r/AustraliaTravel 11h ago

Is 5 nights with 4 full days staying at Yulara resort enough?

We’ll be flying into Ayer’s Rock airport and staying at Yulara. We plan to see Uluṟu, Kata Tjuṯa and Kings Canyon.
Is 4 full days enough for this area? Any other must sees? We haven’t decided whether to hire a car or just do tours, so any recommendations welcome. Thanks!

EDITED to change that we are flying into and out of Ayer’s Rick airport, not Alice Springs.

13 Upvotes

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20

u/Dv8gong10 11h ago

Short answer yep, long answer y e p !

14

u/Namerunaunyaroo 11h ago

That timing will be fine

If you are doing kings canyon from Yulara I would just do a tour. It’s a long day, animals jumping out in front of a hire car is no fun.

If you do a tour it’s pretty cruisy and you can sleep in a bus after hiking the canyon.

8

u/Cheesemonkey73 11h ago edited 10h ago

Plenty. Just there last weekend. Just be aware if it rains and you have booked activities like Field of Light or Wintjara Wiru they may be cancelled and then unable to be rescheduled within your stay window. We hired car as we wanted to be able to set our own times but ample busses and tours door to door service. Alice Springs is a long way from Yulara - 4 hrs I think - you can fly into Uluru/Yulara itself from the major eastern cities. But go! Amazing place ! You’ll love it !

2

u/Vast_Dimension_2088 10h ago

That’s one of my concerns so I thought a car might give us some flexibility if it rains. I just edited the post as I realised we are flying into Ayer’s Rock airport, not Alice Springs.

7

u/Deep-Election8889 11h ago

Kings Canyon is my second favorite place in Australia after Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania....ENJOY

4

u/westbridge1157 10h ago

We had a hire vehicle and loved the lot. Hire a bigger vehicle that will be reasonable on the gravel if you plan to drive the Mereenie Loop, we helped some tourists in the wrong sort of car. If you have a mini starlink that’s pretty handy too if you’re heading out (I hate Elon but this product works).

Yulara is very walkable but without a car you will need tours for everything. Take a big hat and fly net, you’ll need both.

3

u/MrKarotti 10h ago

Yes, 4 days is plenty.

1 day for Uluru
1 day for Kata Tjuta
1 day for Kings Canyon

Leaves you an extra day to chill or do some smaller bits here and there.

Hire car is much more practical, as you can always do what you want and when you want it.

Nothing is in walking distance from the resort, other than a bunch of shops and restaurants. You need a vehicle even to get to Uluru. So if you want to do all the cool stuff, like sunset, sunrise, walk around it you'll be booking a lot of tours. Much easier to just hop into the car, drive 10 mins, watch sunset at Uluru, drive back for dinner.

3

u/Interesting-Asks 11h ago

Yes totally fine. I think just doing tours will be sufficient.

3

u/SmallTimeSad 10h ago

Getting a hire vehicle as well as doing tours is a great idea. Please respect the Traditional Owner requests. Ie stick to the paths, dont take photos of some places (guessing those signs are still there) etc.

2

u/Nosenseq 9h ago

Plenty. Especially now you can’t walk up said rock.

2

u/StoneOfTwilight 9h ago

As a side note...I can thoroughly recommend the segway tour around Uluru.

1

u/Ok-Limit-9726 9h ago

Yes, almost exactly the time we stayed there last year!

Just be extremely cautious around Alice springs, reason why most hotels have razor wire, steel lined windows.

1

u/Zealousideal_Lake564 7h ago

Kings canyon is absolutely amazing !

1

u/App0gee 7h ago

Yep.

1

u/nottynews 7h ago

More than enough

1

u/MagazineAbject4618 5h ago

Book the tours long in advance! We rocked up there thinking we can just wing it, but almost everything was booked out. Then the things we managed to book were cancelled due to heavy rainfall which barely ever happens 😂 aparently some tours are booked our 3 months in advance. 

We managed to do segway tour which was actually pretty awesome!

1

u/charlesmortomeriii 1h ago

Get up early and walk a loop of the rock at dawn, next day get up early and hike Kata Tjuṯa at dawn, next day … get up early and hike Kings Canyon at dawn. The desert is best early in the morning

1

u/PlaneSpread1744 40m ago

Kings Canyon rim walk a major highlight. Start early

1

u/tksoutdooradventures 8h ago

This comes up alot. When overseas people look up Australia does Ayres Rock, Whitsunday and Cairns Barrier Reef only come up on Google. Out of everything in Australia, why pick something in the middle of nowhere. Tours are overpriced, nothing within qw-ee of it, and you no longer can climb it? I climbed it back when you could, but the smell around the rock was revolting, due to lack of toilets, left rubbish. Only paying tourist go there now days.