Gotta Go Orlando

May 24

Check out the Best Central Florida Museums for Kids

Central Florida has tons of museums offering creative spaces where kids can play, explore, and have fun, all the while offering hands-on experiences that deliver valuable learning opportunities.

Kid Friendly Central Florida Museums

Does building a roller coaster, digging for dinosaur fossils, climbing a giant treehouse or stepping back into pioneer times sound like fun? If so you gotta take the kids to a children’s museum in Central Florida.

While adult museums have a kid-unfriendly “do not touch” policy, these children’s museums are packed full of hands-on exhibits and interactive adventures that encourage kids to move, pretend, create and learn.

Central Florida Railroad Museum

101 South Boyd Street, Winter Garden

The Central Florida Railroad Museum shares the history of railroading in Central Florida through photos, exhibits, maps, signage, charts, historic railroad artifacts and more.

Young rail fans will enjoy the model railroad and the hands-on Thomas layout. Admission here is free and donations are greatly appreciated.

Mennello Museum of American Art

900 E Princeton St, Orlando

Owned and operated by the City of Orlando, The Mennello Museum of American Art was established in 1998 to preserve, exhibit, and interpret the outstanding permanent collection of paintings by Earl Cunningham. The Mennello Museum of American Art strives to enrich the public through renowned temporary exhibitions, exciting programs, educational initiatives, and publications that celebrate outstanding traditional and contemporary American art and artists across a broad range of disciplines.

The Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden is always free and open to the public and is most recognized for the 350-year-plus sprawling live oak tree draped with Spanish moss that is called “The Mayor.” You can find numerous sculptures in the surrounding Old Florida landscape and walking paths, which merge into the larger Orlando Urban Trail with over 4000 acres of art and nature.

Every second Sunday of the month is Free Family Funday! On the 2nd Sunday of each month with families offered free admission all day, plus a fine art project!

Orange County Regional History Center

65 E Central Blvd, Orlando

The Orange County Regional History Center, housed in a historic courthouse in the heart of downtown Orlando, offers four floors of exhibits exploring 12,000 years of Central Florida’s rich heritage. A Smithsonian affiliate, the museum also offers visiting exhibitions and a wide range of programs for families, children, and adults.

Prior to 1971, Orlando was a rest stop en route to Miami, which means this center has plenty of kitsch Floridiana to enjoy. Of course, it also includes exhibits on prehistoric tribes, Spanish explorers, Florida Crackers, African-American history, the cattle and citrus industries, and the arrival of Walt Disney World.

Orlando Fire Museum

814 E Rollins St, Orlando

Want to make history as appealing to kids as it is to adults? Serving it up inside a restored 1926 fire house is a very good start. The Orlando Fire Museum showcases the history of the City Beautiful's bravest along with a host of antique equipment that includes an array of impressive fire engines: LaFrance apparatus from the early 1900s, a 1919 ladder truck and another from 1926 just to name a few. Additional artifacts on display include helmets and other tool along with lithographs. Volunteer guides here are retired Orlando firefighters; they really know their stuff. This free attraction is open on Friday and Saturday; donations for its upkeep are greatly appreciated.

Orange County Regional History Center 65 E Central Blvd, Orlando

Ripley’s Believe It or Not

8201 International Dr, Orlando

Sure to entertain the entire family, adults and children alike will be astounded by incredibly hard to believe, but undeniably true stories from around the world at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Orlando.

Admire hundreds of artifacts, incredible art, animal oddities, pop-culture memorabilia, interactive games, and more that you won’t find anywhere else!

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition

When you visit the Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, you embark on a journey back in time to April 1912, when the ship embarked on its maiden voyage!

You receive a replica boarding pass, assume the role of a passenger, and follow a chronological journey through life on Titanic. The Exhibition features more than 300 artifacts and historical items as well as full-scale room recreations.

WonderWorks

9067 International Dr, Orlando

WonderWorks is an amusement park for the mind with 28,000 square feet of “edu-tainment”. The attraction combines education and entertainment with more than 100 hands-on exhibits that challenge the mind and spark the imagination.

This once top-secret laboratory was located in the Bermuda Triangle. An experiment gone awry lifted the laboratory, carrying it to International Drive in Orlando, Florida where it landed upside down. Luckily, all of the exhibits remained intact and available for guests to explore

Museum of Illusions

8375 International Drive, Icon Park

Enter the fascinating world of illusions which will trick your confidence in senses, but amaze you by doing it; the world that will confuse you completely, but also educate you… Visit the Museum of Illusions Orlando and you will be thrilled because nothing is what it seems, especially not HERE!

Orlando Science Center

777 E Princeton St, Orlando

The Orlando Science Center, one of the popular children's museums in Orlando, boasts over 50,000 square feet of kid-friendly exhibits. There's also a movie theater with an 8-story screen, a planetarium and a 4-story atrium that houses live turtles, alligators and fish.

One of the Orlando museum’s biggest hits is KidsTown, a family-favorite exhibit designed for children ages seven and under. It's taken taken over the second floor, with 11,000 square feet of skill-based activities that encourage your gang to invent and create, build and test, spark their innate curiosity, and make exciting discoveries as they play and learn. It includes an adventure in the Orange Grove, complete with an interactive factory and farmers market where guests will learn how oranges travel from tree to table. But that’s just the beginning of the fun; have a blast as you climb, design, build, and splash your way through KidsTown’s other interactive zones.

Florida Children’s Museum

600 Bonnet Spgs Blvd, Lakeland

Florida Children’s Museum is located in the new Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland. With two floors of interactive exhibits, your child can spend hours delving into fun learning opportunities. The Museum has something to offer for babies up to children aged 12.

Glazer Children's Museum

110 W Gasparilla Plaza, Tampa

The 53,000-square-foot Glazer Children’s Museum features 170 hands-on interactives in 17 themed areas. This children's museum in Tampa houses the usual favorites, including a bank, health clinic, engineering station, restaurant and grocery store offering unique learning experiences.

Great Explorations Children's Museum

1925 4th St N, St. Petersburg

At Great Explorations, kids learn by role playing and participating in science-oriented hands-on exhibits. The two-story treehouse located at the center of the museum allows children to become designers, carpenters or engineers while learning about construction. The whole family can work together to build giant magnetic sculptures at the “Express Yourself Art Studio”.

Brave kids can crawl through the museum's 100-foot long “Touch Tunnel” in total darkness to navigate various inclines and obstacles, and little ones can grow their own veggies while learning about farm, beach and sea life at “Kane's Great Beginnings.” Plus, the “Engine Company 15 Fire House” exhibit teaches fire safety and shows kids what it takes to be a firefighter.

Children's Museum of the Highlands

219 N Ridgewood Dr, Sebring

Kids can come to play and learn at the Children’s Museum! The Children’s museum is dedicated to teaching children, ages 1-12, the love of learning through hands-on exhibits that encourage their imagination, creativity and enhance their areas that include a fire tower, grocery store, post office, airplane, theatre and dress-up, kitchen, diner, restaurant, Toddler Town, and more!

Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts

1776 Lightfoot Ln, Barberville

About a half hour west of Daytona Beach and an hour north of Orlando, visitors can step back in time at the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts. The historical village is a unique alternative to traditional children's museum in Florida and featuers a living history lesson illustrating Floridian life from the late 19th century.

Explore a log cabin and old schoolhouse, step inside a railroad depot from the late 1800s, and learn about the skills necessary to survive in Pioneer Florida, including butter making, weaving, blacksmithing, candle making and woodworking. Little ones will enjoy the small farm with peacocks, chickens, goats and other animals, and older children enjoy the turpentine mill, pottery shed, general store and church.

The Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum

352 S Nova Road, Daytona Beach

The Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach features 9,300 square feet of dedicated kid space with interactive science experiments, a mock doctor's office, a laser harp and multiple building centers. There's also a pretend pizza parlor and a planetarium offering an educational laser show.

Don’t miss seeing the 800 teddy bears and mid-century train cars that are part of the “Americana and Coca Cola” collection. And then, take a walk around the nature trails and explore the outdoor sculpture garden before heading home.

Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex

Space Commerce Way, Merritt Island

Have you ever wanted to go behind the gates of NASA? Have you ever wanted to get an up-close look at the largest building on Earth? Have you ever wanted to get so close to a rocket that you could almost touch it?

Explore space with more space at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Come and walk through the giants of space travel in our famous Rocket Garden, learn about the men and women who’ve lived and worked among the stars at our Heroes and Legends exhibit, and stand nose-to-nose with the actual Space Shuttle Atlantis. But if that’s not enough, you can come and watch an actual rocket launch.

Visitors of all ages, and from all over the world, can witness the most amazing things on Earth—leave Earth.

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