OK, so my wife is going to a conference in Fort Lauderdale (Broward County convention center) and we are trying to figure out if I should go along and take our son, who will be turning 2 a week later. The options are to stay home with him, without mommy, for four days, which will make him very unhappy, or we fly out there, and I hang out with him during the day while my wife is at the conference, and then he gets to see mommy at night. Some questions for people who have spent more time in Florida than I have. 1. What are the beaches like in March (17-20 are the dates of the conference)? Too cold to be worthwhile, or sunny and warm? 2. What are fun things to do with a 2 year old, besides the beach? He's not old enough for Disney or anything like that (if we would even survive the drive, he doesn't do well in cars for more than an hour). Zoos? Aquariums? Stuff like that. Anything really neat around there for little kids?
Bump... we're going next week. Staying at the Sheraton Yankee Clipper which is next to South Beach Park in Fort Lauderdale. My main concern is keeping the little boy occupied while my wife is at her conference -- I am hoping that the beach and pool will be enough, but looking for kid-friendly options for a two year old -- anyone got any tips? Is the Miami Zoo good? How far of a drive is it -- it looks like it's on the far size of the Miami metro area -- does traffic suck getting through the Miami area? Any other zoos in the area? I couldn't find one in Fort Lauderdale itself, but it looks like there is one in West Palm Beach, which may be a little closer -- is that one any good? Can we reach the Everglades if we are trying to keep the driving time to an hour or so? Thanks in advance!
Whoa Nellie, are you going to be in Ft Lauderdale during Spring Break time? You all may want to run for your lives! This is what the FL Tourism Bureau suggests for toddlers (click on the link for toddlers on that page). K
Hmm... Spring Break. We may have miscalculated -- I'm usually not a fan of loud, drunk people partying it up -- my last trip to Vegas reinforced that I'm getting old that way. And Monday is St Patrick's Day -- any hope everyone will just take it easy? Where in Fort Lauderdale do the spring breakers tend to gather? From the map, it looks like the strip of beach that my hotel is on is pretty likely to be busy. Sigh.
Well a search around the net reveals that they've considerably cracked down on Spring Break partying in FtL in the past few years so it's not the 400,000 kids mess it was in the 1980s but you will be there in the middle of it. Trying calling the hotel and speaking to the concierge (or stop by when you arrive). I'm sure they can point you away from the college crew and towards places that would work for a toddler. K
Well, we just got here, and holy ass, is it humid. To think that I was worried that it wouldn't be warm enough for the beach. We tried to change my kid's shirt from his 50 degree Northern California early morning outfit to a T-shirt, but he didn't want to put the T-shirt on, he wanted to run around topless. I guess he's getting into the Spring Break spirit.
So we're back. Spring Break -- not so bad, we were not surrounded by crowds of screaming drunk young people at all times, it looks like Fort Lauderdale has cracked down a lot on public drinking (e.g. on the beach) so there was not so much of that. We did however see the "Girls Gone Wild" bus parked off of A1A a couple of miles north of our hotel. I'll start a proper rant about how our hotel did not have very good facilities for families traveling with small children over in the Parenting & Family forum. The short version is, from now on we're going to find condos for rent instead of staying at hotels for anything longer than 2 or 3 nights -- not having a kitchen meant that we had to buy a disposable cooler to keep milk cold, and eating in restaurants every night is practically impossible with a two year old. I'll just update this thread with the activities we found which were useful for families down in South Florida. It was too windy to enjoy the beach or pool for most of the week, so I ended up driving pretty far afield to find places to enjoy with my son. The highlight was Butterfly World, a series of walk-through aviaries (and butterfly-aries?). I'm not a big fan of bugs but it was cool to walk through the place and see butterflies everywhere. We also went to the Miami Seaquarium, which is showing its age and does not compare well to, say, Sea World, but it was close enough that we could get there without having a meltdown in the car. Cheesy sea lion shows, etc. South Florida's a fascinating place. Endless strings of 10-, 20-, even 30-story condo buildings right up against the seashore, all the way from Miami Beach up to Boca Raton (that's as far north as I went, they probably keep going all the way up to Palm Beach and beyond). If all of the buildings were fully occupied, the population density along A1A would rival that of Manhattan, but I'm guessing a lot of those are timeshare or rental units. I could never live there because of the eight months out of the year with unacceptable humidity, but it's a nice place to vacation (in a condo with a kitchen if you have kids).
We were down there about 10 yrs. ago, no kids at the time. We stayed at the Best Western Pelican Beach right on the ocean. I understand they did a nice renovation.