The Five Best Kid-Friendly Attractions in Las Vegas

While the city of sin may not seem a natural choice for a family holiday, Las Vegas actually has a great range of activities for children. Whether your kids are more likely to fall for colorful amusement parks, fast cars, gourmet sweets or eclectic wildlife, you can easily find something to excite and enthrall them. Best of all, most of these activities are pretty fun and fascinating for grown-ups, too.

See 5 tips, like when to book your ticket, from the Hopper research team that can save travelers hundreds on their flights to Las Vegas.

Brave pink-tinted rides at the Adventuredome amusement park at Circus Circus

Las Vegas’s premier amusement park is as bright and colorful as you’d expect: the entire 5-acre site is encased in a pink glass dome at Circus Circus. There are a range of creative white-knuckle rides such as the Disk O, which channels the Las Vegas spirit as glitzy music soundtracks your 14-rotations-a-minute spin around 100 feet of track. For those less interested in G-force thrills there is also a lively fairground vibe, with clown shows, bumper cars, miniature golf and laser tag.

Gape at subaqueous giants in the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay

Two thousand creatures are thoughtfully presented in the Shark Reef Aquarium, and any kid with the slightest interest in the natural world – or just in weird and scary-looking things – is sure to be entranced. The first stretch is jungle-themed, with lizards and alligators reclining in the humid air. This is followed by a sea setting, including a corridor winding through a sunken ship. Along the way you’ll encounter interactive computer guides and open pools with experts on-hand to explain what you’ve been looking at.

Explore a gourmet chocolate factory at Ethel M Chocolates

Ethel M Chocolates is a gourmet chocolate brand, and you can witness the creation of their many bars and boxes in their Las Vegas factory. Tours are self-guided, so you can spend as long as you like peering through the glass windows at the chocolatiers at work. For kids it is likely to be one long build-up to the gift shop. This is also true for adults, but the brand’s history is interesting, too: it was created in the eighties by Forrest Mars, the son of the founder of the confectionary behemoth Mars, as a tribute to his mother, Ethel.

Roar through the Nevada desert on a Las Vegas RaZoR Adventure

Photo via their official FB page.

Stick on a helmet, climb into a 4WD RZR and explore dusty tracks looping through open desert just outside Las Vegas. RaZoR Adventures take you on a guided two-hour tour, which is navigated at your own pace: you can mosey along gazing at the wide horizons, or race your friends with eyes focused only on the road ahead.

Kids ride at 160mph in NASCAR speed racers at the Richard Petty Driving Experience

Sleek cars with engines of enormous power can seem like caged animals on conventional highways. But the Richard Petty Driving Experience allows enthusiasts to experience the thrill of racing around a track at speeds of over 160mph. And in Las Vegas they’ve recently introduced ‘junior ride-alongs’, where children aged 6 to 13 can ride shotgun with a professional driver for three laps in a NASCAR race car. Before the ride participants are given a tour of the cars, parked up like sleeping tigers in the racetrack’s garage.