Memphis: What To Book Before You Land
Most Memphis lists put the same nine or ten sights in a row without saying which ones you actually need to book ahead and which ones you can walk up to. Here’s that ranking, plus the closed-day traps that wreck an itinerary if you get them wrong.
Book weeks ahead: Graceland
Graceland (3717 Elvis Presley Blvd, Whitehaven, about 9 miles south of downtown) sells timed entry, and the standard tour slots do sell out, especially in May and during Elvis Week. The Elvis Experience tour (mansion plus the entertainment complex and jets) runs around $85 adult / $49 youth; the entry-level Elvis Presley’s Memphis tier, which skips the mansion, is about $53; VIP and Archives tiers climb toward $150-260. Prices move, so check the official site before you commit. Kids 4 and under get in free. Give the visit a genuine half-day, not a rushed hour between other stops.
Book same-week: the Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel (450 Mulberry St) doesn’t require timed booking the way Graceland does, but it does have a hard constraint worth planning around: it’s closed Tuesdays. Built around the preserved motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, this is one of the most significant history museums in the country, tracing the civil rights movement from slavery through 1968 and into the present. The reimagined “Legacy Experience” permanent exhibit reopened May 16, 2026, extending that story further. Entry runs about $25 adult / $22 child / $23 senior-student, 9am-6pm, last entry 5pm. Treat it as the centerpiece of a day, not a stop to squeeze in, and give it real, quiet time.
Walk-up is fine: Sun Studio and Stax
Sun Studio (706 Union Ave), the actual room where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and B.B. King recorded, still fills up same-day more often than not, but you generally don’t need to plan weeks ahead the way you do for Graceland. Tours run 40-50 minutes, about $15 adult / $10 ages 5-11. Stax Museum of American Soul Music (926 E. McLemore Ave, Soulsville, on the original Stax Records site) covers Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and the rest of the Memphis soul lineage for about $20 adult / $16 concession, 10am-5pm Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays. If you only have time for one, Sun Studio is the tighter, more atmospheric visit; Stax is the deeper dive if soul music matters more to you than rockabilly.
No booking needed: Beale Street, timed right
Beale Street is free to walk, and it rewards doing both a day visit (you can actually read the historical markers) and a night one (for the live music). Weekend nights after 9pm bring a $5 security fee at some entrances plus ID checks and metal detectors, genuinely more secure than the street’s reputation suggests. Verified, currently-operating venues worth your evening: B.B. King’s Blues Club, Rum Boogie Cafe and its attached Blues Hall, King’s Palace Cafe, Silky O’Sullivan’s, and Alfred’s on Beale.
Free, no planning required
Big River Crossing, a roughly one-mile pedestrian bridge over the Mississippi into West Memphis, Arkansas, and the Peabody Duck March (149 Union Ave, 11am and 5pm daily, arrive 30 minutes early) both cost nothing and need no advance ticket. Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid is free to browse; only “The Lookout” observation deck, about $8-10, charges anything.
For the full city overview including food, safety, and when to go, see the Memphis guide ; the 2-day itinerary shows how this booking order actually plays out day by day.