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.
Aquaparque Madeira
Santa Cruz
The island's only water park: five slides, racing lanes, two seawater pools including a shallow one, a lazy river, and a birds-of-prey session included in the ticket.
- Outdoors
- From 3
- Children free
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
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.
Museu da Baleia
Machico
Whaling history, life-size whales and stereoscopic 3D films in a purpose-built museum at Caniçal - the island's best museum for children by a distance.
- Indoors
- From 4
- Children free
Museu de HistĂłria Natural do Funchal
Funchal
The city's own natural history collection in the Palácio de São Pedro on Rua da Mouraria: Madeiran birds, fish, fossils, monk seal material and a small basement aquarium.
- Indoors
- Ages 3-10
- Children free
Museu Quinta das Cruzes
Funchal
A manor-house museum uphill from the cathedral whose romantic garden - stonework, old trees, a small chapel - is free to walk and open to anyone.
- Partly covered
- From 2
- Children free
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.
PR11 Vereda dos Balcões
Santana
A kilometre and a half each way, flat, along a levada through laurel forest to a railed balcony facing the island's highest peaks - the walk that actually works with a five-year-old.
- Outdoors
- From 4
- Children 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
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.