Expat Travel Mom

In the UAE, children are part of everything, and they're almost everywhere you go. This place genuinely loves kids and makes it easy to keep them entertained (and you sane) while you're at it. Dubai in particular has no shortage of child-friendly attractions for every age. Here are five we loved, plus how we managed a full weekend there without spending much at all.

Children's City

Tucked into Dubai Creek Park on the Bur Dubai side, Children's City is packed with interactive exhibits covering the human body, technology, space, and history and culture. My kids easily spent two and a half hours there and would have happily stayed longer if we'd had the time. A family ticket for four of us ran 40 dirhams, our two-year-old got in free, plus a small 5-dirham fee just to enter the park itself.

Ski Dubai

Home to the world's largest indoor snow park, 22,500 square meters of actual snow, complete with a ski lift for the "hills," a sledding section, a bunny slope, and an area where kids can climb inside a giant plastic ball and roll down a mini hill. If you'd rather not go into Ski Dubai yourself, there's plenty of space to watch from outside the park. A one-day Ski Slope Pass runs 300 dirhams for adults, 275 for kids.

The Beaches

Dubai is home to some genuinely stunning beaches, pure white sand and warm, deep blue water. Kids will happily build sandcastles and waste an entire afternoon here. Bring the sunscreen, hats, and sunglasses. Jumeirah Beach is a favorite, right off the boardwalk with restaurants, activities, and beach rentals nearby.

The Dubai Fountain

The world's largest fountain show, and genuinely worth a second, third, and fourth trip. Best part: it's completely free. We stayed for two full shows in one night. The kids were mesmerized by the 500-foot sprays of water and loved dancing along to the music. Fair warning, it gets crowded on weekends, so stake out a good spot early. If you're eating dinner at one of the lakefront restaurants, ask for a table along the railing so you're above the crowd.

Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo

Found right in the heart of Dubai Mall, this is the largest suspended aquarium in the world (notice a theme here, everything in Dubai tends to be the biggest version of itself). You can see rays, sharks, and smaller fish through the main tank, then walk the tunnel into the Underwater Zoo, home to otters, penguins, crabs, eels, octopus, crocodiles, and all kinds of fresh and saltwater fish. You can even pay for a boat ride across the massive tank. We spent about two hours there in total; entry to both the aquarium and the zoo runs 50 dirhams.

How We Did It Without Spending Much at All

There's a hotel loyalty program that made this entire trip basically free for us. Because we'd needed to stay at the Intercontinental in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain for three months while we got settled, we'd racked up a huge number of points, more than enough to cover stays in other cities entirely for free.

Every hotel in the group costs a different number of points per night, with Holiday Inn sitting on the lower end. So this past weekend, we decided to cash some in and try it out in Dubai. We didn't need a fancy beachfront resort for this trip, just somewhere to sleep after a full day of touring. (If you do want the resort, they have those too, just for more points, or you can split your stay across a few different properties.)

Booking was easy through their phone app, genuinely handy for a family on the go. We picked the Holiday Inn Express on Jumeirah Beach, 15,000 points a night. With three kids, six and under, we needed a room that could sleep all of us, so we booked a king bed with a pull-out couch, and brought along a small vacuum-sealed sleeping bag for the one who wanted to camp out on the floor.

The hotel itself was a pleasant surprise, spotless, with a helpful, prompt staff. The room was bright, the linens crisp (before the kids got to them), the bathroom immaculate. Someone had the pull-out bed made up within three minutes of us arriving. There was a nice wall unit with a TV, mini fridge, desk, safe, and closet, and a genuinely good complimentary breakfast the next morning: cheeses, meats, yogurt, cereal, juice, coffee and tea, croissants, and fruit.

The location couldn't have been better either, right around the corner from Diyafah Street, which comes alive on weekend nights, restaurants, shops, and souks everywhere. Being on Jumeirah Beach Road opened up even more nearby options: cute malls, coffee shops, pet stores, souvenir shops. This stretch is considered "Old Dubai," quainter, slower-paced, less crowded, and genuinely charming, almost like a beach town back home. We even found a Mexican restaurant, which is not an easy thing to come by here.

All in all, we'd absolutely stay there again for a Dubai weekend. Clean, well-located, big enough for our whole family, and it used the fewest points of any option we found. Sign up for the loyalty program, rack up points wherever you're already staying, and you might just find yourself visiting Dubai with your lodging entirely free.

Update: The hotel loyalty program we used has changed names twice since we wrote this: Priority Club became IHG Rewards Club in 2013, then IHG One Rewards in 2022, though the core idea of racking up points to travel for free is still very much alive and well.