When you think of family vacation destinations in the United States, Sin City probably doesn’t come to mind. While Las Vegas has a reputation as more of an adult playground, there is a surprisingly wide number of fun things to do with a family. After recently spending an unexpectedly extended period in Las Vegas, I wanted to share a number of the activities we did, with quick reviews/tips for each, as well as some pictures to give you an idea of what they were like.
Arte Museum Las Vegas (Interactive digital art exhibit)
One of our favorite activities of the week was visiting the Arte Museum Las Vegas, which is in the CityCenter building near Crystals Shops at Aria Las Vegas. The Arte Museum is an interactive digital art experience cut from a similar thread as the Team Labs experiences in Tokyo and beyond. If you’ve been to a Team Labs location, attenuate expectations a little bit. If you haven’t been to a Team Labs location and you’re not really sure if immersive digital art is for you, you should absolutely go to this if you’re in Las Vegas to get a taste of why this type of experience can be so cool.
If you’ve read about our Frequent Miler team experience at Team Labs, the Arte Museum will feel familiar, with some aspects complete copies and others very similar. The digital art projected on the walls moves around and is truly interactive in that there are places where you can touch the wall, and the art reacts. Displays change as you walk through the art exhibits. To be clear, Team Labs is better, but we still very much enjoyed the Arte Museum.
Perhaps my favorite of the exhibits was a room that changed between three completely different display themes. It took the better part of half an hour to see all three in their entirety.
One of the three full-room shows was sort of an Aurora/Northern Lights exhibit. Another was a look at the change over time from the desert to the Las Vegas we know today. The third, which was the longest and, in my opinion, by far the coolest, was a show done in collaboration with Musée d’Orsay. It featured almost 20 minutes of classic art from the likes of Monet, Renoir, Degas, Vincent van Gogh, and more, set to music and in some cases moving around the room. If you are sensitive to lights and sounds, this may not be the right place for you, but we loved it.
Admission to Arte Museum Las Vegas varies by day of the week, age, and inclusions. We visited on a Thursday. Booking general admission directly through the Arte Museum website would have cost $180 for my family of four (2 adults + 2 kids between 4-12 years old), or booking with “Arte Cafe” (which is just a poor-quality cold latte at a table in what they call a “cafe” – not worth it) would have cost $201.68.
We purchased admission with the Arte Cafe (because we didn’t know better, but don’t make this mistake, it’s nothing special). Instead of booking directly, we waited to get a good offer from Klook when they were a Capital One Top Deal of the Day. We paid $211.76 through Klook — $10 more than it would have cost to book direct — and we have $62.69 pending in rewards.
Since I have long had Capital One Shopping redemption options like Marriott and Hotels.com, I was happy enough to pay an extra $10 in real cash to essentially buy $62.69 in gift card money.
This is the sort of attraction for which I aim when we see elevated portal rates for sites like Klook, Viator, and TripAdvisor: admission to something where the experience will be identical whether or not I book direct and where the ticket is for a museum/attraction/experience. I’ve had third-party tour bookings through these platforms that have been cancelled at the last minute with no recourse, but things like admission to the Arte Museum are typically honored the same as tickets purchased directly (and indeed the experience was seamless — I brought up the QR code in the Klook app, which the person at the entrance scanned and instantly verified, and the employee at the cafe scanned the same QR code and we ordered drinks).
Here are some pictures, though keep an eye on Frequent Miler’s Instagram channel as this will look far cooler in video format:
BattleBots Destruct-a-Thon
This one has a bit of a story to it.
A few years ago, I took our older son to see BattleBots Destruct-a-Thon, the Las Vegas show based on the old robot battle TV show. Both kids have been asking about going again ever since.
A couple of months ago, I had an offer to get $100 back on $100+ in event tickets through Capital One Shopping, as did my wife and another family member. In an attempt to get the best possible deal, we purchased 4 total tickets that came to just over $100 each. I bought two through my account, one through my wife’s, and one through a third family member’s account. I expected that we would get a total of $300 back on the $400 worth of tickets.
Unfortunately, while I love that VividSeats (and some other sites) now show the all-in price of the tickets in search results, I didn’t think about the fact that the ~$100 “all-in” price shown was after all of the fees. As it turned out, the actual ticket price was about $72 per ticket. Our two individual $100 ticket purchases were deemed ineligible for the $100 back on $100 offer, as the ticket itself was only $72, and the purchase hadn’t tracked based on the all-in price. I had purchased two tickets through my account, so the purchase tracked at $100 back on my 2 tickets, but not on the other two separate tickets we bought.
I was annoyed by that rookie mistake, but c’est la vie.
Then, when we arrived at the arena for the show on July 5, 2026, we were surprised to find it completely closed, with the front gates locked. I double-checked our July 5th tickets through the Vivid Seats app. Our tickets were dated for the July 5th show.
I then went to Ticketmaster, where I found that the July 5th performance had been cancelled. We had not received any notification from VividSeats. When we eventually attended the show a few days later, we inquired about this and were told that they cancelled the July 5th performance because they “figured everyone would be hungover from the Fourth of July”.
As I stood outside the closed arena on July 5th, I chatted with support through the VividSeats app, which is only an AI bot. The AI bot told me that the event was still on as far as it could tell, but I was able to provide a link and a screenshot showing that it was cancelled. Within an hour, an actual agent reviewed the case, and we got emails saying that the event was cancelled and that VividSeats was refunding us in “store credit” (with VividSeats) at a value of 110% of the purchase price or that we could request a cash refund of the original purchase price.
I expected to ask for the cash refund because I had since learned that I could get two free show tickets to BattleBots with my Caesars Diamond Plus status. I figured I would buy through Caesars Rewards, paying for 2 tickets out of pocket and getting two for free.
Unfortunately, that plan didn’t work out. When I tried to buy tickets through Caesars, I was told that no comp tickets were left for the dates during our stay, despite the fact that the show wasn’t anywhere near sold out.
I ended up using the VividSeats credit to buy 4 new tickets. Maybe we’d use the extra 10% someday, or maybe we wouldn’t.
However, I should have just requested the cash refund and bought tickets anew through Ticketmaster or perhaps StubHub using Sapphire Reserve credits. Annoyingly, even though we didn’t get a cash refund from VividSeats, Capital One Shopping clawed back the $100 from my purchase after the July 5th show cancellation.
So, in the end, we paid about $400 for our tickets and didn’t get anything back. That’s more than I intended to spend on this. However, I don’t regret it. Our kids loved it. I haven’t seen them so purely joyful about anything we’ve done anywhere in as long as I can remember. I’d go again just to watch them laugh and cheer that hard. Don’t get me wrong — BattleBots isn’t the best show in all of Las Vegas. The jokes are a little corny, and you only see four or five battles (though they do a good job with the build-up). I’m not sure I’d even crown it as the best family-friendly show in Vegas — I’d have to give that title to the Mac King Comedy Magic Show. But I’m pretty sure my kids would disagree with me about that. When we got home, they went on and on and on and on about BattleBots, recounting almost the entire show to their grandparents. It was a hit, even if I took a hit on the purchase price.
Pro tip: The BattleBots arena is a long walk behind the Horseshoe casino. Parking at the show costs $20, but there is a Caesars lot between the arena and the Caesars employment center that sits behind Horseshoe if you want to use your free parking benefit and you don’t mind a still-pretty-long walk. However, the smarter play is to park at the Ellis Island Casino, which sits right across from the entrance to the BattleBots lot (a shorter walk than walking from Horseshoe or the Caesars lot). Ellis Island offers free self-parking for everyone. They also have pizza for $3.75 per slice, which sure beats the $12.99 they were charging per slice in the food court at Caesars Palace (and saved the day when we showed up to a cancelled performance).
Discovery Children’s Museum Las Vegas
Link to the Discovery Children’s Museum website
We spent one afternoon at the Discovery Children’s Museum of Las Vegas, which is in the downtown Las Vegas area. While not the biggest or flashiest children’s museum we’ve seen, this is definitely worth at least half a day if you have young kids. There’s plenty of stuff to climb on, and there are perennially popular children’s museum staples like a grocery store and a bank with a working ATM, as well as exhibits that help them explore and learn through building or play.
There was a science desk where a scientist performed and explained experiments a few times a day. We caught a demonstration in which the scientist was explaining the difference between chemical and physical reactions. I think my kids will long remember that hydrogen is much more reactive than helium, thanks to the fireball created when heating a hydrogen-filled balloon.
Admission to the Discovery Children’s Museum is $20 per person (from Age 1-99). We paid full price, and it was well worth the price of admission.
Swingers (“The Crazy Golf Club”) Las Vegas
Link to Swingers Las Vegas (indoor mini golf) website
Looking to beat the heat, we spent a couple of hours one day at Swingers indoor mini golf course at Mandalay Bay. Honestly, while this place looks pretty cool in pictures, it was kind of lame and definitely not worth the sticker price, apart from the fact that it was air-conditioned and comfortable. You pay for either one course or two, but it’s really two nine-hole courses, so paying to golf two courses simply means you get to golf all 18 holes.
Kids are only allowed before 5pm.
We bought a package that included the 18 holes and a $20 dining credit per person, as well as 30 minutes of all-you-can-play carnival games for about $40 per person. That actually isn’t terrible considering Las Vegas prices, but I wouldn’t do this again. For starters, the holes are pretty small and simple. We went right at opening time, so it wasn’t very busy, but I can imagine it being annoying to wait during a busier time. The 30 minutes of “unlimited” Carnival games are actually kind of limited because the card they give you to operate the games can’t be swiped more than once about every minute. They likely limit that so as to limit the number of “tickets” you can earn on the games, but the “tickets” can only be redeemed for playing one of a few claw games that only dispense Swingers swag.
It was also kind of weird how strictly they explained the rules of miniature golf. I can’t imagine that many people are playing their first-ever round of mini golf indoors in Las Vegas, but they were oddly detailed about the rules. This activity was fine, but I wouldn’t really recommend it. I’ve never gone to a Top Golf, but I would imagine it being far more fun for anyone who can swing a club and this just isn’t going to be a memorable course for anyone who actually enjoys mini golf.
Pinball Hall of Fame
Link to Pinball Hall of Fame website
The Pinball Hall of Fame sits just south of the Las Vegas Strip, within walking distance of the south end of Mandalay Bay (when it isn’t 110° outside). As a kid, I loved pinball, and I have wanted to visit this place for years. I was glad to finally fit in on this trip.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is a huge open warehouse collection of pinball machines from the earliest known machines through modern pinball machines. The cost per game ranges from $0.25 to $1 per game, with most of the older machines being $0.25. They have tons of older machines from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (many of which give you “at least” 5 balls for $0.25, with it being pretty easy to earn at least one extra). There is even a playable machine from 1933. They had all the games I remember playing as a kid in the 80s and 90s. The kids had fun, I had fun, and I would 100% go back.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is entirely staffed by volunteers, and the money that the place makes is donated to charity. This is a pretty inexpensive way to spend a couple of hours. I would gladly go back and play pinball for an entire afternoon. I think we got $40 worth of quarters, and that would probably be overkill for most people. This isn’t a fancy place, but it was a lot of fun.
Las Vegas Aces vs Indiana Fever (WNBA game)
Link to Las Vegas Aces home page
The last time we were in Las Vegas, we caught a WNBA game between the Las Vegas Aces and the Indiana Fever. Funny enough, we got tickets to see the Aces vs the Fever again during this trip. I had purchased tickets directly when individual games went on sale and paid about $42 per seat. I had purchased a couple of extra tickets, hoping to sell them for a small profit, but I waited to list them until a week or two before the game.
Unfortunately, the star players on both teams were out for this game, so ticket prices dropped dramatically as game day approached. If you’re in Las Vegas during the season, it might be worth checking on last-minute ticket prices, as they dropped below $20 on game day. They do get a very lively crowd in Las Vegas. It’s a fun place to see a game, so I would definitely go back on another trip, though I might wait until the last minute to buy tickets next time.
One complaint: the air conditioning inside T-Mobile Arena was too strong. We were so cold that we left after the third quarter. Thankfully, ParkMGM’s valet parking entrance is literally right across from T-Mobile Arena’s main entrance, so MGM Gold status (which I got by matching my Caesars Diamond Plus status) effectively gave us free valet parking right across from the stadium. Note that I believe the Aces may still play some games at Mandalay Bay (that’s where we saw them last time).
Circus Circus Adventuredome
Link to Circus Circus Adventuredome website
I played in a World Series of Poker event during this trip. On the day I played, my wife took the kids to the Circus Circus Adventure Dome. The Circus Circus Casino has certainly seen better days. The Adventure Dome behind the casino actually has lots of fun games, and the price is the most reasonable we’ve found for an arcade on the Las Vegas Strip (our money went further here than it has at the arcades at Excalibur and Horshoe on previous trips, and the kids walked away with quite a haul of toys and candy thanks to tickets won on ticket-related games).
The Adventure Dome has a decent selection of arcade games as well as a selection of carnival games and rides. We’ve been here before, and the kids were asking about going every single day. Don’t get me wrong, the arcade isn’t cheap, nor is it the best arcade we’ve seen. However, it is cheaper than the other options you have for this sort of thing on the Las Vegas Strip. I’d be more excited about going back to the Pinball Hall of Fame, but I bet my kids will ask to go to Circus Circus again the next time I come to Las Vegas.
Bottom line
There are plenty of other things we did as a family, like days spent at the swimming pool, walking through the flamingo exhibit at Flamingo (which is free), the flower conservatory at Bellagio (as well as the flower displays at Wynn), the Forum Shops at Caesars, and the indoor canals at The Venetian, to name a few. But this post includes the bigger activities, of which there were many. In between these activities, we did a lot of eating. Be on the lookout for a post about where we ate and which dining benefits we used. Spoiler alert on the dining post: If you have a trip planned to Las Vegas and you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you should go to Esther’s Kitchen (which is on Sapphire Exclusive Tables at the time of writing). If you don’t have a Sapphire Reserve, you should still probably go to Esther’s Kitchen. I think we were disappointed to have waited until the end of the trip to go, because it meant we didn’t have time to go back a second time. More to come.
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How did you do in the World Series of poker event? You guys are awesome parents. It was a win-win obviously for you and your kids. Rock on!
Grew up playing Eight Ball Deluxe pinball. They have it there. “Stop your talkin’ and start your chalkin'”
I believe you opted for Vegas after some NP plans got 86’ed right? I would recommend 2 super easy day trips from Vegas to either Red Rock Canyon or Valley of Fire. The latter in particular is really spectacular and deserves NP status imho. This time of year is obviously not ideal for outside activities in that area but that is easily remedied by getting out early in the morning which is easy when your internal clock is set to the eastern time zone.
We’ve visited Red Rock Canyon before, but that’s a great suggestion. We would have absolutely done Valley of Fire if not for the heat. It was very nearly 100° by 9 a.m. every day. We talked about driving to Mount Charleston, but ultimately didn’t.
When I say early I mean EARLY. Twilight is around 5 am but I understand your position with the kids. Maybe next time. Looks like y’all had a great time anyways!
Yeah, my 5yr old is an early riser — 6am anywhere we are, no matter what time we went to sleep — but my 8yr old is at the opposite end (if we didn’t wake him up, I don’t think he’d ever see a time earlier than 8:30am, no matter where we are and what time he went to sleep lol). I’m the one who sometimes gets up before 5am, but that’s just because it is the quietest time to write :-).
But since my Caesars status is good through January 2028, I imagine there is a non-zero chance that we’ll end up back in Vegas at some point next year (and surely not in July).
When I was younger my dad told me that his trick to raising kids on a tight budget was to take us to national parks where we were self entertaining and didn’t ask to spend a lot of money. We tried it with my daughter, and to my considerable surprise it actually worked. We spent a lot more with her on activities than my dad did. But we never had to take her to Disney, which I consider to be a major life win right there.
Thanks, I’ll be sure not to go there with the kids
Hey Nick, thanks for sharing what activities you did as a family. Were they saying the BattleBots would be hung over on July 5?
Were you able to get any free activities with your Caesars diamond plus status? I enjoyed going on the high roller Ferris wheel at the Linq.
It was unclear. We definitely wondered aloud to ourselves whether the “everyone” referred to potential audience members or staff.
No, we didn’t end up doing any of the activities. I had anticipated trying to use the free show tickets for Piff the Magic Dragon, but then when we had the snafu with BattleBots, I tried to use them for BattleBots. Like I said there were no complimentary tickets to BattleBots. I was not really interested in the high roller, and only one of my sons was big enough to do the zip line at Linq, so we just let it go. I might have tried harder to fit in free show tickets for something, like maybe Wayne Newton or Donny Osmond, if nothing else, but I didn’t really want to pay for two full-price tickets (Diamond Plus members only get two free tickets and there are four of us), so in the end we just didn’t bother.
Bummer that the complementary tickets to BattleBots were not available. Can you check online or do you have to go to a Caesars kiosk and see what shows are available and what days are available?
The Topgolf in Las Vegas is pretty fun, but more for adults than kids. Some topgolf locations do have a kid friendly mini golf course but I don’t remember if the Las Vegas one has one.
I appreciate your honesty on the screwups with the tickets but most people cannot afford those expenses. $100 a ticket for kids? I know Disney is crazy but things have gotten out of control for families. I’ve never had kids but parents have my sympathy.
Unfortunately, $100 a ticket has become pretty commonplace these days. I don’t disagree that it’s ridiculous. I was originally expecting $300 back in gift cards. We didn’t do a Cirque du Soleil show because those are mostly more than $100 per ticket. So was Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. Again, I’m not arguing that $100pp is reasonable for BattleBots. You’re absolutely right that costs have gotten out of control. We recently went to the movies with free tickets we had gotten from the Visa Infinite / Regal Cinema deal and we covered concessions with gift cards from Newegg/Paze, but if not for those two things bringing the cost to nearly $0 out of pocket, we realized that it would have cost us nearly $100 for the four of us for tickets and concessions to see Toy Story 5. Add in dinner, and what used to be a simple night out has gotten really expensive.
Las Vegas has definitely become a very expensive destination in particular. We did OK overall, using a variety of discounts and things, but it is no longer a cheap destination.
I think your kids are a little older than mine, but these are some other family favorites not listed:
Dinosaur Outpost
Omega Mart
Popovich Comedy Pet Theatre
Paradox Museum
And perhaps unexpectedly my kids love to eat at Hofbrauhaus.
You had me at pinball. As a kid in the 70s we didn’t have video games. We would take our quarters and walk to the 7-11 and play pinball.
Pinball back in the early 1970s seemed to be viewed negatively, almost like gambling which I never understood.
Anyhow, I’ve never been a beach person but the one thing I loved when we went to the beach was the boardwalk at night time and I would spend a ton of time playing pinball games, especially a baseball one and a card game one that I did well with.
Always wanted to buy one for my home but never did.
We might have played that baseball game. There was one with a metal bat you had to swing to hit the ball. It was fun!
For what it’s worth, the machine from 1933 had a notice on it (from the 1930s) saying there should be absolutely no gambling on the machine. Some of the very early pinball machines were kind of like those children’s games where you have to try to get a ball into a basket, but the basket was made of pins. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some sort of early gambling that happened on those things.
Join us in Asheville for our pinball museum. ~$20 all you can play
Ha! I had the same comment for the pinball museum in Seattle: Vintage Arcade in Seattle | Seattle Pinball Museum.
Maybe next time you visit Tim.