Key West with Children: the Aquarium, the Boats, and What Actually Holds Their Attention

Key West is easier with children than its reputation suggests, and harder in one specific way: an enormous share of what is sold here is a boat with an open bar on it. Strip those out and what is left is genuinely good – but you have to strip them out deliberately, because they are the top of every list.

Here is what actually works, with the details that decide it.

The aquarium, with the timetable that matters

The Key West Aquarium sits at 1 Whitehead Street on Mallory Square, and the entrance ticket is €19.81 – one of the cheapest things on this island. Shows and feeding times are listed as 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 4.30pm, and they are included in admission rather than sold separately, along with guided tours that run 15 to 20 minutes.

Time your visit to land on one of those four slots. An aquarium of this size without a feeding is twenty minutes; with one it is an afternoon. There is a touch tank where children can pick up starfish and other gentle animals, and shark and turtle feedings are the draw.

One honest note: it rates 3.9 stars from 65 reviews, the lowest of anything recommended in this article. It is a small, old-fashioned aquarium, not a modern aquarium complex, and people who arrive expecting the latter say so. People who arrive expecting a touch tank and a shark feeding do not.

Check the hours on the day. The aquarium’s own visitor information gives 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. with last entrance at 5.30 p.m., 365 days a year; the booking page states 10am to 6pm. Those disagree, so look before you plan a 9.15 arrival.

Next door in practical terms, the Shipwreck Treasure Museum describes itself as a family-friendly trip through Key West’s salvaging history: €16.98, 4.3 stars. Both sit inside the things-to-do category, which starts at €10.53.

The boat rule people misread

Several of the big catamarans state that guests aged 14 and under must have an 18-plus chaperone with them throughout the tour. That appears on the dolphin and snorkel eco cruise, on the two-stop reef trip and on the glass-bottom boat.

That is a supervision rule. It is not a minimum age and it is not a ban, and it gets repeated online as though it were both. If you are the adult and you are on the boat, your ten-year-old is within the rule.

What is a real exclusion: the dolphin eco cruise lists itself as not suitable for non-swimmers, and one of the sandbar cruises is 18 and over, stated in its own title. Those you cannot talk your way around, and the second one is easy to book by accident because a nearly identical family boat sits beside it at almost the same price.

Most other listings say nothing at all about children. Where a booking page is silent, that is a question for the operator, not something for us to fill in.

What holds attention, by age

The glass-bottom boat, for anyone who will not get in the water. 105 minutes, €56.30, from 0 Duval Street, with an air-conditioned viewing cabin and a sundeck. You stay dry, it is shorter than everything else on the water, and it is the reef without the three-hour commitment. For a child who is nervous about a mask, or one who overheats, this is the whole answer.

The mangrove kayak, for anyone who can hold a paddle. Two hours, €57.06, 238 reviews at 4.6 stars, from Cow Key Marina at 5001 5th Avenue. Single or tandem kayaks – take the tandem with a smaller child. The listing includes toilets on site and phone cases, which is precisely the information that decides a morning with children and appears almost nowhere else. The operator names birds, sea stars, sea cucumbers, rays, manatees and nurse sharks as possible sightings. A three-hour version with a swim stop is €74.62 and a clear-bottomed kayak eco-tour €65.12.

The Conch Train, for small legs and an hour of heat. €39.59, a 60-minute loop with a short break, from the Front Street Depot. You cannot get off, which with a four-year-old is an advantage. If you want to get off, that is the Old Town Trolley instead – 13 stops, and the last departure from Mallory Square is 4:30pm.

Teenagers. Jet skis and parasailing are the two things that work here and nothing else comes close. Parasailing is the cheaper of the two and sets the entry price for the whole water sports category at €56.63; the most-reviewed parasailing trip is €65.26 with 177 reviews at 4.7 stars. Jet skis cost roughly three times that – the island tour with a sandbar stop is €160.44 and has 470 reviews, more than any other water-sports offer here. Check minimum ages and weight limits with the operator; they vary by boat and none of them are on our pages.

Everyone, free, at the end of the day. The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square begins about two hours before sunset, runs every night of the year, and costs nothing. Street performers hold children’s attention far better than a sunset does.

What to leave alone

The open-bar sunset catamarans and the party boats. They are excellent and they are not for children, and several of them are loud in a way that is worth taking seriously with small ears.

Five-hour sandbar excursions with a young child. The boat is good, the sun is relentless, there is no shade on a sandbar at all, and five hours is a long time to be eight years old on open water.

Two rules we hold to

We do not invent a minimum age. Where the booking page gives one, it is quoted above. Where it does not, the sentence is “ask the operator” – because a number we guessed could leave a child standing on a dock.

We do not recommend anything for seasickness. What helps without a pharmacy: take the morning departure, sit amidships rather than at the bow, and keep your eyes on the horizon. Anything beyond that belongs in a conversation with a pharmacist or your child’s doctor before you travel, not in a travel article.

And the sunscreen that operators here ask for by name is the biodegradable kind – the water is a national marine sanctuary, and it is a rule you can explain to a seven-year-old in one sentence.

Prices show in euros because GetYourGuide converts them; the operators bill in US dollars.