The Best Things to Do in Fort Worth With Kids

The zoo publishes what it costs and what time it opens, which sounds like a low bar until you try to plan a Fort Worth family day off anybody else's website. Adults 13 and up are $22, children 3 to 12 and seniors 65 and up are $18, two and under are free, parking is $5 per vehicle, and every Wednesday is discounted under the zoo's Half-Price Wednesdays program. A ticket is good for one visit within 30 days of purchase, so you can buy ahead on a maybe.

The habitats worth routing toward with small children are Elephant Springs, African Savanna, and Predators of Asia and Africa, which the zoo lists as newly open. Safari Splash and Junior Train Conductor are the two attractions aimed squarely at the under-tens. Two things to know before you commit, both from the zoo's own visit page as of this writing: the elephants are behind the scenes for habitat maintenance, and a construction fence surrounds the gorilla habitat, though the troop is still outside and visible through the windows.

This is really four or five attractions sharing a roof, which is what makes it the right pick for a family with a six-year-old and an eleven-year-old who want different things. The museum's own site lists the TCU Children's Gallery as now open after a renovation, described as a space for its youngest learners, alongside the Noble Planetarium, the Omni Theater, and the Galaxy Park playground outside. DFWChild's Tarrant County family guide, last updated in May 2026, names it the best museum in the county, with the Kimbell as runner up.

We are not quoting a ticket price here on purpose. The museum sells timed tickets through its own portal and the only admission figures we could find in writing came from a press release dated 2018, so check the current price at buy.fwmuseum.org before you leave the house. One practical change: general visitors now enter through the Omni Theater entrance on Lansford Lane, not the main doors, because school groups use a separate entrance.

Real drovers walk a herd of Texas longhorns down East Exchange Avenue at 11.30 am and again at 4 pm, every day, and the city's own Herd page says it is free for all. For a family travelling on a budget this is the single best hour in Fort Worth. Children who have been dragged through two museums will stand still for a longhorn walking past them at arm's length.

The Behind-the-Drive Experience at 129 East Exchange, free as well, runs at 1.30 pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and gets you closer to the drovers and the tack. Arrive at least fifteen minutes early for the drive itself and stand on the north side of Exchange, where the crowd thins out past the Livestock Exchange Building.

The best value in the city for a family. Adults 18 to 59 are $7, adults 60 and over and youth 4 to 17 are $6, three and under are free, groups of ten or more are $5 a head, and parking costs nothing. The cabins are real nineteenth century buildings moved to the site rather than reproductions, and the interpreters in period dress do the grinding, spinning and candle dipping in front of you.

It sits a short walk from the zoo, which is the reason to know about it. If the zoo takes three hours instead of five and nobody is ready to go home, this fills the gap without another drive or another parking fee.

Eight dollars, and half price all day Tuesday if you say the code word Cowtown or show the offer on your phone to the attendant. The maze is 5,400 square feet of wooden pathways laid out like a set of cattle pens, and there is a second-story observation deck where you can preview the layout or just watch your children get lost in it. Groups over twenty get group pricing.

It is the right length for a family attraction, which is to say short. Most children want to run it twice to beat their own time, which is the business model and also genuinely fun. The mechanical bull next door is a separate charge.

The honest version of this listing: the thing being built here specifically for families, the Baker Martin Family Garden, is described on the Garden's own site as Fort Worth's newest place for families to explore and play, with member early access this autumn and public opening in March 2027. So you are not visiting for that yet. You are visiting because it is a large, shaded, walkable garden a ten minute drive from the Museum of Science and History, and because toddlers do better here than in a third gallery.

If you have a child between 18 months and five years, the Garden runs a one-hour Little B.I.T.s Nature Club with story time, music and movement, and nature exploration. A family membership is listed at $95 a year covering two adults and children, which pays for itself in roughly three visits.

Billed as the world's only year-round rodeo, and the schedule on the Coliseum's own site confirms it is running now, with a 7.30 pm Friday show and a 1.30 pm Sunday matinee on the weekend we checked. The card covers tie-down roping, breakaway roping, team roping, barrel racing, bull riding and bronc riding. For children, the draw is the calf scramble, which kids under 12 can enter by signing up at the main entrance when the doors open.

Ticket tiers on the Coliseum's own box office page are Bronze Star Kid for ages 3 to 12 and Bronze Star Senior for 60 and over, with under-threes free on a lap. The page does not publish dollar amounts, which is why there is a band here instead of a figure. The box office answers on (817) 625-1025 and stays open until 10 pm Thursday through Saturday.

Free, open 6 am to 10 pm daily per the city's own page, and 5.4 acres of concrete and moving water in the middle of downtown. The Aerated Pool runs 40 nozzles. The Active Pool drops into a basin 38 feet down, with stepped stairs beside the falling water, which is the part children remember and the part that needs a hand held. The Mountain rises about 20 feet above the Central Square and leads to the only patch of grass in the park.

Read this clearly: the city states that swimming and wading are not allowed, and tells visitors to take the same precautions they would at a lake or stream. The stairs are wet concrete with no railing. It is a 30 minute stop, not an afternoon, and it is best as the thing you do on the way to or from somewhere else downtown.