I have a 1 p.m. intl departure out of PEK T2 on a Saturday in September. I am wondering whether it is advisable to visit the Great Wall (Mutianyu section) before the flight. Rough plan would be to hire a private driver to do this:

06:30 departure from hotel in Wangfujing
08:00 arrive Mutianyu when they open
2h - 2h30m at GW
10:30 drive to PEK T2, arrive before noon

Is this doable? Or is the 2 hours at the GW just too short, or the drive to PEK T2 too risky? This is a flight I can't miss. If this is a bad idea I would just visit the GW on another day.

Your plan is doable (don't stress).

Try to arrive much before noon. With martial law and enhanced security in effect until September 3 due to the military parade, one hour for an international flight sounds too tight. Normally ok, but not now.
but I doubt that you will spend 2.5 hours at the Wall and the ride to the airport is just one hour. So you can still make it by 11am at the airport.

I'm going to dissent and say that if you really want to spend 2+ hours actually on the Wall, you should move the GW trip to another day or get an earlier start out of town. Couple of things: 1) On the front end, you can no longer have your driver get to the old parking lot that was convenient to the ticket booth--now you have to park in an outlying lot before the actual village of Mutianyu, and take a shuttle bus. I think in September, first shuttles start running at 07:20. If you get there at 08:00, and using cable car, you won't actually be on top of the Wall until 08:30 and maybe later if there are queues (likely in September). 2) As JPDM says above, arriving just an hour before a critical international flight departs is a very bad idea. Given the enhanced security (and I think it will continue to be more time-consuming even after the parade period ends), I'd aim to arrive at T2 1.75 hours before departure, which would be 11:15. Drive from Mutianyu to PEK T2 allow 1 hour. That's 10:15. Allow 30 minutes total to get down the Wall (cable car/toboggan), to shuttle bus, back to main visitor lot and driver. That's 09:45. You see the time squeeze now? 08:30-09:45 = 1.25 hours. If you move your hotel departure to 06:00, you can pick up another 30-45 minutes on the front end (including less traffic and less queuing at Mutianyu ticketing and cable car) and maybe push another 15 minutes onto the end to total 2+ hours. But that's about the limit and if you want to do a bunch of hiking, may not be adequate.

Just to add - we did this a couple of weeks ago, although out flight was 4.30pm and without any extra security.

We left the hotel (Grand Hyatt) at 8am. From there it took just under 4hrs to drive to the wall, take the shuttle up to the cable car, take the cable car, walk along the wall and get the toboggan down.

The walk took us 50 mins - the guide suggested most people took 60-70 mins. We had no meaningful queues.

Bear in mind you also need to buy lots of different tickets at different booths, which may add to the time it takes you.

Thanks, very useful. I think we;re gonna do it. Should we take a reliable guide (Simon or such) or negotiate with just any taxi? How much do you think this should cost? Swiss Tony, what did you use and for how much?

If you find yourself in a taxi that you like, it never hurts to inquire about a fixed rate to the great wall. While I'm not up to speed on current rates, I'm guessing that 600 all in should be doable.

We used Catherine Lu tours - I've just posted another note in the forum praising them. As there were 5 of us we needed a van - the charge for that was CNY900. We then paid an extra CNY600 for the guide, which saved us a lot of time. I guess this looks punchy when it's one person but there were five of us....

If my notes are correct, it was another CNY60 to access the wall and for the shuttle bus (other option is a steep walk!) then CNY100 round trip on the cable car or CNY 80 each way for the cable car then toboggan.

I guess the other consideration is all your bags will be in the back of the taxi. Do you want an utterly random taxi driver waiting for you? Sod's law is that you'll end up with the bad apple.

900 is a good price for a van, and I suppose 600 for a guide isn't too horrible (they need to make a living), but IMO the great wall is really easy to do unguided (just download relevant content from the LP if you're curious about specific towers).

The idea of leaving luggage in random taxis used to freak me out, and I would still keep my passport on me, but if you think about it, you can get a great deal of info (e.g. car license, taxi license, phone number, wechat) on your taxi/driver before heading out on the hike. Furthermore, the driver will certainly want to collect his y600 from you, so driving off would be quite irrational. All that having been said, it is important to select drivers who appear trust worthy (gut instinct thing).

A guide is totally useless. You just need a driver and that should cost about 700-750RMB. Less for a taxi. Normally the driver will go with you to help get the tickets (he gets a kickback).
Plenty of drivers are found here: http://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/cars-drivers

Personally, I have used Mark a few times when friends were visiting: http://www.best-our.com/

A rather sweeping - and slightly condescending - comment I fear.

Our guide bought tickets from three different locations at Mutianyu and there was a bit of juggling owing as to what was needed. However she probably saved us 100CNY or so with my youngest only needing some of the tickets and the other two qualifying for discounts.

It also meant we had the guide on hand to call the driver (don't know where he parked for the morning). Given the driver spoke no English - and I speak no Chinese - doing this myself would have been a fun exercise.

600CNY for one person as I said might seem punchy, but after the 100CNY saving, we paid 100CNY per person so that was quite a bargain. Missing that flight from PEK - 3 J and 2 F seats to HKG - because I couldn't find the driver would have been an expensive problem to unpick.

We used Simon last year and he was fantastic. Speaks fluent english and is amazing. The bonus is he gives you a cell phone with his number pre programmed into it. You call him when you are ready to be picked up. I agree with the others that a guide is totally unnecessary and the cell phone that Simon provides renders it even more so.

http://www.simon-service.com/