best value only on the lowest fare that buys what the site is about. A platform's own badge is not shown.

Today Best seller sits on Wendella's 45-minute river tour, which has the most reviews. No tour is rated 4.9 or higher, so nothing is marked Top rated. The lowest fare is the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry's daytime ticket, and a value badge on a museum that closes at 4pm would mislead on a site about the evening, so nothing is marked Best value either.

The featured tours at the top of the homepage are three different evenings from three different starts: First Lady's By Night cruise from Michigan & Wacker, Wendella's sunset cruise from 400 N Michigan Ave, and the Night Crimes bus from Pearson Street.

Two of First Lady's cruises, By Night and the Creepy Cruise, are each listed on both platforms under different names. The copies are never shown side by side, and each listing is described from its own page.

Prices, ratings and how current they are

Prices, star ratings and review counts belong to the operators and were taken from their own listings on 27 September 2026. They move, and the figure at checkout is the one that counts. Every fare is quoted in US dollars, the currency the listings were captured in, and every fare here is per person. Nothing was on offer when the listings were captured.

Sunset and dark times come from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Facts about the Riverwalk, the fountain, the projections, the fireworks and the observation decks come from the official pages of the City of Chicago, Choose Chicago, Art on theMART, Navy Pier, 360 Chicago and Skydeck. Where a detail comes from a listing, such as a meeting point, a start time or what the fare covers, it belongs to that tour.

What we deliberately do not publish

• A guide who is not one. One booking page lists a guide on Wendella's sunset cruise; Wendella's own page calls it light narration from the crew, not a guided tour, and so do we.
• A lake the boat does not reach. The Creepy Cruise stays on the river, as First Lady's own answers say, so we never put it on the lake.
• A night that is not one. The 45-minute river tour runs by day, and only its last departures reach dusk, so we never call it a night tour. The helicopter listing prints no flight times: we say the operator sells sunset and evening slots, never that yours will be dark.
• Access claims either way. Some listings say the boats are not wheelchair accessible while the operators' own pages describe accessible boats and routes. We give the operators' routes and phone number and ask you to check before you book.
• Figures no official source settles. A fixed time for a sunset cruise, a season for an operator that publishes none, parking rates that the operator's own pages disagree on, or next year's fireworks and projection dates.