The Best Things to Do in New Braunfels, Texas

The Comal is the reason the town exists and still the best single thing to do in it. It runs about two and a half miles from Comal Springs in Landa Park to its meeting with the Guadalupe, which makes it the shortest river in Texas, and because it comes straight out of the ground it sits at about 72 degrees in February and in August alike. The float takes an hour or two depending on where you get out.

The chute itself is a concrete slide cut into the side of the old dam at Prince Solms Park, and the city runs it rather than an outfitter. Published 2026 rates are 7 dollars to sit on the bank and ride the chute as many times as you like, or 15 dollars to rent a tube plus a 20 dollar refundable deposit. On weekends and holidays from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, every person on the river also needs a 2 dollar River Activity Wristband.

This is Schlitterbahn's original and flagship park, now operated by Six Flags, and it is built into the hillside above the Comal rather than poured onto a flat lot. That is the whole point of it. Several of the rides use river water and the natural grade instead of pumps and towers, which is why the place reads as a piece of the river valley and not a parking lot with slides on it.

New for the 2026 season is Wasserbahn Racers, a three lane face first mat racing slide built into the natural hillside, which opened with the park on May 2. The Falls also came back for 2026 after time out of service.

Gruene was its own cotton town before New Braunfels grew around it. Ernst Gruene brought his family to the land northeast of town in 1872, and his son Henry D. Gruene built the dance hall in 1878. The 6,000 square foot building still has its original layout, the hinged side flaps that open the room to the air, a bar at the front, a small stage at the back and a live oak garden out the side door.

The hall is the anchor of about ten square blocks of restored storefronts, and the district is walkable in an afternoon. We gave it a whole piece of its own because it deserves one.

The springs that make the Comal rise here, and they are the largest in Texas and the wider North American Southwest. They feed fourteen acre Landa Lake, which you can paddle, and a spring fed swimming pool that predates 1936 and is still in use, along with the Philippine Gazebo from the same era.

The rest is an unusually complete municipal park. A miniature railroad loops the grounds, and there are three playgrounds, an arboretum, a fishing pier, an outdoor amphitheatre locals call the Dance Slab, a golf course and a miniature golf course. Published acreage varies depending on what is being counted, from about 51 acres of developed park to roughly 196 acres including every parcel the city has acquired.

Four St. Mary's University students found this on March 27, 1960, after hearing about a 60 foot limestone bridge on a ranch outside town. Orion Knox Jr., Preston Knodell Jr., Al Brandt and Joe Cantu got the landowner's permission, came up empty three times, and on the fourth trip squeezed through a crawlspace into two miles of untouched cavern. It opened to the public on July 3, 1964.

The standard Discovery Tour covers about half a mile of passage and runs around 75 minutes. Hidden Passages takes a different route to more delicate formations and includes a total darkness moment. The Adventure tours put you in a harness and helmet and lower you down a 160 foot shaft, which is a real caving trip rather than a walkway.

If your trip lands in early November, this is the thing to plan around rather than an extra. The grounds sit right on the Comal next to Landa Park, and the programme is the actual German Texan thing rather than a costume version of it, with polka and waltz dance competitions, a stein holding championship, sausage making and a full music line up across several halls and tents.

Tickets went on sale September 1 for 2026 at 15 dollars on Fridays and Sundays and 25 dollars on Saturdays when bought online. Children 12 and under are free every day, and admission is free Monday through Thursday.

It opened in 1967 as plain the Snake Farm, a classic piece of interstate roadside Texas, and unlike most of that generation it is still here and has turned into a genuine zoo. The reptile collection is still the reason to come, and it is deep, but there are also big cats, primates, hoofstock and birds, with keeper talks and animal encounters running through the day.

Two phone numbers circulate for it in directories. The one above is the one that appears most consistently across current listings.

Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels ordered a fortified house built on this hill in 1845 and named it the Sophienburg for his wife, Princess Sophie. It became the headquarters of the Adelsverein, the German nobles' colonisation venture that put the settlers here, and it ran as that until the venture went bankrupt in 1853.

Local citizens bought the site in 1926 and chartered a memorial association in 1933, which is the museum you walk into now. If you want to understand why a Texas town has half timbered houses, a Wurstfest and a bakery from 1868, an hour here does it better than anything else in town. Adult admission is 10 dollars, with discounts for seniors, students and children.

Main Plaza sits inside a large roundabout at the centre of the historic district, and almost everything worth seeing on foot is within a few blocks of it. Start at Naegelin's Bakery at 129 S Seguin Ave, the oldest bakery in Texas, opened in 1868 by Edouard Naegelin Sr. with less than a dollar and a single sack of flour and in its present building since 1870. The Granzin family bought it in 1980 and kept the name and the recipes. Get the apple strudel.

Two blocks west, the Brauntex Theatre at 290 W San Antonio St opened on January 6, 1942 with a Bing Crosby picture while the country was weeks into the war, closed as a cinema in 1998, and was bought by a local nonprofit in 1999 and reopened in 2000 as a 586 seat performing arts house. It went on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. Around the corner, the Faust Hotel opened on October 12, 1929, two weeks before the crash, and still trades as a hotel and brewpub.

Most surviving drive-ins are a single screen running a summer season. This one has three, runs first run double features on all of them nightly, and stays open year round, which makes it a real option on an evening rather than a novelty you catch once.

There is a 1950s styled cafe on site doing burgers and drive-in food, so it works as dinner and a film for the price of a cinema ticket.