Piscinas Naturais do Porto Moniz
Porto Moniz
Lava pools the Atlantic fills and refreshes, fenced and lifeguarded, with a separate children's pool and a playground on the terrace.
- Outdoors
- Any age
- Children free
Madeira with children
What there is to do with a child on an island sold on levadas, cliffs and wine.
Everything here was checked against the operator's own source rather than a guidebook, and the awkward facts are kept: which museum shuts on Monday, which levada a pushchair survives, which lava pools have a lifeguard and which identical-looking ones next door do not, and how old a child has to be before an operator will take them. Where nobody publishes a price or an opening time, this page says so instead of guessing.
Lava pools, sea-water lidos, calm beaches and the water park - with which ones have a lifeguard and which of the identical-looking pools next door do not.
Complexo Balnear do Lido
Funchal
Funchal's municipal lido: two seawater pools, one of them shallow with play equipment, plus ladders straight into the Atlantic, for five euros a head.
- Outdoors
- Any age
- Children free
Complexo Balnear da Ponta Gorda
Funchal
Two seawater pools - one a proper children's pool with play equipment in it - plus a natural tidal pool, at the quiet end of the Funchal promenade.
- Outdoors
- Any age
- Children free
Whales, monkeys, sharks in a tank, sugar under a glass floor and science you are allowed to touch - the wet-weather half of the island.
Karting, climbing, escape rooms, surf schools and riding lessons, with the minimum age each operator actually enforces.
Cable cars, toboggans, tuk-tuks, catamarans and the pirate ship - the outings that are the ride itself.
Teleférico do Funchal
Funchal
Fifteen minutes in a glass cabin from the Funchal seafront up 560 metres to Monte, which most small children treat as the attraction rather than the transport.
- Indoors
- Any age
- Children free
Teleférico do Jardim Botânico
Funchal
The island's second cable car, nine minutes each way across the Ribeira de JoĂŁo Gomes valley between the Botanical Garden and Babosas in Monte.
- Indoors
- Any age
- Children free
Playgrounds, gardens, picnic parks and the levadas a pushchair survives, nearly all of them free.
Casas TĂpicas de Santana
Santana
The three or four thatched A-frame houses beside Santana's town hall, free to walk round and about twenty minutes of a family's day.
- Outdoors
- Up to 10
- Children free
Fanal
Porto Moniz
Flat open pasture at a thousand metres, scattered with twisted centuries-old til trees, where children wander between the trunks instead of walking a path.
- Outdoors
- From 2
- Children free
Jardim de Santa Luzia
Funchal
Thirteen thousand square metres of central garden with a playground and a café terrace, ten minutes' walk from the cathedral - and shut every weekend.
- Outdoors
- Ages 1-12
- Children free
Prices and opening times change without notice, and on this island they change often. Everything here carries the date it was checked in our research notes; if a place has moved or closed, tell us and we will fix it.