Dubai hot air balloon: three flights compared by price and breakfast

Sunrise flight, $280. The description is the flight and nothing else: sunrise over the vast sand dunes of the Dubai desert, camels and mountains below, and an altitude of 4,000 feet. Four hours, 4.8 across 478 reviews. No breakfast is mentioned.

Sunrise flight with breakfast, $305. The same sunrise over the dunes, then a gourmet breakfast, a camel to ride and the chance to have your picture taken with a falcon. Five hours, 4.8 across 438 reviews. It costs $25 more than the flight alone.

Flight with a falcon and a chef’s breakfast, $462. Sold as a storytelling flight about culture and heritage, with a falcon flying alongside the balloon and a breakfast menu crafted by a Michelin star chef at a desert oasis. Five hours, 4.9 across 407 reviews. This description does not use the word sunrise.

All three give the length of the whole outing. None of the descriptions compared here says how much of it is spent in the air, so read the listing if minutes aloft matter to you.

With three listings the numbers are close: 4.8, 4.8 and 4.9, on 478, 438 and 407 reviews. No flight here is the weak one, and none has a thin sample. What separates them is what happens on the ground. For $25 over the base price you get breakfast, a camel and an hour more. For $182 over it you get a falcon in flight, a chef’s menu and a tenth of a rating point.

So choose on what you want after landing. If the flight is the point, the $280 listing is the only one that names its altitude, and 478 people have rated it 4.8. If the morning is the occasion, the $462 flight has the best score.

Against the other ways up, a balloon is the long one. The helicopter flights on this site last 12 to 30 minutes and cost $195 to $482; a balloon outing is four or five hours from $280, over the desert rather than the towers.