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Kids HEART NYC!! Tips for an OUTSTANDING Family Vacation to the Big Apple! New York City

The Best Week of My Life! The Westin New York at Times Square! The Westin New York at Times Square A recent change in my employment allowed me to take Mrs. Duckling on a busi...

Times Square, The Best Week of My Life! Times Square Some of us are reaching the age to have a "Bucket List." You know, things y...

Looking for a great family vacation destination? One of the best trips our family has done with the kids has been a week in New York City. The city is so wonderfully large and diverse, with the most cosmopolitan atmosphere in the United States, that there is ALWAYS something new and exciting for kids of all ages. The city has wonderful outdoor escapes and activities for days when the sun is shining, and it has more indoor attractions for those rainy or cold days than anyplace else in America.

New York City is a place where families can have fun and where they can experience genuine American history and culture, with plenty of opportunities to also savor the flavors of all the myriad world cultures that blend into America’s “great melting pot”. Nowhere else in America can you find as many cultural events and venues.

New York City throws incredible holiday parties and it has awesome events too! Of course there’s New Years Eve in Times Square, but more kid-friendly would be parades like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Saint Patricks Day Parade —those are just unbeatably outstanding parades, and kids just drop their jaws at the sight of these things (seeing a parade on TV doesn’t prepare you for the experience of the real thing). Christmas in New York is totally unbeatable because the stores are all decked out, you can depend on performances of the Nutcracker and Handel’s Messiah to give you your traditional Christmas cultural fix, and the kids can do ice skating every evening, either on the Wollman Rink in Central Park or at Rockefeller Center.

If you’re a sports fan, New York City is just about the best place in America to be: there’s two franchises of each major league sport, so there’s always a baseball, football, basketball, or hockey event happening somewhere around town. The Mets and the Yankees are each getting new stadiums, so those will be fun places to take the boys for a day, Madison Square Garden is a total classic and a Knicks game is probably the ultimate wintertime sports experience (though I thought the dinosaurs wrecked that place in the movie, “Godzilla”). Not to mention catching a football game over in the Meadowlands (where I think parts of Jimmy Hoffa are buried in concrete somewhere).

New York City is an amazingly outstanding family vacation destination. The city is full of wonderful sites, magnificent landmarks, brilliant performing arts events, delectable treats, and fun activities — after all, some 10 million people live and work in the area, and I’d be willing to bet that at least a few of them have kids who like fun things too.

Here’s just a few of the hundreds of spectacular kid-friendly destinations in and around New York City — places that will make your kids want to do The Big Apple just as often as mine do…

Let’s Do a BOAT Tour!
There’s several fun boat excursions you can do, including rocketing around the harbor in a high-powered jet boat, doing a lazy afternoon tour around Manhattan Island on a classic NYC boat tour, and for frugal families, a trip arcoss the harbor on the Staten Island Ferry gives you some of New York’s best harbor vistas, but at bargain basement prices.

The Staten Island Ferry costs next to nothing to ride, plus there’s some family friendly places to visit once you get there (like a Staten Island Yankees baseball game in the summer, a visit to the Staten Island Zoo, or maybe a few hours of creative playtime in the Staten Island Childrens Museum). The Staten Island Ferry is a total winner!

Circle Line is the classic way to cruise around Manhattan Island. They have several tours to choose from, but the classic “bang for the buck” tour is the one that goes all the way around Manhattan Island. It takes a full three hours to do, but it’s a whole lot of fun, and kids sure like it better than bus tours or walking.

There’s several of those high-speed boats that do different adrenaline-fueled trips: look for “The Beast”, “The Shark”, and the “Chelsea Screamer”.

Day In the Museum…
New York City has dozens of spectacular museums, but all of them are not kid friendly. Many are brilliant art collections, or dry historical museums that won’t appeal to younger kids. I’d stay away from those and concentrate instead on the most kid-friendly places. The Intrepid is always a good kid-friendly bet, and there are at least three children’s museums in New York City, plus there’s places like the Firefighters Museum that will appeal to kids, but the two museums that I think give you the best “family friendliness” and that can fill an entire cool weather or rainy day with fun and excitement are the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Because I’m a big Ben Stiller fan, I know that the exhibits in the American Museum of Natural History come to life at night. It’s a little quieter during daylight hours, but it’s still plenty fascinating for kids! There’s a million and one things in this museum to pique the curiosity of small minds. (Actually, I lied about that: the American Museum of Natural History actually has a collection of 32 million specimens — it is simply an AMAZING place to visit!) Young kids will go totally bonkers over the dinosaur exhibits, of which there are an entire 6 galleries (the dinosaur halls alone are bigger than most other natural history museums). My son totally dug on it, crawling across the long glass floorway that let him peer down into a dig exhibit. My daughter, on the other hand, wanted to spend hours in the museum’s Ocean Life hall, where they have an area that gives you the illusion of being in the sea, with fish and other sea animals all around you. (And yeah, the mammoth blue whale is still suspended from the ceiling, ready to amaze all with its humongous girth).

I recommend that families avoid MOST of New York’s art-oriented museums, but the Met is the one, and really the only, exception. The Met is just so big, so complex, and so utterly amazing that it’s a place that a lot of kids will fall in love with — especially kids who are 8 or older. Some of my kids’ favorite exhibits were the hall of medieval armor, the Egyptian room is great (chock full of mummies and things like that), and the Temple of Dendur is something that all ages will appreciate. You could meander through the myriad galleries for a week, but the kids will help keep your tour down to a single day (by the way, your Met admission ticket will also get you into The Cloisters at no extra charge).

The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum is a serious winner, especially with the boys: It’s an aircraft carrier….so of COURSE it’s kid friendly. The carrier has been out of commission the past few months, undergoing hull and structural repairs, but it was recently towed back to its home and will be reopening soon. There’s tons of planes, tanks, guns and assorted stuff that goes BOOM. There’s lots of exhibits chronicling various points of military history, and besides the big flattop, there’s also a submarine and a destroyer here that you can tour at no extra charge.

Get Outside and Play!!
Urban parks just don’t get much better than Central Park, and there’s always something to do that kids will love, even if it’s just hanging out, doing a picnic in John Lennon’s Strawberry Fields, catching a summer theatre or concert in the park, walking the trails and chattering about the places you saw in the movie “Enchanted”, and climbing on some of the huge boulders strewn through the park. Horse-drawn carriages are a huge winner with the kids and they’ll give you the grand tour of the meandering park roadways. Carriages depart from South Central Park (aka, 59th Street). Some of the kid-oriented attractions in Central Park include a great carrousel, boating on the lake, ice skating on the Wollman rink, and of course, there’s the small but thoroughly delightful Central Park Zoo (home of Marty, Alex, and all your pals from the movie “Madagascar”).

If you want to work off some calories or do some fun active kind of activities, head over to the Chelsea Piers. They’ve got all kinds of things to do, from batting cages to rock climbing and kayak rentals. (There’s also a brewpub there, Chelsea Brewing, serving up fresh brewskis so you can put the pounds right back on after your workout! Not that such a thing would ever entice ME to visit the area….)

Take a Walk On the Wild Side…
I told y’all about the Central Park Zoo, which was the zoo from the movie “Madagascar”, and that’s a simply WONDERFULLY whimsical kind of zoo to visit. I love it! But the Central Park Zoo isn’t all that big and not many jaded teens would be impressed by the fairly small number of animals there. To “wow” those kinds of kids, you’ll have to hoof it on over to the Bronx Zoo.

The Bronx Zoo is one of America’s really “great” zoos. It’s got a long heritage behind it, it’s huge, and it’s a delightful place to walk, with rolling hills, wooded paths, and of course, thousands of animals of every species and description imaginable. The Bronx Zoo can easily fill an entire day of your trip, and the only downside of going there is the high entry cost and the insulting add-on fees for certain exhibits and other activities. If you can keep the phony smile plastered to your face in spite of the downsides of the place, the kids WILL love it!

There’s also another small zoo on Staten Island, plus you could venture out towards Coney Island and do the New York Aquarium (though I’d really only head out that way during the summer months when we could pound the boardwalk and do the carnival attractions — though I heard that one of Coney Island’s classic amusement parks was shutting down — pity).

The Lights of Broadway….
Don’t miss strolling around Times Square and checking out all the glittering lights and the wonderful sights and smells. Also don’t miss the chance to catch one of Broadway’s MANY family friendly live theatre productions. There’s always a Disney tale or three somewhere, and my daughter loved Beauty and the Beast and Lion King while my son votes for Tarzan. We took the kids to Mamma Mia! and they loved it — such a fun production!

A family night on Broadway can be an expensive proposition with many shows costing $100 or more a seat — but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Just do it like the locals (if you can). If you simply MUST see a specific show on a specific night, you’d better just bite the bullet and call the box office, paying full price, because that’s the only way to ensure you get what you want — especially for newer or more popular shows. Shows that have been out awhile are easier to get into and you can usually get in for half price or less.

How? Well, there’s two ways I know of to do it: one is to look for the “twofer” coupons that are often handed out in and around the Times Square area. The other time-tested way is to use TKTS.

TKTS is a same-day deep-discount ticket service. Available shows vary quite a bit, but you can ALWAYS get tickets to SOMETHING for half price — as long as you’re flexible with your choices. The best show selection is available when they first open, but if you don’t like standing in line, keep in mind that sometimes additional ticket blocks or additional shows are released as the day goes on. There’s a web site that lists what shows are currently offering discount tickets, and I recommend taking a look at it as a predictor of what you might expect to find. (Though it does vary, day to day, and hour to hour.) Popsrocks did a real nice review of TKTS — I highly recommend reading it for some more tips and thoughts on using it to snag cheap tickets to Broadway shows.)

A Few Kid-Friendly “DON’T” Rules for Parents…
The key to a successful kid-friendly family vacation in New York City trip is simple: keep it simple.

Here’s a few tips that might help…
1. Don’t try to do too many big “destination” activities in one day. Limit yourself to a single “big thing”, and then fill the day with lower-key activities (like playing in Central Park or Chelsea Piers) or simple ventures like riding the subway and buses, taking a carriage through Central Park, or doing a childrens museum.

2. Don’t do boring shopping trips. New York has a plethora of upscale stores. They’re not kid friendly and they’re utterly boring. Know it or suffer the whining consequences (and accept that you richly deserve the whining kid for even trying something so kid-surly). There are only two shopping trips worth attempting with kids: FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue at 58th Street (where Tom Hanks played in the movie “Big”) and the brilliantly wonderful Macy’s, which I’d hazard a guess to be on 34th Street since that’s where Santa Claus was in the heart-warming Christmas classic, “Miracle on 34th Street”. Great stores, both of ‘em, and a lot of fun for kids!

3. Forget the art. Yes, New York City has wonderful art museums and galleries. Yes, they will all bore kids to tears (except the Metropolitan, as I said before). If you simply MUST do something “artsy”, at least take the little guys down to SoHo to the Childrens Museum of the Arts, and not to some stuffy place like the Guggenheim.

4. Forget fine dining. New York unquestionably has more outstanding restaurants than anywhere else in America, and the ethnic restaurants are invariably authentic and mercifully free of dull-palate pandering. It’s one of the best cities in America for a cultured palate. Don’t try to prove that to kids though. Take them out for pizza. Do a great Jewish deli. Try one of those small side-street eateries instead of the big names. You can eat well in New York at reasonable prices, and the reasonably priced places are the ones that are more likely to please small tongues.

Bottom Line…
New York City is America’s greatest city, and it’s a spectacular destination that offers a lot of somethings for everyone. It can even be a better, funner, cheaper family vacation than Disney (after all, it doesn’t cost you $80 a day to get in, there’s no lines at most attractions, it’s not always 100 degrees outside with 100 percent humidity, and it’s actually got some substance behind the image.)

I love New York: It’s got class, sophistication, and some of the best, most kid-friendly attractions you’ll find anywhere in America. Do it!

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Tags: , Destinations, Hotels & Travel, New York City