How we research and verify

Last checked October 17, 2026. Each page states how strong its sources are.

This page explains how the facts on this site are gathered, checked and corrected, and where the method falls short. It matters because Niagara Falls boat tour information changes often: prices, hours and opening dates move from season to season, and many websites still show figures from 2013 to 2019. If you find an error, the correction process is below.

Primary sources first

For each fact we look for the original publisher before we look at anyone who repeats it. In practice that order is:

• The operators. Maid of the Mist (its schedule and pricing page, FAQ and 2026 press release) and Niagara City Cruises (its ticket page, FAQ, Know Before You Go and accessibility pages).
• The parks. Niagara Parks for Canadian-side attractions, passes, WEGO, parking and the falls illumination and fireworks schedules, and New York State Parks for Niagara Falls State Park and its parking.
• Treaty and government sources. The text of the 1950 Niagara Treaty, the International Joint Commission, Canadian treaty records, the bridge commissions, CBP and CBSA.
• Environment and Climate Change Canada for climate normals.
• Secondary sources (Wikipedia, local history sites, trade press, news reports, library exhibits) only when no primary source answers the question. We label them as secondary in the text or in the source note.

Third-party ticket sellers, travel blogs and review sites are not treated as evidence for operator rules. They help us understand what visitors ask, and we report what they say as "visitor accounts report" or "a reseller guide says", never as fact.

Dated facts and the verified-on stamp

Every page shows the date its sources were last checked. Pages built on operator and park pages say they were verified against the official pages. Pages that lean on secondary sources, such as the history and facts pages, say so instead, because Wikipedia, local history sites and news reports are not official records. The date is when the sources behind the page were last read. It is not a promise that nothing changed since. Prices carry their currency, the season they apply to and the checked date, for example "US$30.25 adult, 2026 published fare, checked October 17, 2026". We import prices from one data file, so one fact is never typed in two ways. Canadian prices exclude 13% HST unless stated. No operator had published 2027 season dates or prices when we checked, so we print none.

Conflicts are shown, not buried

Sources disagree more often than readers expect. Examples on this site include:

• The Niagara City Cruises child fare: CA$32.95 from Niagara Parks and CA$27.95 from Niagara Falls Tourism.
• The launch date of the first Maid of the Mist: 27 May or 18 September 1846.
• The Niagara City Cruises bag limit: a personal item of 17.8 by 38.1 by 40.6 cm on the ticket page, and a backpack up to 16 by 20 in on the Know Before You Go page.
• The crest width of the Horseshoe Falls, which depends on how the curve is measured.

When this happens we state both figures, name each source and say which we would trust more and why, or say that we cannot tell. The history page and the facts page each end with a list of open disputes.

Unverified items are flagged

When we could not find a fact, we say so and send the reader to the operator. Current examples include: refund and rain-check policy at Maid of the Mist, bag, umbrella and tripod rules there, restrooms and infant rules; at Niagara City Cruises, washrooms on board, a recommended check-in time, walk-up versus online prices, and the cost of the dock-area parking lots; and the 2027 season dates for both. We do not fill these gaps with a plausible guess. Some items are deliberately not published: poncho colours as official fact, any left-or-right "best side" rule, fog frequency, water temperature, mist figures, and which falls the sun lights at what time.

No ratings, no review counts, no first-hand claims

We have not ridden the boats for this site, so we do not write as if we had. There is no "we rode" or "our team tested". We do not publish star ratings, review counts or "voted number one" claims, because we could not read TripAdvisor or Google pages directly, and secondary snapshots of ratings are stale or unverifiable. The few third-party figures we found were undated, stale or from resellers, so none is used. What visitors report about wetness, queues and comfort appears only as a labelled report, and only when two or more independent pages support it.

How prices are handled

• Each price is stored once, with its source URL and checked date, and every page and tool reads that same value.
• We state the currency: Maid of the Mist is in US dollars and includes the elevator; Niagara City Cruises and Niagara Parks are in Canadian dollars and exclude 13% HST unless noted.
• We label the year ("2026 published fare") and never carry a price forward to a new season.
• If an operator shows only "starting at", we say so rather than inventing a walk-up or peak price.
• Every price or date change gets an entry in the changelog.

Climate and sunlight

Monthly temperatures, precipitation days, rain, snow and thunderstorm days come from Environment and Climate Change Canada's climate normals for the Niagara Falls NPCSH station (Climate ID 6135657). Only the 1981-2010 normals were reachable through ECCC's open API, and the station's record ends in 2011. Secondary 1991-2020 temperature means are within about 1 C of these for every month, which we mention but do not publish as official. We found no ECCC wind or fog normals, so we publish none.

Sunrise, sunset and twilight times for the 15th of each month are computed by us with the NOAA solar-position algorithm for 43.080 N, 79.074 W. We checked the method against an outside sunrise and sunset site for October 15, 2026 and found it about two minutes off, so we ask readers to treat the times as plus or minus three minutes. Falls illumination times come from Niagara Parks' published schedule.

Drive times

Drive times are free-flow estimates from the OSRM open routing engine using OpenStreetMap data. They assume no traffic and no border wait. The Toronto and Pearson figures (about 1 h 41 m) look high compared with typical off-peak experience, and summer Fridays and Sundays can be much slower. Use them for rough planning, and check a live map the same day.

Limits of our research

• Several official sites render schedules and prices by script, so we could not always read them. The Niagara City Cruises booking calendar did not render, and many Niagara Parks hours tables did not load. Those items are marked unverified.
• Some pages were read through summarising tools or search excerpts. Where the wording matters we flag the item for re-checking against the live page.
• Reddit could not be read at all, and TripAdvisor returned access errors. Visitor questions are therefore a qualitative picture drawn from operator pages, travel blogs, reseller reviews and forum thread titles, not a count of posts.
• Several primary science and power sources (Niagara Parks, USGS, NYPA, OPG) were unreachable, so some falls figures rest on Wikipedia and are labelled that way.
• We do not know what changed after the checked date.

Corrections

If something is wrong, use the form on our contact page and tell us the page, the figure and the source you rely on. We check it against the primary source. If the correction holds, we fix the page and add a dated entry to the changelog that says what changed. We do not quietly edit prices or dates. If an operator tells us a figure is wrong, we still look for a published source before we change it.

Editorial independence and commercial relationship

This site also sells a Toronto day tour that offers an optional paid boat add-on. You can see it in the day tour pages, in the sidebar and in the footer. That is a commercial interest, and we want you to know about it. The boat operators have not reviewed or paid for any content on this site, and we do not take payment for placement. Our comparisons of Maid of the Mist and Niagara City Cruises are written from published sources, and the day tour is mentioned only where it is relevant, such as for day trips from Toronto or for avoiding driving. We never say the boat ride is included in the base price of the day tour. Read more on the about page.

For the datasets behind these pages, see the data page. For the story of the boats themselves, see the history page.