Try your luck walking-in to the canyon parking lot and buy your tickets directly with the tour operator. At the time of post, the tickets are $100 per person. There are only 2 licensed operators: Navajo Tours and Tse Bighanilini. TripAdvisor allows third party tour agencies to resell the tickets at 80% mark-up ($179) which is too much in my opinion. But to be fair, I bought the tickets last minute (5 days before) so the online tickets sold by the official operators were sold out. However, it is possible to walk in and try your luck at getting last minute openings.
My tour was operated by Tse Bighanilini, they are professional and our guide was friendly and accommodating. She knew all the good smartphone photography tips and tricks to help amateur photographers take amazing pictures.
The operator was strict with mask policy which is a good thing to see. No double standards and no slack in reinforcing the rule.
I learned from the guide about the strictness of the rule. Antelope Canyon belongs to the Navajo Nation, which is a sovereign state - their President is not the POTUS so usual rules/laws that apply in the US doesn’t apply to their land. During the covid pandemic, the Navajo Nation was badly affected with the world’s highest infection rates at one point of time.
Navajo Nation does not have readily accessible water and medical amenities so covid hit them hard. Their President allowed the re-opening of businesses with the condition that masks are worn.
Do NOT bring any pets or service animals as. Saw a young couple who tried to argue and made a big fuss on insisting to bring their service animal along but was turned down. I later heard from the guide that one reason is that dogs may bark in the canyon at animals (birds, lizards, etc) which may disturb the spirits of their ancestors.
We went for the 3:25pm tour, which is the last tour for the day. This means we were lucky that it we did not have to hike up the canyon and take the stairs, we could just u-turn at the end of the canyon and walk out through the canyon.
We were formed in groups of 8-9 people who shared the same guide and truck. There are about 4 groups in the canyon for our 3:25pm time slot and we had to wait for the group in front of us finish taking photos and disappear in the background before we could proceed. Most of the time spent in the canyon was waiting for our turns to take photos.