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A brightly painted wooden lifeguard tower standing on the sand at Miami Beach in daylight

Things to Do

South Beach With Kids

Last updated

South Beach with children: which lifeguard stand to pick, the three playgrounds, where to eat off Ocean Drive, and why the evening ends early here.

South Beach with children is better than its reputation and worse than its marketing, and both halves of that come from the same fact: this is a dense, adult, late-night neighbourhood wrapped around one of the best public beaches in the United States.

Take the beach first, because it is the whole plan. The sand is wide, free, lifeguarded through the day and accessible from the end of every numbered street. The Atlantic here has small surf most of the year, no reef and no coral to cut feet on, and the water is calmest in the morning before the sea breeze fills in. A family that gets to the sand by nine and leaves by noon has had the best of the island and missed the worst of it.

The island's small size is the genuine advantage and almost nobody frames it that way. In most beach destinations a nap means losing the afternoon. Here the room is a ten-minute walk from wherever you are. You can go back for two hours in the heat and come out again at four for the playground, and nobody has driven anywhere. Bring a stroller and the flat, kerb-cut sidewalks on Collins and Washington and the paved beachwalk make it easy.

The parts that need planning are shade, food and the evening.

Shade barely exists between 5th and 15th Street. Lummus Park has palms, which throw a thin, moving shade, and the pavements on both sides of Ocean Drive are exposed. In July and August the middle of the day on that strip is genuinely hard on small children. Bring an umbrella or rent a set, and treat noon to three as indoor time.

Food is the other trap. The sidewalk cafés on Ocean Drive run pavement hosts, menus that sometimes arrive without prices, and automatic service charges, and a family of four can end up with a bill that bears no relation to what they thought they ordered. One block west solves it.

The evening changes character faster here than parents expect. Around nine, Washington Avenue and the southern end of Ocean Drive turn into a nightlife district, with the noise, the door queues and the promoters that implies. Plan dinner early, on Española Way, Lincoln Road or at the quiet southern end below 5th Street, and be back before it turns.

Our picks

The ones we would book

  • Best for Families

    Best boat trip with children aboard

    Why we chose it

    Look for a ninety-minute departure rather than a three-hour one, with shade on deck and a toilet, leaving from the marina at the foot of Alton Road. It is a five-minute walk from the 5th & Alton garage, the bay is flattest in the morning, and passing a cruise ship in Government Cut is the part children actually talk about afterwards.

    Little Havana Food and Walking Tour in Miami

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    Little Havana Food and Walking Tour in Miami (opens in a new tab)

    Best for FamiliesFree cancellationSmall group
    9.9K reviews

    Join us on a culinary and cultural walking tour of Little Havana where you will discover the traditions, history, music and flavors of…

    2–3 hours

    Prices checked

    from $69.99
  • Best Value

    Best-value way to cover the island

    Why we chose it

    A family bike hire for a day costs less than one round of drinks on Ocean Drive and turns the flat, separated beachwalk into the day's activity. Ride south to South Pointe Park for the ships, north along the dune path, and skip the hottest, most crowded pavement entirely. Check that child seats or smaller frames are available before you book.

  • Free

    Best free evening with kids

    Why we chose it

    The lawn at SoundScape Park, beside the New World Center on 17th Street, where the building's exterior wall is used as a 7,000 square foot screen. The city has long run free outdoor film nights there through the cooler months alongside the free concert broadcasts. Bring a blanket and arrive early enough to get a spot near the front.

    Speedboat Sightseeing Adventure of Miami

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    Speedboat Sightseeing Adventure of Miami (opens in a new tab)

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    Miami's only off-shore, speedboat tour. Experience thrills during a 45-minute speedboat ride across Miami waters. Soar along the Miami…

    45 minutes

    Prices checked

    from $42
  • Small Group

    Best short walk for older children

    Why we chose it

    A small-group Art Deco walk works from about ten upwards if the guide is the storytelling kind, because the district has a genuine plot: a neighbourhood nearly demolished, saved building by building, then repainted in colours nobody had used on it before. Ninety minutes is the limit. Book the earliest departure so the heat is not a factor.

Which stretch of sand, and which stand

Local tips

The beach runs the whole length of the island, and the differences between stretches matter more with children than without.

  • Below 5th Street, towards South Pointe Park. The quietest sand in South Beach, close to the park, the playground and the pier. Some of the calmest water too, because it sits in the lee of the Government Cut jetty. This is the family default.
  • Between 5th and 10th Street. Busy, well served by concessions, and the closest to the lower deco blocks. Fine in the morning, crowded by midday.
  • Between 10th and 15th Street. The photographed stretch, in front of the deco row and the beach volleyball courts. The most people and the most noise.
  • North of 15th. It thins out quickly. Quieter sand, fewer facilities, more walking.

Use the lifeguard stands as your marker. Each one stands at a numbered street end and takes that street's name, and each is painted differently. Put your towels by a stand, tell children the number and the colour, and you have given them a landmark they can find from a distance on a featureless beach. It is the single most useful thing you can do with a five-year-old here.

Watch the flags. Green and yellow are ordinary. Red means strong current. Double red means closed. Purple means jellyfish or man o' war, which arrive on onshore winter winds and are the one genuine sting risk here.

The three playgrounds, and what each is for

South Pointe Park, at the southern tip, is the best of them and the one visitors find. A playground, a splash area, a long lawn and a pier at the end of the island. The attraction that makes it, though, is the shipping: PortMiami's cruise ships pass out through Government Cut a couple of hundred metres from the pier, mostly on weekend afternoons, and container ships run through all week. Children who are bored of sand are not bored of a ship the size of a block going past at walking pace.

Maurice Gibb Memorial Park, at 18th Street and Purdy Avenue on the bay in Sunset Harbour, is the small one: a playground, a dog run and a kayak launch on the waterfront. It faces west, so it is shaded in the morning and it gets the sunset, which makes it the best late-afternoon stop on the island with young children.

Flamingo Park, inland in the residential grid around 11th and 12th Streets between Jefferson and Michigan, is where the island actually plays. A public swimming pool, a tennis centre, a running track, a baseball stadium and a playground, all a ten-minute walk from Ocean Drive and almost entirely visitor-free. Families staying more than three days should go at least once; a morning in the pool is a different day from a morning in salt water. Non-resident entry to the pool carries a fee and the schedule varies by season, so check before you walk over.

Feeding a family without the Ocean Drive bill

What it costs

This is where family budgets break here, and it is entirely avoidable.

The sidewalk cafés between 5th and 15th Street on Ocean Drive have a long-documented pattern: a host on the pavement offering a deal, a menu that may not carry prices, and an automatic service charge of 18 to 20 percent added to the bill on top of tax. City rules now require that charge to be disclosed on the menu, the bill and the receipt. With four people and a round of drinks, the gap between what you expected and what you pay can be substantial.

What to do instead.

  • Walk one block west. Washington Avenue and the numbered cross streets carry counters, delis, pizza by the slice and Latin American lunch places at a fraction of the price.
  • Use the pharmacies and grocery shops on Washington and Alton for beach snacks, water and fruit. A cool box packed in the morning removes the single biggest daily expense.
  • Española Way early, before the hosts are working the pavement, is pleasant with children and genuinely pretty.
  • Ask for a printed menu with prices before you sit anywhere, and read the bottom of the bill. That is not rudeness here; it is standard practice.
  • Breakfast is the good value meal on this island. Most of the best-value eating happens before eleven.

Indoor hours, and the free film night

For an air-conditioned hour or two, there are more options than the island's reputation suggests.

The Wolfsonian-FIU on Washington Avenue works surprisingly well with children over about eight: it is full of objects rather than paintings, including posters, machines and furniture, and it is small enough to finish. The Bass at Collins Park runs contemporary shows and has historically programmed work aimed at younger visitors. Neither takes more than ninety minutes.

SoundScape Park, beside Frank Gehry's New World Center on 17th Street, is the best free family evening in South Beach. The 7,000 square foot wall of the building is used as a projection screen, and alongside the free WALLCAST concerts the city has long run an outdoor cinema series on the lawn on weekday evenings through the cooler months. Blankets, no tickets, no queue. Children who will not sit through a concert will sit through a film.

The Miami Beach Botanical Garden across the road is small, free, densely planted and shaded, and takes about twenty-five minutes at child pace.

The evening rule. By nine, the southern end of Ocean Drive and the length of Washington Avenue become a nightlife district with promoters, door queues and volume. It is not dangerous so much as unsuitable. Eat at six or seven, walk Española Way or Lincoln Road afterwards, and go north or south rather than into the middle.

Strollers, trolleys and the things that catch families out

Local tips

  • The free trolley is a free activity. It runs the length of South Beach roughly every twenty minutes, costs nothing, and buys you twenty air-conditioned minutes at the worst part of the day. Children generally like it more than the thing you were walking to.
  • Strollers are fine on the pavement and useless on sand. The paved beachwalk runs behind the dune line and is the route to use; several street-end accesses have matting laid part of the way towards the water.
  • Public toilets are scarce on the strip itself. The parks have them: South Pointe, Flamingo Park and the beach concession areas in Lummus Park.
  • Do not bring a car onto Ocean Drive. Park once in a city garage on the west side, where the day is capped around $20, and walk. With children, the 5th & Alton garage, which gives the first two hours free, is the one to know.
  • Sargassum is the seaweed that lands on the Atlantic beaches from roughly March to October. On a heavy week the smell and the flies put small children off the tide line entirely. The bay side and the pool at Flamingo Park are the fallbacks.
  • Jet skis are not a family activity here. Florida sets the minimum age to operate a personal watercraft at 14, and rental agreements require 18. A short boat trip from the marina is the version that works.

Book it

Everything else we track

These earn us a commission through Viator. Same price for you, and the commission had no hand in the order.

Sharing, or having it to yourselves

Most of what is bookable here sells two ways, and the cheaper one is not always the cheaper one. A shared departure is priced per person; a private booking is priced for the party, so the arithmetic flips somewhere around four to six people — and it is the only version where you pick the time. Check the party size each listing actually covers before you decide.

  • Book a seat

    A shared departure, priced per person. The cheapest way to do this for one or two people.

  • Book the whole thing

    Priced for the party rather than the seat, and you choose the departure time.

The heat plan, which is not optional in summer

Before you book

South Beach has high UV all year and very little shade in the blocks visitors walk. The breeze off the Atlantic hides how hard the sun is working, and a first-day burn costs a child the rest of the trip.

The schedule that works. Out by eight or nine, beach or playground until about eleven-thirty, indoors or back to the room from noon to three, out again from four. That is not a cautious timetable; it is how families who live here use the island.

Where the cool places actually are. The Miami Beach Botanical Garden opposite the Convention Center is the most reliably shaded ground in South Beach and free. The Wolfsonian and the Bass are air-conditioned and neither is so big that a child loses patience. Hotel lobbies along Ocean Drive and Collins are public-facing rooms. The covered sections of Lincoln Road hold shade through the afternoon.

Practical kit. Rash vests beat sunscreen reapplication on small children. An umbrella or a rented shade set is worth more than any single attraction. Water is sold everywhere and is expensive on Ocean Drive and cheap at the pharmacies on Washington Avenue.

Afternoon storms in summer come in fast, usually between about three and six, and lifeguards clear the water for lightning. That is a real hazard and not a formality. Watch the sky to the west, because the storms build inland and travel east.

On the ground

Where to go

Every place below has its own page — hours, parking, what it costs and what to expect when you get there.

All attractions
  • Early morning sun rising out of the Atlantic over an empty stretch of sand

    Beach

    South Beach

    Free

    Free, public, and about three times wider than it was fifty years ago, because most of it was pumped there on purpose.

    1.5–6 hoursFree. The entire beach is public. Loungers, umbrellas and the concession rows are not.

  • Rows of simple beach cabanas and painted shelters set back behind a line of palms

    Landmark

    South Beach Lifeguard Stands

    Free

    Around three dozen individually designed towers along Miami Beach, each known by the street it stands at rather than by a number.

    0.5–1.5 hoursFree. The beach, the accesses and the towers cost nothing.

  • A public pier running out over the water with a city skyline behind it at dusk

    Park

    South Pointe Park

    Free

    Fifteen minutes south of the Ocean Drive crowd, the island stops at a shipping channel and everything gets quieter.

    1–3 hoursFree. The park, the pier, the splash pad, the playground, the dog park and the beach access cost nothing.

  • Curving paved walkways running through low coastal planting in a landscaped seafront park

    Park

    Lummus Park

    Free

    Ten blocks of palm, path and free outdoor gym, and the decision that kept anyone from building between Ocean Drive and the Atlantic.

    0.5–3 hoursFree. The park, the outdoor gym, the volleyball courts, the restrooms and the beach access cost nothing.

  • A bright double-height gallery with large-scale contemporary works and a window onto daylight

    Museum

    The Bass

    A 1930 keystone library built by the family that made this island, now showing contemporary art four blocks from Ocean Drive.

    1–2 hoursTicketed. Adult admission has been published at around $15, with reduced rates for seniors, students and children and free entry for Miami Beach and Surfside residents. Collins Park and the sculpture outside are free.

  • A paved shoreline walkway running between planted borders with the ocean on one side

    Trail

    Miami Beach Boardwalk

    Free

    Seven continuous miles of shoreline path from South Pointe to the Surfside line, with almost none of the timber the name promises.

    0.5–3 hoursFree. The whole route is a public right of way with no entry point that charges.

  • A public fishing pier running out over the water with a city skyline behind it at dusk

    Park

    Maurice Gibb Memorial Park

    Free

    The bayfront park where South Beach actually watches the sun go down, with a Bee Gees playground and a mangrove shoreline.

    0.5–1.5 hoursFree. The playground, dog park, fishing pier and overlooks all cost nothing.

  • Curving paved walkways through low planting in a landscaped urban park

    Park

    SoundScape Park

    Free

    Two and a half acres of Dutch-designed lawn and shade whose best feature is the building next door playing concerts onto its wall for free.

    0.5–2.5 hoursFree, including the WALLCAST concert simulcasts and outdoor film screenings.

  • A player resting courtside on a blue hard tennis court with racket and balls

    Park

    Flamingo Park

    Free

    The island's largest park, four blocks inland, where spring-training baseball was played in the 1930s and residents still run the place.

    0.5–3 hoursThe park, paths, playground, dog park, track and open courts are free. Tennis and the aquatic centre are ticketed, with non-resident rates recently in the high teens per person per hour or per session and lower rates for Miami Beach residents.

  • A red timber bridge crossing the pond in the Japanese garden at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden

    Park

    Miami Beach Botanical Garden

    Free

    Two and a half acres of free, densely planted shade behind the convention centre — the coolest ground in South Beach in August.

    0.5–1 hoursFree. Donations and memberships support the non-profit that runs it.

Straight answers

Questions people actually ask

Is South Beach good for families with kids?

During the day, yes. The beach is wide, free, lifeguarded and calmest in the morning, there are three good playgrounds, and the island is small enough that you can go back to the room for a nap without driving anywhere. After about nine in the evening, Washington Avenue and the southern end of Ocean Drive become an adult nightlife district. Plan an early dinner and stay north or south of the middle.

Which part of South Beach is best with young children?

The stretch below 5th Street, towards South Pointe Park. It is the quietest sand in South Beach, the water sits in the lee of the Government Cut jetty so it is often calmer, and the park at the end has a playground, a splash area and a pier where cruise ships pass close by on weekend afternoons. It is also furthest from the nightlife blocks.

Are there playgrounds in South Beach?

Three worth knowing. South Pointe Park at the southern tip has a playground, a splash area and the ship-watching pier. Maurice Gibb Memorial Park at 18th Street and Purdy Avenue is a small bayfront green with a playground and a kayak launch, and it gets the sunset. Flamingo Park, inland around 11th and 12th Streets, has a public pool, a track, tennis courts and a playground, and almost no visitors.

Where should families eat in South Beach?

One block west of Ocean Drive. The sidewalk cafés between 5th and 15th Street have a documented pattern of pavement hosts, menus without prices and automatic service charges of 18 to 20 percent, which adds up fast with four people. Washington Avenue and the numbered cross streets carry counters, delis and Latin American lunch places at a fraction of the cost. Breakfast is the best-value meal here.

Is the water safe for children in South Beach?

Generally yes. The Atlantic here has small surf most of the year, no reef and no coral, and lifeguards staff the stands through the day. Swim in the morning, when the water is calmest before the sea breeze fills in, and read the flags: red means strong current, double red means closed, and purple means jellyfish or Portuguese man o' war, which arrive on onshore winter winds.

How do you handle the heat in South Beach with kids?

Treat the day as two halves. Out by nine, beach or playground until about eleven-thirty, indoors from noon to three, out again at four. There is very little shade between 5th and 15th Street, so bring an umbrella or rent a shade set. The Botanical Garden, the Wolfsonian, the Bass and the free trolley are the reliable cool places, and rash vests beat reapplying sunscreen.

Can kids go on jet skis in Miami Beach?

Not as operators. Florida law sets the minimum age to operate a personal watercraft at 14, and rental agreements require the signer to be 18. Anyone born on or after 1 January 1988 also needs a boating safety education card. A short daytime boat trip from Miami Beach Marina is the version that works with children, ideally a ninety-minute departure with shade and a toilet on board.

What is there to do in South Beach with kids when it rains?

Most South Beach rain is a heavy half hour in the afternoon rather than a lost day. Use it: the Wolfsonian on Washington Avenue is full of objects rather than paintings and works well with children over about eight, the Bass at Collins Park is an hour, and the covered stretches of Lincoln Road and the hotel lobbies along Collins are free. The free trolley is a dry twenty minutes in itself.