Ultimate List of FAQs about visiting Las Vegas with kids (with answers)

Las Vegas is safe for all travelers including kids. It is a tourist destination and most resorts on the Vegas Strip, especially the major luxury hotels, take great lengths to secure the public. Don’t let the term Sin City, scare you. Although Las Vegas has a higher national crime rate, it’s still lower than other popular west coast cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Kids are allowed to walk through the casinos. In fact, most hotels have their casinos adjacent to hotel check-in, so you have no choice but to walk through the casino to get to your room or from one attraction to another.  That being said, you are NOT allowed to stop for long periods of time near the gambling floor with your kids. You can stroll through without hassle, though, which can be a fun free activity when you arrive in Vegas for the first time with kids.

It is safe to walk the Vegas strip with kids. Like most cities, the day time is the safest. The night is of course more sparkly and the kids will enjoy seeing the lights, but the dark of night also brings increased risk as it does anywhere. The Vegas strip is usually very busy with tourists, autos and taxis, so be sure take normal safety precautions seriously and keep your kids close when you approach busy intersections and congested areas. We have had fun, safe walk with kids on the Vegas strip day and night.

Where do I start? There a TON of fun things to in Las Vegas with kids. There are kid-friendly shows, museums, exhibits, arcades, pools, places with live music, fun-themed restaurants and many other attractions. Almost every hotel has a handful of family-friendly activities (and there are a lot of hotels on the Vegas strip!), so that means there are plenty of fun things to do in Las Vegas with kids.

Here is a short list of some of our favorites:
Watch the free mermaid show at Silverton
Visit the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at Mirage
Go up the Eiffel tower at Paris
Listen to live Irish music at Ri Ra at Mandalay Bay
Go Shopping at Forum Shoppes at Caesar’s Palace
Watch Tournament of Kings at Excalibur

There are so many great options on the main Vegas strip that finding the best family hotel is just a matter of figuring out which one matches your budget, style and interests the most. We get this question a lot so we published a comprehensive article of our favorite 5 best family hotels in Vegas. Briefly, our go-to hotels in Vegas are Mirage, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, NYNY and Luxor, which are great for various reasons for families visiting Las Vegas with kids.

Hands down, I believe that Mirage has the best Vegas pool for kids. It is tropical and lush with waterfalls that are perfect for escaping the hustle of the strip and indulging the imaginations of children. The pool has an outside restaurant with ample misters (or even shade) for those hot summer days, and it has a dolphin bar with refreshing pina coladas.

Other Vegas resorts with kid-friendly pools include:
– Mandalay Bay (wave pool, lazy river)
– MGM Grand (huge complex, multiple pools, lazy river)
– Luxor (nice large pool at an affordable hotel)
– Golden Nugget (not on the strip, but has a water slide through a friggen fish tank!)
…But to be honest, just about every Vegas resort has a pool the kids would enjoy!

There are many shows in Las Vegas that are kid-friendly and some that even seem designed specifically for families with kids. They truly run the gamut including comedies, magic shows, dance shows, cirque and various interesting combinations of these (e.g. comedy-magic shows). With so many to choose from, we decided to help by creating an epic guide to 21 family-friendly Vegas shows, which provides graphic ratings on 5 key dimensions to help you find the right show. If that doesn’t help you find the right Vegas show, well, I don’t know what to tell you!

In fact, most hotels offers free activities that are kid-friendly. We put together a list of 10 free family-friendly activities. For example, you can walk the strip for free, walk through vast indoor shopping areas at Caesar’s Palace, Venetian, Paris and others, watch free iconic outdoor shows on the strip like the Fountains at Bellagio and Volcano at Mirage, and much more.

It depends on what one means by “iconic”. I’d consider the Bellagio fountains and Mirage Volcano to be iconic (as was the Treasure Island Pirate show before it was cancelled a few years ago). In a different way, Fremont Street in downtown Vegas is also iconic with a handful of places like the Fremont (built 1956) and Golden Nugget (built 1946) that literally have defined Vegas for decades while other casino hotels have come and gone.

Yeah sure, there are plenty of things to do in Las Vegas that are safe and appropriate with a toddler. There are shows (e.g. we took our 11 month old to Tournament of Kings at Excalibur), pools, exhibits, animal encounters, aquariums with sharks, a mermaid show and more. Hell, we even make it a routine to visit Irish Pubs like Ri Ra and Mandalay or Nine Fine Irishmen at NYNY to catch live music at night with the kids (yes, including when they were toddlers). It really just depends on what you are comfortable doing with your toddler. (However, I would recommend NOT going to really fancy restaurants…not that we go to those places anyways, but usually the type of people that pay $110 for a steak get really uppity about having to listen to kids while they dine. Go figure!)

Some things to do at night with kids in Vegas are shows, restaurants with live music, and free outside entertainment along the strip. Some restaurants that allow kids of all ages to hang around and see a live show are Ri Ra Irish Pub at Mandalay, Nine Fine Irishmen at NYNY, and House of Blues Restaurant & Bar at Mandalay. Also, when we’ve stayed at NYNY we often sit with the kids and have a slice of NY style pizza just outside the Times Square Bar so we can still hear the dueling pianos in a safe area where we won’t be hassled (and it’s free this way!).

It gets really cold in Vegas during the winter, so you will want to focus on indoor activities like shopping, shows, arcades, exhibits, and hanging out in a variety of restaurants (preferably with a good draft selection and live music!). The pool will not be an option in the Winter, and walking the strip may also be out of the question (at least it is for us being from California and all). If it is below 45 deg, we run inside! Ha!

Most hotels and casinos in Vegas have plenty of options for inside entertainment when it is too hot to go outside (see our answer above for things to do in winter). One unique option though when it is very hot outside during the summer is to spend an hour or two at the resort pool. Mirage, for example, has ample trees and shady areas from overhanging waterfalls, etc., and we have taken our kids out to the pool in 110+ degree weather. They actually keep the pools very crisp and refreshing (and perhaps downright COLD at first, to be honest!).

Parents take their kids to Las Vegas for a variety of reasons. Some families like our have discovered that Vegas is a unique family-friendly destination, so we choose to spend a vacation there. Vegas is also a popular destination for conferences due to the large number of hotels and amount of conference space, so some business travelers may choose to bring their families along for the experience. And don’t forget that Vegas is a popular place for weddings, family reunions, or other celebrations of life events. Flights to Vegas from most major airports are also tend to be cheaper than flights to other places, so it is a popular meet up point for families or groups that are geographically disbursed.

No, not really. Sure, there are advertisements showing hunky shirtless men and sexy women, but is it really much different than what kids see at the beach or on TV? I mean, maybe hunkier and sexier, haha! Sometimes walking the strip in certain areas there are people handing out cards for call girls, but those can be easily avoided. My advice is to just walk past them and don’t take the handouts. From our experience these folks don’t engage with you or the kids anyways (probably due to some policy, as this would be in pretty bad taste and a waste of paper). If you stay out really late with the kids, which we’ve done on occasion (like midnight-ish), then the crowd gets rowdier and more intoxicated and that means unexpected things can happen. This is easily avoided if you don’t want to take that risk.

Honestly, how much you gamble while Las Vegas with kids is up to you and depends on how well you plan the trip. If you are with other adults then you can switch off watching the kids so others can have a turn gambling. We call it the switch-off and that’s what we usually do. You can also bring a babysitter or use the babysitting service provided by some of the hotels. We’ve brought my niece along a few times and let her babysit the kids for an hour or so in the room at night after the kids fell asleep.

You can walk through any casino, and each is unique, so this is highly recommended as a pretty fun free activity to do with kids in Vegas, especially if it is your first time there (you should try to see what each resort looks like). Most Vegas resorts also have indoor shopping areas, and some really go all out on the shopping malls like Caesar’s Palace and Venetian.