Your Best Oklahoma Summer Experience Isn’t By Car, It’s on a Water Taxi

Skip the car this summer in Oklahoma City. Instead, hop onto a Bricktown Water Taxi guided tour. Located in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City’s entertainment district, this experience offers riders a unique opportunity to explore the city. Explore the canal’s many attractions up close and personal, including historical monuments, murals, and a lineup of local landmarks. 

These regularly scheduled narrated cruises are entertaining and offer educational insights into the city’s history throughout the Bricktown entertainment district. This local boat business, which dates back to 1999, offers multiple ways to explore. Bricktown Water Taxi tours are among the most popular entertainment opportunities in the state of Oklahoma. 

The Water Taxi Tour Experience 

A regular round-trip experience boards and disembarks at the same location, in downtown Oklahoma City. The full tour experience lasts between 40 and 45 minutes, and departures occur every 20 to 30 minutes at the main landing on the Bricktown Canal. This man-made waterway winds through Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Entertainment District. While you’re on the ride, you can listen to expert Water Taxi Ambassadors offering insider insight into various points of interest along the journey.  

The canal is lined with dozens of restaurants, shops, and attractions. Taking a water taxi tour is a great way to get an idea of where you’d like to stop and spend some more time after the cruise, on your trip. Each tour guide is different and tells a different story (so you can take the tour multiple times and have a different experience every time!). You’ll learn something new every time you take the tour, even if you take it a dozen times. 

As you sail along the water, guides narrate what you are seeing downtown in real time. They’ll tell you how it all came to be and offer some insider insight into the little bits of history across the city and Oklahoma as a state as a whole. The tour guides are known to be funny and add a light touch of personality and individual character to the rides. One attraction you can count on seeing during the ride is the Land Run Monument. You can also count on getting an in-depth educational explanation of the history of how Oklahoma became a state.

Those who seek an exceptionally special experience can sign up for one of the other types of cruises offered by Bricktown Water Taxi. These include reserving a whole boat for your group or organizing a reserved lunch or dinner cruise experience. There are even special “Showboat Cruises,” a concert-style cruise offered in the spring and summer evenings featuring some of Oklahoma’s most talented local musicians from a diverse range of genres. Net proceeds from these types of tours benefit the Bricktown Canal area improvement efforts of ArtAfloatOKC Foundation. 

Summer Days are Best Spent Out on the Water

There’s no better way to spend a summer day or evening than a dreamy glide down the river in Oklahoma City. Admire the local artwork, learn about the city’s history, and become immersed in the culture of this storied town. With tours leaving every 15-20 minutes, there’s no shortage of opportunity to hop into this fun and unique experience. 

If you're looking for other unique activities in Oklahoma City, check out this awesome local flea market, which features a range of vendors and food trucks and is even pet-friendly. There are other hidden gems in the city, too, like this impressive manmade waterfall in the Bricktown District (where the taxi tour takes place!). There is no shortage of adventures to enjoy in downtown Oklahoma City, on and off the waterway.