Plitvice Lakes Entrance 1 or 2: Which One to Pick

Entrance 1, Rastovača

Entrance 1 sits in the north, above the Lower Lakes. This is the canyon section: cliff walls, the tightest cluster of waterfalls, and the shortest route in the whole park to Veliki Slap, at 78 metres the tallest waterfall in Croatia. Every route from here is signed in green: A, B, C and the long K1.

It is also the busier gate, simply because Veliki Slap is the single most photographed thing in the park and most people walk straight for it. If you are short on time and want the headline sight with the least amount of walking to reach it, this is the entrance.

Entrance 2, Hladovina

Entrance 2 sits in the south and opens onto the Upper Lakes, a wider, more forested system with gentler shorelines and the Prštavci waterfalls rather than one dominant drop. Routes here are signed in orange: E, the currently closed F, H and the long K2. The auxiliary Flora entrance sits right beside Entrance 2 and also sells tickets, so if the main gate looks busy, Flora is worth checking.

This is the calmer half of the park to walk through, and the better pick if you want more time among trees and smaller cascades rather than one big landmark.

Both entrances sit on the same road

Entrance 1 and Entrance 2 are on the D1, a few kilometres apart, each with its own parking and its own ticket allocation. Most visitors end up doing a circular route and finishing back where they started, which is exactly why the boat and panoramic vehicle exist: so you are not walking the same valley twice to get back to your car.

The full route table

The park runs seven marked lake tour routes and four hiking trails. Below is every lettered lake programme, its start gate, duration and distance, straight from the park's own route descriptions. Last verified: August 2026.

Reading the colours

Entrance 1 routes are signed in green on the ground: A, B, C, K1. Entrance 2 routes are signed in orange: E, F, H, K2. If you lose the printed map, the paint on the trail markers tells you which gate a path belongs to.

A short visit

Two to three hours covers Programme A from Entrance 1, the Lower Lakes canyon and Veliki Slap, walking only, no boat. From Entrance 2, Programme E does the equivalent in the Upper Lakes with a short boat crossing and the train back, also 2 to 3 hours.

A full day

Four to six hours is the realistic window for seeing both lake systems properly. Programme C from Entrance 1 covers both in 4 to 5 hours; Programme H from Entrance 2 covers the whole lake area in 4 to 6 hours and is the longest circuit that still uses the boat and vehicle rather than walking every metre.

The full-day walkers

K1 and K2 are for people who want to walk almost everything on foot rather than rely on the boat or vehicle: 16,500 metres from Entrance 1, 17,500 metres from Entrance 2, both 6 to 8 hours and both including the Tomićevo Pogledalo viewpoint. These are long days on marked trails, not casual strolls, and worth planning around good footwear and an early start.

What they do

The electric boat crosses Lake Kozjak, the largest and deepest lake in the park at about 47 metres. A short route runs P1 to P2 from 07:00 to 20:00, as needed; the longer route between P2 and P3 runs every 30 minutes, 08:00 to 18:00 one way and 08:30 to 18:30 the other. The panoramic vehicle, an open road train, links the stations around the park on a similar 30-minute schedule through the day.

Both are already included in the entrance ticket, whichever price band you paid; see the full ticket breakdown if you want the price table. There is no separate fare to board either one.

A seasonal caveat, honestly stated

The park itself warns that weather conditions can change rapidly, and individual trails may be temporarily closed or vehicles prohibited when they do. Neither the boat nor the panoramic vehicle runs on a fixed year-round timetable; both operate on a reduced schedule in winter and can stop entirely in hard weather. We are not going to hand you a shutdown date the park does not publish; check the current schedule on arrival or call the information office at +385 (0)53 751 014 before a winter visit built around a specific route.

One ticket, one gate

The online ticket is validated at the entrance you selected during purchase and within the time window you bought it for. A visitor inside the lake zone on an inactive ticket is treated as having no valid ticket at all, so there is no informal switching between gates on the same day pass. Decide your entrance before you buy, not after.

If your plans genuinely change, the fix is to buy a fresh ticket for the other gate rather than expect the first one to transfer. Groups of 15 or more should also confirm the entrance in advance, since the group rate is arranged directly with the park by email, at least two days ahead.

The closure

Programme F, from Entrance 2, is flagged as temporarily closed on the park's own programmes page as of August 2026. When it runs, F is a 3 to 4-hour, 4,600-metre circuit: boat across Kozjak, the Lower Lakes canyon up to Veliki Slap, a steep serpentine climb to the canyon rim, then the panoramic vehicle back. Until it reopens, it simply is not bookable, and there is no announced date.

What to walk instead

Programme E covers the Upper Lakes from the same gate in a similar time window, 2 to 3 hours over 5,100 metres, if you want a shorter loop that still starts at Entrance 2. If reaching Veliki Slap was the point of Programme F, Programme H from the same entrance gets there too, just as part of a longer 4 to 6-hour circuit covering the whole lake area rather than F's shorter loop.

The common ones

Buying a ticket for the wrong entrance and not realising until the gate is the single costliest mistake, since the fix is a second ticket, not a refund on the first. Beyond that, a handful of patterns repeat every summer.

• Assuming the boat or train is an optional paid extra and skipping it to save money it never cost
• Choosing K1 or K2 without checking the 6 to 8-hour duration first, then running out of daylight
• Straying off the marked boardwalks for a photo, which is strictly prohibited and enforced
• Swimming in the lakes, also strictly prohibited
• Not checking whether Programme F is open before building a day around it

Which route suits you also shifts with the season; the crowd pattern and the water level behind Veliki Slap both change through the year, covered on the best time to visit Plitvice Lakes. If you would rather have all of this decided for you, browse guided Plitvice Lakes routes and day trips that already commit to an entrance and a programme, so the only choice left is which morning to go.