What to Expect on a Nashville Golf Cart Tour

Booking a Nashville golf cart tour is straightforward; knowing exactly how the 90 minutes will run is what makes it relaxed instead of slightly stressful. This first-timer’s guide walks through a Nashville golf cart tour start to finish — the meeting point, what the route actually covers, what is and isn’t included, what to wear, how children and booster seats work, and the handful of rules worth knowing before you turn up. It is based on the featured Top-Pick 1.5-hour Sightseeing Cart Tour by Joyride Nashville; the other four cart tours on this site follow the same general shape.

Finding the meeting point

The Sightseeing Cart Tour meets at a downtown Nashville pickup point near Lower Broadway — coordinates 36.1472°N, 86.7806°W, a short walk from the honky-tonk strip. The exact street address arrives in your booking confirmation email after you book.

Two things genuinely matter:

Arrive 10 minutes early. The open-air carts seat six passengers and leave on time. The Top-Pick Sightseeing Tour by Joyride Nashville is the most popular cart in the city, and the slot you booked is full or close to full. Late arrivals can’t be slotted into a later cart on the spot.

Allow extra time on weekends and event nights. Downtown Nashville parking gets tight on Friday and Saturday evenings, and any night a major Bridgestone Arena show is on, the streets within several blocks fill from late afternoon. If you are driving in from outside downtown, build in 15 minutes more than the map suggests; if you are using a rideshare, expect surge pricing on event nights.

The cart itself — what you are riding in

The vehicle is an open-air sportscart with bench seating for up to six passengers and a driver-guide in front. It is fully street-legal, has a roof for sun protection and a windshield, but it is open on the sides — that is the entire point. You feel the city around you, you hear the live commentary clearly, and you can take a photo at any moment without rolling down a window.

It is not a buggy you drive yourself. The driver is the guide; you are the passenger. This matters because it lets you actually look at the city instead of watching the road, and it means anyone in the group can have a drink in their hand on the way back from the brewery variant of the tour without anyone in your party having to stay sober behind a wheel.

The route, stop by stop

The Sightseeing Cart Tour is a 1.5-hour loop covering 35+ stops. The narrative shape moves from the noisy honky-tonk strip up into the music-business neighbourhoods and back. Here is the structure:

The cart is moving most of the time, but it pauses at the photo-strong stops — the Ryman, the wings mural in The Gulch, the AT&T “Batman” Building from a good angle, the giant Country Music Hall of Fame complex. Your guide narrates the music-history connections at each landmark live the whole way.

A few stops worth understanding before you ride:

The Ryman Auditorium. Known as the “Mother Church of Country Music,” the Ryman is where the Grand Ole Opry was broadcast live for three decades from 1943 to 1974, before the Opry moved to its current home. The building still hosts shows; on a tour you see it from the outside and your guide explains its place in the story of country music.

Music Row. A handful of blocks south of downtown built around 16th and 17th Avenues South. The street-level buildings look unremarkable — bungalows and small office buildings — but inside many of them are the recording studios where the Nashville sound was made. RCA Studio B is the most famous, sometimes called the “Home of 1,000 Hits” for the run of records it produced; Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, and many others recorded there. A few doors away at 804 16th Avenue South is the Quonset Hut — the first Music Row studio, set up by brothers Owen and Harold Bradley in 1954–55 when they attached a surplus Army Quonset hut to a house they had bought for around $7,500. Within eight years it was a hit factory recording Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Brenda Lee and Marty Robbins; Columbia Records bought it in 1962 for around $300,000. The cart takes you past on streets a bus is too wide to use comfortably.

The AT&T “Batman” Building. The tallest building in Tennessee — 33 stories and about 452 feet to the roof, rising to its full 617-foot architectural height with the twin antenna spires that earn it the unofficial Batman name. Finished in 1994 by Earl Swensson Associates, it is visible from most of the cart route, and your guide will line up the angle for the photograph.

The Gulch. A formerly industrial neighbourhood south of downtown that has redeveloped into a dense pocket of bars, restaurants, and street art. Its most-photographed piece is “What Lifts You” by Kelsey Montague — the giant white angel-wings mural installed in April 2016, on the south wall of the Taziki’s building at 230 11th Avenue South. The cart stops; you stand between the wings; the photo is the one most travellers leave Nashville with.

Printers Alley. The cart pauses or rolls slowly past this short L-shaped alley between 3rd and 4th Avenues North. The name comes from the late-19th-century cluster of print shops and newspapers that ran out of the block. When Tennessee passed statewide Prohibition in 1909 — more than a decade before the federal ban — the alley pivoted into a discreet circuit of speakeasies operating on the “brown-bagging” cover (patrons brought their own bottle; the venue served the setups). When alcohol was re-legalised in Nashville in 1968 the speakeasies came out of the shadows and the alley settled into the live-music room it still is today. Chet Atkins and Waylon Jennings both got early gigs here.

Hatch Show Print. Founded in 1879 by the Hatch brothers and now housed inside the Country Music Hall of Fame complex (it moved into the building when the Hall opened its current home), Hatch is one of America’s oldest working letterpress poster shops. Many of the original 19th-century woodblocks are still in use. The cart passes the entrance rather than entering; the poster shop is a worthwhile separate walk-in stop after the tour ends.

The local shortlist. Toward the end of the ride, your guide hands you their personal recommendations for the same evening — which honky-tonk has the best house band that night, where locals actually eat hot chicken (not the tourist line), which speakeasy is worth the wait. This is the part many guests rate highest in their reviews.

What’s included — and what isn’t

Included in the $54 fare:

• The open-air sportscart for up to six passengers
• A local Joyride driver-guide narrating live
• 35+ Music City sightseeing stops over 1.5 hours
• Photo stops at the iconic backdrops

Not included:

• Food and drinks
• Tips / gratuities (standard practice in Nashville is to tip the driver)
• Admission tickets to anything (the tour is exterior-only — no inside-the-Ryman ticket)

This matters because the cart is not a substitute for an evening on Broadway, dinner, and drinks — it is the sightseeing piece, and the food, music, and bar-crawling pieces happen separately afterwards (which is precisely what the guide’s local shortlist sets you up for).

What to wear

Open-sided cart, no climate control — what you wear is what you ride in.

• Summer (Jun-Aug). Light cotton or linen, sunglasses, sunscreen, a hat that won’t fly off. Bring water — Nashville summers are humid and the heat builds. Closed-toe shoes are fine; you stay seated for almost the whole tour.
• Spring & autumn (Mar-May, Sep-Oct). Layers — a tee plus a light jacket covers the morning chill and the warm afternoon.
• Winter (Dec-Feb). Proper warm coat, scarf, gloves, hat. The wind on a moving cart cuts more than the still-air thermometer suggests.
• Light rain anytime. The tour runs in light rain — bring a small packable rain shell from October through April. Heavy rain or severe weather would trigger a reschedule; use the free 24-hour cancellation if a serious storm is forecast.

Children and booster seats

Joyride Nashville’s safety rule is clear and worth noting before you book: children between five and seven years old must be in a booster seat. If you are travelling with a child in that age range, bring your own booster — it is not provided. Children younger than five are generally not suited to the format; the tour is built around adult and older-child commentary, not interactive entertainment.

For a family of four with one child aged 8 or older, the format works well. The 1.5-hour length is short enough to hold attention, the seats face forward, and the live commentary is something kids genuinely engage with — especially around the wings mural and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Tipping, cancellation, and the rules to know

Tipping. The tour price does not include gratuity; tipping the driver-guide is standard practice in Nashville. A typical tip is in the 15-20% range for good service.

Cancellation. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before — a standard GetYourGuide policy across all five Nashville cart tours on this site. Bookings cancelled less than 24 hours out forfeit the fare.

Weather. Light rain — the tour runs. Severe weather — the operator may reschedule and contact you.

Drinks on the cart. Nashville’s Metro low-speed-vehicle ordinance bans alcohol consumption on the cart itself, so on the drink-focused variants (Brewery & Distillery, Bootleg & Barrels Whiskey) the tastings take place at the venues — not in motion between them. Check the booking page for the specific tour you book.

Quick recap

A Nashville golf cart tour is a 1.5-hour open-air cruise through 35+ Music City landmarks with a local driver-guide narrating live. Arrive 10 minutes early at the downtown Lower Broadway pickup point, dress for the season, bring water in summer, and expect the personal nightlife shortlist at the end to be the part you remember. If you are travelling with a child aged 5-7, bring your own booster seat.

Ready to Book?

The featured Nashville golf cart tour is the Top-Pick 1.5-hour Sightseeing Cart Tour by Joyride Nashville — 4.7/5 from 202 reviews, $54 per person, 35+ stops from Broadway to Music Row, free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Check live availability for your dates on the homepage.