Trip Ideas
Family Vacations

Best Family Getaways 2014

Whether your family is looking to surf in Hawaii or spot wildlife in Costa Rica, these trips promise to bring your passions to life—and make you feel like a kid again.

Raise a Nature Lover: Costa Rica

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With its rain forests and volcanic-sand beaches, butterfly farms and turtle nests, as well as family-friendly hotel openings, Costa Rica has become a top destination for adventure seekers. In the northwestern province of Guanacaste, there are miles of coastline and thick jungle to explore: a government mandate ensures that 70 percent of the region remains protected land. Check in to the Four Seasons Resort Costa Rica at Peninsula Papagayo ($$$$); the Kids for All Seasons program is free (for ages 4 through 12) and feels more like summer camp than a drop-off babysitting program, with hermit-crab hunts, bird-watching, and outdoor games. At the new Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort, Costa Rica ($$$), the Cambi Kids Club includes activities such as animal rescue missions and treasure hunts. There’s also snorkeling and kayaking in the Bay of Culebra and stand-up paddleboarding lessons for the whole family. Outings can be arranged to Palo Verde National Park, home to hundreds of bird species, and for ziplining excursions with Witch’s Rock Canopy Tours, where even four-year-olds can fly 30 feet above the ground.

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Best Family Getaways 2014

Raise a Nature Lover: Costa Rica

By Heidi Mitchell

“On every trip, try something new; come back knowing you did something you weren’t willing to try before,” tweeted Wendy Perrin, TripAdvisor’s Travel Advocate and a mom of two.

It’s a travel motto she shared in our recent family travel Twitter chat (#TL_Chat), and it’s one that we’d wholeheartedly retweet. After all, today’s best family trips are thrill rides of adventure, immersive cultural exchanges, and transcendent bonding opportunities with furry new friends. They’re opportunities to open—and blow—the minds of your offspring, while creating memories they’ll want to recount to future generations.

If you can imagine swinging through a canopy of trees in Costa Rica, your youngest child squealing with pleasure right behind you; or seeing your bookish son mesmerized as he wanders the ancient Greek ruins he’d seen only in the pages of his history textbooks; or shearing sheep with a fourth-generation New Zealander farmer, then you’ve officially outgrown your parents’ version of a family-friendly vacation. And these trips are for you.

The following family getaways have been tested by travelers we at Travel + Leisure know and trust and who hit the road more often than most CEOs—only with a significantly younger entourage in tow.

Whether you’re 55 going on 5 or the other way around, these family vacation ideas will get the kids as pumped as the parents for some quality time together.

And if things don’t go quite as planned, we recommend adopting another parent’s family travel motto: as Amy Tara Koch tweeted, “This is not a nightmare—it is an adventure!”