Looking for the best things to do with kids in Long Beach? This coastal city is a wonderful family destination, home to one of the country’s best aquariums, calm beaches, and a nature center. This local family guide covers Long Beach’s top kid-friendly attractions, museums, outdoor fun, and rainy-day options — plus how to find what local parents actually recommend.

Top things to do with kids in Long Beach

The Aquarium of the Pacific is Long Beach’s marquee family attraction — a world-class aquarium with touch tanks, sea otters, and a lorikeet aviary. The gentle, breakwater-protected beach is ideal for young swimmers, and the historic Queen Mary offers a memorable (slightly spooky) family tour.

Kid-friendly museums & attractions in Long Beach

The Aquarium of the Pacific anchors the family scene, and the El Dorado Nature Center offers trails and wildlife. The Long Beach area also has the Pike Outlets with a Ferris wheel and family dining near the water.

Parks & outdoor fun for families

The calm beach and beachfront bike path, El Dorado Regional Park’s lakes and playgrounds, and the Colorado Lagoon and Naples canals give families lots of gentle, warm-weather outdoor fun. For more, see our guide to the best parks and outdoor spots in Long Beach.

Rainy-day & indoor options in Long Beach

On rainy days, the Aquarium of the Pacific is the top indoor destination, along with local indoor play centers and the nearby LA-area museums.

What local parents in Long Beach recommend

Kids’ favorites, new attractions, and which spots are worth it at each age change all the time — and local parents know the details that listings miss. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Long Beach community, real Long Beach parents share what their kids genuinely love. For more ideas, see our guide to the best things to do in Long Beach. Join your Long Beach neighbors free and get real family recommendations →

Where this fits in Long Beach

Family spots here range from playgrounds to hands-on museums, and locals know which hold up on a rainy day. The picks in this guide make the most sense once you know how Long Beach is laid out. Belmont Shore and Bluff Park sit at the center of where locals actually spend their time, so planning a day out with the kids around one of them rarely goes wrong. When you want something calmer, the El Dorado Nature Center pulls you away from the busiest blocks, and the Naples canals is the kind of spot regulars mention but visitors miss. Anchor your plan to one of those and the rest of the day in Long Beach tends to fall into place.

More Long Beach guides

Long Beach rewards people who dig a little deeper. These related guides map the same neighborhoods from different starting points: Free things to do in Long Beach, Parks in Long Beach, Things to do in Long Beach — enough to plan a whole day or two.

Ask a Long Beach neighbor

The best tips never make the guidebooks — they come from neighbors who know which spot is worth it this week. That is what the Long Beach community on Neighborhood Nurturers is for. Ask Long Beach locals what they would do, or join free and get honest answers from people who actually know Long Beach.

The Big Family Attractions

Aquarium of the Pacific

At 100 Aquarium Way, this is the anchor family attraction in the city: more than 11,000 animals across exhibits covering the Pacific’s ecosystems, including sea otters, sharks and tropical fish, plus interactive touch pools that hold small children’s attention far better than glass tanks do. Open daily 9:00am to 6:00pm, with extended hours during school holidays. Going at opening is the single best decision you can make here; by midday the touch pools have queues.

El Dorado Nature Center and El Dorado Regional Park

The nature center is a 105-acre wildlife sanctuary with roughly two miles of walking trail, a visitor centre with hands-on rotating exhibits, and resident wildlife that children can reliably spot: turtles, rabbits and more than 100 species of bird. It runs pre-school programmes and morning bird walks through the year, and there is an archery range offering free lessons, which is an unusually good option for older children.

It sits inside the 800-acre regional park, which adds duck ponds, multiple playgrounds, a skate park, miles of bike path and extensive picnic and barbecue areas. This is the easiest full day out in the city for a family, and parking is straightforward, which cannot be said of the waterfront.

El Dorado Frontier

A small western-themed amusement area within the same park complex, with a carousel, a train ride, pulley carts, bounce houses and gem mining. It is aimed squarely at younger children and works well as the reward at the end of a long park day.

Beaches and Water

Mother’s Beach, on the northeastern side of Naples Island inside Alamitos Bay just below Marine Stadium, is the default family beach and deservedly so. Because it sits inside the bay, the water is shielded from open-ocean motion, so it stays calm and shallow, with lifeguard coverage in peak periods. The surrounding Marine Park is the only place in the area combining grass, sand, a large modern playground, picnic facilities, volleyball and a designated swim area in one spot, with a concession stand on site.

For older children, Kayaks on the Water at 5411 East Ocean Boulevard rents kayaks and paddleboards daily 9:00am to 5:00pm and offers quick beginner lessons. Alamitos Bay is sheltered by a sand spit and the breakwater, so the water genuinely suits first-timers.

Rainy Day and Indoor Options

The Long Beach Museum of Art runs family art-making workshops and events with local artists, and Friday admission is always free, which makes it one of the better-value indoor options in the city. The Art Theatre on Retro Row is the oldest operating single-screen cinema in Long Beach, opened in 1924, and is a more interesting outing than a multiplex.

Shoreline Village on the waterfront has a carousel and an arcade alongside its shops and restaurants, and costs nothing to walk through, so it works as a low-commitment filler when plans change. The Pike Outlets nearby adds a Ferris wheel and a cinema.

Playgrounds and Free Options

Lincoln Park downtown has an accessible playground, a skate park, exercise equipment, paths for scooters and skates, a grassy sports field and a large library attached, which makes it the most practical downtown option without a car. The Rivo Alto Canal loop around Naples Island is a flat, traffic-free public mile that works well with scooters and strollers, with no gate and no ticket.

On timing and cost: the aquarium and the ship are the paid attractions and both reward an early start; nearly everything else here is free or close to it. Parking is easy at the inland parks, manageable downtown, and difficult in Belmont Shore between 10:00am and 7:00pm when meters run $3.00 per hour. See also parks in Long Beach, free things to do in Long Beach and things to do in Long Beach.

Planning a Family Day That Actually Works

The recurring mistake families make in Long Beach is treating it as a compact city. It is not. The waterfront attractions, the sheltered family beach and the large inland park are separated by real driving distance, and attempting two of the three in one day usually means a tired afternoon in traffic. The city works far better one zone per day.

The most reliable single day for younger children is the inland park: arrive mid-morning, walk the nature trails while everyone is fresh, break for a picnic, then let them loose on the playgrounds and the small themed rides in the afternoon. Parking is easy, there is shade, the facilities are all in one place, and nothing about it requires booking ahead. The most reliable day for older children is the waterfront: the aquarium at opening, lunch on the boardwalk, and the afternoon on the water in a kayak or on a harbour cruise.

The bay-side family beach is the exception to the one-zone rule, because it combines calm water, sand, grass, a playground and food in a single location, and it is close enough to the walkable main street that a meal afterwards involves almost no driving. If you have one afternoon and small children, that is the highest-value choice in the city.

Two seasonal notes. Summer weekends are the busiest period across every attraction listed here, and the beach parking in particular fills early. December is unexpectedly good for families, because the parade and the canal lights in the southeast of the city are free, outdoors, and genuinely spectacular for children, with the one caveat that both require an early arrival and a walk in from wherever you manage to park.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best things to do with kids in Long Beach?

The Aquarium of the Pacific, the calm breakwater-protected beach, the historic Queen Mary, the El Dorado Nature Center, and El Dorado Regional Park.

What can you do with kids in Long Beach on a rainy day?

The Aquarium of the Pacific is the top indoor destination, plus local indoor play centers and nearby LA-area museums.

What do local parents recommend in Long Beach?

Long Beach parents share their kids’ genuine favorites and current tips in our community.