How to avoid the Lines at Major Hong Kong Attractions
Simple really - book a Private Tour of Hong Kong!
Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years - I know the place.
I have personally completed 2,300+ Private Experiences (over 6,000+ guests) since April 2011 and I am considered one of the finest Private Tour Guides in Asia.
A blog post with a difference
Please do visit Hong Kong in 2025 | Travel, Tourism, Tours, Tips, Daily Life and my personal thoughts on Hong Kong.
Hong Kong | Pearl of the Orient
Customised Private Tours & Experiences in Amazing Hong Kong
Pearl of the Orient
Private Tours Cultural Tours Walking Tours Sightseeing Tours City Tours Night Tours Transit Tours Shore Excursions
Carefully Crafted Personalised and Customised Itineraries by Jamie | Hong Kong’s Most Experienced Private Tour Guide For :
Solo Travellers Friends Families Seniors Couples Business People
J3 Group Hong Kong | J3 Consultants Hong Kong | J3 Private Tours Hong Kong
Creating Memories That Will Last A Lifetime
Book Now
How to avoid the Lines at Major Hong Kong Attractions
Simple really - book a Private Tour of Hong Kong!
click on the image to enlarge
A familiar sign over the years at the NP 360 Cable Car to go to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island and this is the wait to get to the ticketing office, once a ticket is purchased you then have a lengthy wait to get on the cable car!, it is like this on weekends, public holidays in fact most days to be honest unless the weather is not great.
Report in Dim Sum Daily in Hong Kong
May 3rd 2025 - a report on lines at major attractions
A familiar story, the line to get to the ticketing office of the NP 260 Cable Car to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island.
click on the image to enlarge
Yep, a simple but to the point news article by Dim Sum Daily
click on the image to enlarge
This is outrageous, the line outside the NP 360 Cable Car building! very bad optics for visitors
click on the image to enlarge
click on the image to enlarge
The Line going up at the Garden Road Terminus of the Peak Tram to Victoria Peak
As mentioned in an earlier blog post this week. the image above was taken by my great friend Stephanie of Hong Kong A La Carte Tours who also run quality Private Tours of Hong Kong, this image was taken on May 2nd 2025 at 10.45am at the Garden Road Terminus where you catch the iconic Peak Tram up to Victoria Peak. The terminus building holds 1,300 people and this queue was outside the building, there was probably anywhere from 400 - 500 people OUTSIDE the terminus.
The NP 360 Cable Car | Big Buddha and Victoria Peak in Hong Kong - the 2 most popular attractions in Hong Kong, they do not get any more popular than these 2 epic sites and I love them both and yes the Lantau Island experience also covers the Tai O Fishing Village.
I have been to Victoria Peak well over 6,000 times since 1972 and many hundreds of times to the Big Buddha on Lantau Island and one of the ways you can visit it is to take the amazing NP 360 Cable Car which is operated by the MTR our subway company.
I was the first to do Private Hong Kong Tours, setting up and getting my website online in 2010 and doing my first tour in April 2011
Even back then these 2 attractions were considered the best of the best and the one consistent factor with both places are the long lines for the NP 360 Cable Car and the Peak Tram that goes to Victoria Peak, to put it into perspective, the Peak gets between 7 - 10 million people a year, the NP 360 Cable Car had 1,56 million passengers in 2024, pre covid it was a lot more.
Myself and my great friends who also do private tours of Hong Kong all know that people hate lines, any sort of lines really, 10 minutes is about their limit.
You book a private tour of Hong Kong because private tour guides make it their mission in life to give you an extraordinary experience by maximising your time in Hong Kong, in English….
We know how to skip the lines and know Hong Kong
It really is that simple.
I have personally done over 2,330+ private tours since 2011 so you learn a few things about lines and itineraries and a keyword I love to use is that we are FLEXIBLE
I like to tell my guests that I have a plan A, B, C, D and E and if they don’t pan out I will go to plan F etc.
Without giving to much away, these 2 attractions are quite similar in many respects and one of the big time savers is you only need to do the cable car or peak tram ride ONE WAY, yes, that’s right, one way, going up or coming down is the same view and experience, you save a lot of time and money.
Us private tour guides know multiple ways to go to and from both attractions and our flexibility changes on a day by day basis according to circumstances on the day
In addition we have flexible starting times which gives us the opportunity to avoid any potential lines and trust me it is a lot better for a 1 person or 2 - 6 people to visit these sites rather than being in a group of 40 - 50 people, imagine trying to deal with 40 guests stuck in a line for 2 hours because the guide got the timing wrong.
The Lantau Tour which includes the NP 360 Cable Car, the Big Buddha, the Po Lin Monastery and the Tai O Fishing Village is these days Hong Kong’s most popular tour to book and you probably have 50 + companies competing for your booking and good luck with booking on Viator, Tripadavisor, Get Your Guide, Klook etc, some Hong Kong Tour Companies offer 5 or 6 options to book the Lantau Island Tour, with different prices, difference in the tour time ie from 5 hours to 8 hours and you absolutely have to try and navigate what’s included and what isn’t - in a nutshell, you get what you pay for oh and you get a terrible guide or a good guide, you do not get to pick and choose.
Some Tour Companies are notorious for using misleading images and tour descriptions, such as showing doctored images of the NP 360 Cable Car and the Big Buddha and then you find out that the NP 360 cable car is an optional extra and that visiting Tai O and the Big Buddha is free, (there are no admission fees)
Many tour companies are reluctant to tell you that to get to the Tai O Fishing Village on, before or after the Buddha you are actually using a public bus, this is simply because road traffic to the Buddha and Tai O is strictly limited on Lantau Island and it is almost impossible for private cars and tour coaches to go there and there is a strict quota system on the special permit need hence public transport.
I can only imagine the hassle of taking 40 - 50 people on a public bus, it is not a problem if the private group is 6 people or less and it is a great bus ride!
There is simply no substitute for local knowledge and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years.
Think of it another way, with me, you get me and the group (of family or friends) is normally less that 5 people, you have my undivided attention, what are you going to learn from an ill equipped mainly young guide with crummy English and shouting at people through a microphone, you basically get NO personal attention from the guide and they give you a prepared script which they learn by heart and the script is always out of date and yes I have been on quite a few of these tours in the interests of research.
Oh and did I tell you I have been up to Victoria Peak over 6,000 times since 1972, it is my stomping ground and I know the place quite well, you might get that impression from the number of lengthy blog posts I have written about Victoria Peak.
My insider tip 1
Most Travel Bloggers writing about Hong Kong get a lot of facts wrong.
I am always entertained by travel bloggers who write lengthy articles with advice and tips about exploring Hong Kong on your own and in many areas they get the facts quite wrong.
It is quite likely the blogger has been to Hong Kong once and perhaps they rely on Wikipedia for facts and figures which can be quite inaccurate, think of it this way, I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years and I have done 2,330+ private tours, I have almost 175,000 images of Hong Kong on my Flickr image site as I like to take photographs and have a nice camera and spend a lot of time exploring on my own and writing daily blog posts. I have a local wife, we have 3 adult sons all born and educated in Hong Kong and 2 still live in Hong Kong, one in London.
The Point? - I know Hong Kong
My insider tip 2
Please note that in general if you book a tour on Viator or Tripadvisor you generally have NO control over what guide will lead your Private Tour of Hong Kong and this is the most important component of the tour. I urge you to check the actual company website and book via their website and do not forget to read Tripadvisor reviews as well.
© Jamie Lloyd | J3 Consultants Hong Kong | J3 Private Tours Hong Kong |
| 2010 - 2025 All rights reserved. |
Click on any image to enlarge to full screen
Current images from my Instagram feed
