Florida for young children - beyond Orlando?

[JoyofSpring]

Hello,

Planning a trip to Florida in June. We will do Orlando / Disney etc. for a few days but then want to head off to either one or two other destinations for a few days.

We will have a 3 y.o. and a 9 m.o with us. Would like to have one beach location if possible but would be great to find somewhere that has more to do - some nice places to eat, maybe somewhere we can walk around (rare in the USA I know). Also, bearing in mind it will be HOT, we probably need more activities than just beach.

Any top tips?

not sure if you are going to be able to do Disney in a few days!! there are some nice beaches down on florida keys as well as over on the west side near Tampa. personally, unless I was going just to do Disney I would go somewhere else with littlies. buy the books wdw with kids and beyond wdw with kids as they are packed full of ideas.

Thank you! I will have a look at those.

It's a family trip as my parents won two weeks in a house in Orlando so we are locked in to that destination. I think we will do one day in magic kingdom and maybe another park but don't think we are going to be doing days and days of Orlando parks. I've been before and the kids are still small.

Just wondering where else might be fun. Tampa is on my list - the keys might be a bit far and not sure how good it would be for very small children.

Have a loom at Captiva Island.

Kennedy Space Center is about 45 minutes from Orlando along the coast and is one of the best attractions in all of Florida. There's a museum, a number of old rockets/shuttles to look at, different activities (meet an astronaut, IMAX movies), and also bus tours out to the shuttle launch pads. It's near Cocoa Beach, which is a pretty nice beach as well.

St. Augustine is about 2 hours' drive. It's the oldest city in the States, with a lot of historic sites to see. It's very good for walking, although it will be blazing hot in June! There's an old fort, a historic town, a pirate museum, and evening boat trips out to watch the sunset.

Sarasota is beautiful.

Definitely go for an airboat ride. We did one at Wild Florida. It's also a small widlife park, the kids loved feeding the gators.

*wildlife