Over the past decade, I’ve found myself returning to St. Louis over and over both to visit family and friend, but also just because it’s a great place to visit. There are so many great things to do in St. Louis with kids that no two trips have been the same (though we happily re-visit our favorites on occasion!).
I’ll give you the bottom line up front: St. Louis is absolutely an underrated destination for families. While it might not be the first place that comes to mind when planning a kid-friendly getaway, there are plenty of great options that are fun for kids but also interesting for their parents. In fact, several of the most family-friendly attractions in St. Louis are free! It’s also a pretty easy city to experience in a “bite sized” chunk if you just have time for a quick weekend getaway because you can easily pack a lot in without some of the logistical hurdles of other destinations.
Read on to find out what your family will love in the Gateway City!
Where to stay in St. Louis with kids
Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch
I’ve stayed twice now at Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch and it’s such a fantastic option for families! While it may not be the fanciest hotel around, it has some great things going for it.
First, the location is really excellent. You can walk from the hotel lobby to The Arch in about 90 seconds, plus a few extra minutes if you stop for photos. If you’re baseball fans like us, Ballpark Village is less than 10 minutes on foot.
Second, they have a wide variety of room types that are typically very affordable for what you get – even on weekends. You can see the full range of rooms here, and we were really excited to get upgraded to the Deluxe King with Arch view pictured above on our most recent trip. Not only is that room huge at more than 700 square feet, but it has an incredible view of the Arch from two walls. What you don’t see in this photo is that there was a second roll-away on the other side of the king bed and off to the left by the entry there was a spacious conversation area with arm chairs. You could easily fit a family of 6 or 8 in here if the hotel allows you to.
We don’t normally spend a lot of time hanging out in our hotel rooms but honestly we were all mesmerized by the view and loved sitting on the comfortable couches and chair just looking out the window.
Once you walk down to the Arch and look back up at the hotel, this makes sense and you can see exactly where these rooms are. Unlike so many hotels that just have a few large rooms that are comfortable for families, there are more than 60 suites and deluxe rooms here.
Parking here is $50 per night for valet. While self-parking is available (in theory) and cheaper ($30) it’s only offered sometimes so I wouldn’t bank on it.
The breakfast is very solid and you can choose between a generous buffet ($25 for adults, $12.50 for 6-12 years old) or a la carte options. For a quicker option, there’s also a full Starbucks attached to the lobby.
If you’re like me and hate spending money to travel, this hotel is very reasonable on points when you transfer from your Chase Sapphire Preferred to a Hyatt account. Since Hyatt places this hotel as a Category 2, it will only require as few as 6,500 points per night. That’s amazing when you consider that the $95 per year credit card offers a 75,000 point welcome bonus!
Drury Plaza St. Louis at the Arch
Speaking of views, the Drury Plaza St. Louis at the Arch has some great ones as well! Its location basically mirrors that of Hyatt Regency on the opposite side of the plaza in front of the Arch though part of the building is blocked by a much taller tower. If you are from some parts of the US you may not be familiar with the Drury brand, but know that it’s a really solid family-friendly, value oriented, mid-level hotel chain. We stayed at a different St. Louis location on one of our visits and had a great experience!
The price here can be really variable and unfortunately there isn’t the same easy trick for booking with points but you still may decide it’s worth it. The Drury offers a few notable features that the Hyatt lacks, namely a pool and hot tub, free extensive breakfast for everyone, free “5:30 Kickback” heavy appetizers that could be dinner for young visitors and a lovely terrace with city views. Parking here is $30 per night – be sure to pull up in front and have someone jump out to check in, as you need a pass from the front desk to get into the lot!
The Drury is only about 1/3 the size of the Hyatt, so it’s much more likely to be sold out if you aren’t booking early. That goes double for the rooms with a good view, which are in much shorter supply than they are at the Hyatt. Some of the Drury rooms look to an inner courtyard, which can be an acquired taste.
You really can’t go wrong with either of these two hotels, and if you’re paying cash (rather than points) and don’t have Hyatt status then the Drury may be the better option for your family thanks to the included food.
Fantastic things to do in St. Louis with kids
There are a few kid-friendly things to do in St. Louis that you just won’t find anywhere else, plus some wonderful experiences that kids will love to round out your trip.
Pro tip: You’ll definitely want to rent a car if you want to visit some of the awesome attractions away from the riverfront area. Just be sure to budget for parking – even at free activities.
City Museum
I don’t even know quite how to describe the City Museum, because it really isn’t a museum at all. It’s more of an industrial-chic immersive full-body experience than a traditional children’s museum… a celebration of the weird and the wonderful. There’s climbing, there’s crawling, there’s sliding, swinging, old school arcade games and much more. While many activities are inside, there’s also an extensive outdoor climbing area (not for those afraid of heights!) as well as a rooftop that requires an upgraded ticket.
We’ve visited City Museum a number of times over the years – both with and without kids – and I like it more every time we go. On our most recent trip the kids were 11 and 13 years old and they could really do everything! I recommend it for kids who are at least school age, as it’s really easy for them to disappear through tiny crevasses that an adult can’t get through.
If you’re visiting with toddlers, there’s still plenty for them to do but you’ll need to come prepared to crawl around with them and be sure that they’re good enough listeners not to go into a passageway where you can’t follow them; my husband and I are both fairly small for adults and there were some places even we couldn’t go. Many slides wind up several floors away.
Here are a few tips for City Museum to have the best possible experience:
- Make sure that anyone crawling around removes delicate jewelry and stores it safely – my son learned that one the hard way!
- Bring water because it’s a really active experience
- If your kids will go off on their own, bring these if they don’t have phones or Apple Watches (one time my kids had a Gizmo and it was useless)
- Use the buddy system and have a meet up spot – we like the whale fin on the first floor
- There is street parking adjacent to the official parking lot, if you’re lucky enough to score it
- If you’re visiting during “regular hours” on a weekend buy tickets in advance to avoid long lines
Here’s the ultimate hack if you’ll be spending the weekend in St. Louis with kids who are tweens or teens: while the City Museum opens at 10am every day, it’s often very crowded during “typical” hours. Instead, you can plan to have a somewhat early dinner and then arrive at City Museum around 6 or 7pm. It’s open until 9-10pm nearly every Friday and Saturday, plus you get discounted admission after 5pm. The museum is also open until 8pm most summer weeknights, though the tickets are full price. With a 7pm arrival we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves, and it was cooler on the outside climbing structure as well. Since there were no lines anywhere, after two hours our kids had done everything they wanted to do and were totally spent.
Gateway Arch National Park
Don’t miss a stop at potentially America’s most unique National Park! We’ll pause any discussion of whether it should be a National Park or National Monument but feel free to weigh in down in the comments if you feel strongly. But I digress…
Gateway Arch National Park is home to the famous St. Louis Arch, which was built in the 1960s as a monument to westward expansion and dedicated to the American people. A beautiful new visitors center and museum was added in 2018.
Before you visit, it’s good to understand that Gateway Arch functions as a public-private partnership. The grounds and visitors center are totally free and open to the public – to enter the building, you’ll go through a metal detector and run your bag through an x-ray machine, so if it’s the middle of the day on a weekend be prepared for lines. Almost everything else is run by Bi-State Development and requires purchasing tickets, ideally in advance.
Plan for a solid couple of hours to really make the most of your visit to Gateway Arch – the kids and I were on-site for 3.5 hours though that’s because I really enjoyed the museum. The museum focuses on how St. Louis developed through history for all of the groups that have lived there over time, the Lewis & Clark expedition, how westward expansion impacted the area and finally the design and construction of the Arch itself. It’s very informative and has some unique interactive stations – some digital and some physical.
When purchasing your tickets, I recommend planning for the documentary movie Monument to the Dream along with the tram ride to the top. You can buy these as the Builder’s View package to save a few dollars, and adults who have a National Parks Annual Passport will save even more (child prices are cheaper than the Passport prices). Buy your tickets in advance as they do sell out.
If you’re able to choose your ideal schedule, I suggest seeing the documentary before you go up into the Arch. It does a great job of explaining the design features and challenges, which will give you a greater appreciation of this engineering marvel.
The tram ride is a cool experience as you watch all the inner workings of the Arch whiz by in just a few minutes. Keep in mind that each pod is pretty small, so if you suffer from claustrophobia it isn’t for you! But once you’re at the top, the design and the view are both very cool and worth experiencing at least once. You’ll notice the curve of the floor in addition to the stellar views out the windows.
If you’re struggling to pack everything in to your St. Louis itinerary or tram tickets are limited and you’re staying at one of the two hotels I recommended, you can consider splitting your visit in two. The museum stays open on summer Friday and Saturday evenings until 8pm and is otherwise open until 6pm, and most people arrange their plans to visit the museum first so they aren’t in the exhibits late. On our most recent family trip to St. Louis we popped over to the museum at 5pm on Sunday – it was virtually empty, there was no security line and it was the perfect place to stay cool and do something interesting before our late flight home.
St. Louis sports teams
One of the big motivations for our most recent trip to St. Louis was to watch our beloved LA Dodgers. Mission accomplished! My apologies to the Cardinals for the drubbing.
But we were blown away by Busch Stadium! Opened in 2006, this is one of the best executions I’ve seen of the new generation of ballparks. It’s in the heart of the city, just 10 minutes’ walk from the hotels I recommended above. The stadium is surrounded by Ballpark Village, which houses plenty of restaurants and bars plus a kid-scaled baseball field where little sluggers can get their energy out before the game. Local companies fill the plaza with activities and freebies before games, especially on the weekends.
Once you enter the stadium, if you’re sitting anywhere close to the infield you have a magnificent view of the Arch just behind the scoreboard. We grabbed affordable resale tickets in the Cardinal Club section to have access to an air conditioned area as the temperature rose during our day game. Overall it was a fantastic stadium experience and I look forward to seeing more games at Busch Stadium!
If you’re visiting in the winter months, you can catch the St. Louis Blues at the Enterprise Center. It’s a little further from the riverfront – about 20 minutes on foot, or a very short Uber ride if your kiddo is old enough to use the Ride Safer Travel Vest in the car. Energizer Park, home of the MLS-affiliated St. Louis City SC is just a little further than the Enterprise Center.
Saint Louis Zoo
There are some really wonderful free things to do in St. Louis with kids, and Forest Park Zoo tops the list. This zoo has a great variety of animals for educational and conservation work, including polar bears, sea lions, hippos, rays, puffins, gorillas and more. It spans 90 acres and houses more than 600 species.
The St. Louis Zoo is open year-round, until 5pm most days. If you’re visiting St. Louis in the summer I’d recommend hitting the zoo closer to the opening time (8 or 9am depending on the day) to avoid the oppressive mid-day heat and humidity.
Thankfully admission to the St. Louis Zoo is totally free! There are some paid add-on experiences but you can have a great day without spending money on them. I did opt to pay for parking the last time I went ($20) to save us a long walk on a crowded day, but you can sometimes find free parking on the streets that ring the zoo.
St. Louis Science Center
Another free St. Louis attraction for families? Yes, please! I love free activities because even if we just have an hour or two free in our day, we can go and enjoy without feeling like we’ve wasted money on a family’s worth of admission.
But the St. Louis Science Center definitely isn’t a waste. There are plenty of activities to keep the whole family engaged, from a big dinosaur exhibit in the basement to a fascinating botany area to a video game centric room that’s great when you have a teen in tow along with younger siblings. Don’t miss the maker space/tinker lab as well! There are also paid experience here like special exhibits and OMNIMAX movies – we saw an incredible film about bioengineering that left us all feeling inspired and curious, which is exactly what a good science center should do.
National Blues Museum
If you’re visiting St. Louis with teens who love music, the National Blues Museum should be on your radar. This small museum showcases the history and evolution of the blues and its connection to other musical genres. Our kids both play trumpet and the older one is in a jazz ensemble as well, so it was a great fit. A visit here lasts about an hour.
While we liked the museum, at this time I hesitate to recommend it for families with younger kids. There is supposed to be a series of interactive stations taking kids through the process of creating their own blue song – from writing lyrics in the typical pattern to layering on instruments and putting it all together. Unfortunately at the time of our visit only the first station was working, much to my daughter’s disappointment. When I asked the museum staffer, she said they’re waiting on more funding in order to repair the stations. That’s a real bummer, but once the interactive features are up and running I think it’ll be fun for the whole family.
The museum also hosts great concerts – some free and some paid – throughout the year.
Take a day trip from St. Louis to the Abraham Lincoln Museum
Though the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is in Illinois, it’s much closer to St. Louis than Chicago – I know because we stopped en route between the two cities! From St. Louis to Springfield is just 90 minutes each way, and if you’re visiting both cities on a midwest road trip then it’s an ideal stopping point between them.
With just a few hours and two school-aged kids in tow, I opted to skip the Presidential Library and focus on the Abraham Lincoln Museum. That was a great choice! The Museum uses a variety of large-scale, engaging displays to tell the 16th President’s interesting life story and his important role in American history. There are holographic displays, wooded walk-throughs and even a mock news report showing how the critical race of 1860 would have been covered in today’s language. It was enough to keep my kids engaged from start to finish and would be a great day trip from St. Louis for any family.
Springfield is also a nice little town that’s worth strolling around while you’re there, and for a longer visit add on the nearby Kidzeum of Health and Science – free if you bring your membership card for your local ASTC-affiliated sceince museum!
Kid-friendly places to eat in St. Louis
Ted Drewes Frozen Custard
Even though there are a lot of things my kids love about visiting St. Louis, the #1 thing they always push for is a visit (or two) to Ted Drewes for the famous “concrete”. The custard – complete with toppings blended in – is so thick that they hand it to you upside down!
This isn’t just any custard shop, it’s been a fixture of the Gateway City for almost a century. In fact, the ever-popular DQ Blizzard is a knock-off attempt to copy the concrete! I love that this isn’t just a place you’ll find tourists but also regular St. Louis families – especially after a baseball game.
Be sure to check hours before you go. The Chippewa location is now the flagship and it’s open most of the year, plus there’s a South Grand location open seasonally but we’ve noticed that sometimes this one closes especially early. Please do yourself a favor and skip the new Ted Drewes kiosk inside the airport.
A quick note for those with food allergies: cross-contamination rules out concretes, but you do have the option to order a sundae that doesn’t use the mixing machine.
Fun fact: the kids who work here are required to memorize orders rather than write them down! Much respect.
St. Louis BBQ
If your family enjoys meat, take yourselves on a St. Louis BBQ tour! There are plenty of great places to sample so don’t be afraid to try a few. If you’ve eaten BBQ in other places, know that here it tends to be sweet and tangy but less smoky than you’ll somewhere like Texas.
Our family doesn’t eat pork so we focus on brisket and turkey when we go for BBQ. My guys really enjoyed Salt + Smoke on our most recent visit, while I’m partial to Pappy’s Smokehouse (even though it’s technically Memphis style). I’ve got Sugarfire Smoke House on my radar for our next visit, and it’s conveniently located close to Gateway Arch and nearby hotels.
I do suggest going to BBQ for lunch rather than dinner. Not only does the meat tend to be freshest then, but the good/busy places will close once they run out for the day – and that could be early to mid afternoon.
Fitz’s Delmar
Another St. Louis lunch option that’s incredibly fun for the kids is Fitz’s in Delmar Loop. You can get a good sandwich here, but you can also top it off with a jumbo-sized float made with one of their dozen of craft-made soda flavors.
Even better, if you visit for lunch on Fridays you can watch the soda bottling while you eat on the main floor! It’s a combination meal and experience. Unfortunately most of their bottling operations moved to their suburban SoCo location a few years ago, but if you’ll be out that way and want to see the line in action you can check it out Tuesday through Friday 11-4.
Planning your family trip to St. Louis
I hope this guide helps you see how great a weekend in St. Louis with kids can be! Here are a few resources to jump start your planning:
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