What shapes what you pay

There is not one figure on this page, and that is a decision rather than an oversight. Half a dozen separate products are sold in Copenhagen under the loose heading of ghost and mystery walks, they are sold by different routes, and what any of them asks moves with the season and the platform. What does not move is the shape of the thing: whether a guide walks with you, how long you are out, whether transport and food travel with you, how many of you there are, and which language you need. Those are what actually decide the number, and the live widget at the foot of this page carries the number itself.

The guided ghost walkIn English, set evenings

The murder mystery huntsSelf-guided, start when you like

Smallest party a hunt takesTwo people

The hunts suitTwo to four

The giants walk carriesTransport, coffee, a meal

Where the number livesThe booking widget below

A live guide is the first fork in the road

One guided ghost walk runs in English. A guide meets you on a square in the old city in a black cloak with a lantern, walks you through the centre for an hour and a half, and tells you the stories in person. Somebody is employed for that evening, in that language, for however many people turn up. That is the expensive shape of a walking tour anywhere in Europe and Copenhagen is no exception.

The two murder mystery hunts are the other shape. Nobody meets you. You are handed a case — a killing near the Round Tower in the last years of the nineteenth century, or a woman’s murder in the streets between the pier and Nyhavn — and you walk it yourself, with paper and a pen and no phone needed, starting at whatever hour suits you. There is no guide standing in the cold, so the cost structure is completely different. The trade is that nobody answers your questions and nobody adjusts the story to the group in front of them. Set out side by side on guided against self-guided.

How many of you there are

This is the part people work out too late. A guided walk is sold by the head, so a couple and a family of five pay in proportion to their size. A self-guided hunt behaves differently: it is a case, and the case does not get bigger when more of you read it. Both hunts want a party of at least two, and both are pitched at parties of two to four, which is a real constraint rather than a suggestion — one person on their own with an envelope has bought a puzzle, not an evening.

So for a small group the self-guided route is usually the cheaper way to spend an evening on the same streets, and for a solo traveller the guided walk is the one that makes sense, because you are buying a guide and a group rather than a party you have to supply yourself. Group sizes, hen and stag parties and private arrangements are on the groups page.

What travels with you

The widest gap between any two products here is not the storytelling, it is the logistics. The walk after Thomas Dambo’s six wooden giants is out of the city for the better part of a day and carries a guide, private transport, a coffee break and a meal. Everything you would otherwise buy separately is inside it, which is why it sits where it does.

The self-guided hunts carry none of that. No food, no drink, no transport tickets, no entry fees to anything you pass. That is not a hidden catch, it is the product: a route through streets you can already walk for nothing, with a case to solve while you do it.

Included

A guide, on the guided walks, for the whole route
On the giants walk: private transport out of the city and back
On the giants walk: a coffee break and a meal
On the hunts: the case material, and a route that needs no phone
Free cancellation on the guided ghost walk, up to a day before

Not included

Food and drink on the ghost walk and on both hunts
Transport tickets, on everything except the giants walk
Entry fees to anything you pass or look at
A pen, if you are doing a hunt and forget to bring one
Warm and waterproof clothing, which nobody hands out at the meeting point

Time in the open air

Duration tracks cost more honestly here than anywhere else on the list. The Danish nightman’s walk is the shortest at an hour and a quarter. The guided ghost walk and the Danish folk legends walk are both an hour and a half. The giants walk is four hours and out of the city. The hunts have no fixed length at all, because you set the pace and stop for coffee when you like. Laid out properly on how long each walk takes.

Which language you need

Language is a cost driver in a city this size, and pretending otherwise would be silly. English demand is met by a single guided ghost walk on set evenings. The deeper material — the natmænd who emptied the latrines and assisted the executioner, the folk legends and where several Danish phrases come from — runs in Danish only. The hunts are available in English or Danish. If somebody in your party speaks Danish, your choices widen considerably and so does what you can get for an evening. The honest shape of that is on walks in English.

From the archive

The cheapest hour in this city is still the one nobody sells. Nytorv, the court house, the overhead prisoner arch, Gråbrødretorv and the Round Tower are outside and open, and walking between them costs you nothing at all. What a guided walk buys is the part that is not visible: who stood where, what the police day-book said afterwards, and which of the stories the record actually supports.

Why the number is not printed here

Because it would be wrong by the time you read it. There are several operators, several seasons, a set of evenings that open and close, and a booking platform whose figures move. A number typed into a page is a number somebody quotes at a meeting point months later. The widget below is live, it shows what is actually bookable on the dates you are looking at, and it costs nothing to look.

If the broader question behind yours is whether Copenhagen is an expensive city to spend a week in, that is a fair question with an answer of its own on whether Copenhagen is expensive.

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Frequently asked questions

Why are there no figures on this page?

Because they move between seasons, operators and booking channels, and a stale figure is worse than none at a meeting point. The shape of the spending does not move, so that is what this page describes. The live widget shows what is bookable on your dates.

Is a self-guided murder mystery cheaper than a guided walk?

It behaves differently. A guided walk is sold by the head; a hunt is a case, and the case does not get bigger when more of you read it. Both hunts want a party of at least two and suit two to four: guided against self-guided.

What is included in the walk after the six giants?

A guide, private transport out of the city and back, a coffee break and a meal. It is the one product here that carries its own logistics, and it is also the longest: the six forgotten giants.

Is anything included on the self-guided hunts?

The case material and the route. No food, no drink, no transport tickets and no entry fees to anything you pass. Bring a pen: the Round Tower hunt.

Can I cancel if the weather turns?

The guided ghost walk has free cancellation up to a day before, and it runs in rain and cold rather than being called off. What that means for your coat is on what to wear.