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The best family-friendly Sydney day tours, zoos, beach, playground, museum, and restaurants.
A very family-friendly city, Sydney has a huge range of attractions, tours and activities to keep family members of all ages engaged and entertained on a Sydney family vacation. Your only problem as you plan your itinerary for your family vacation in Sydney is how much you’ll be able to fit in. Not a bad problem if you ask us!
But how do you go about making the most of your Sydney holiday, while also catering to the needs and interests of each family member? At Your Sydney Guide, we’re local Sydney tour guides offering private, custom Sydney tours, and with decades of combined experience (and most of us parents too), we know how to make a visit to Sydney fantastic for the whole family. Here are our top tips.
Like any place you visit, it’s how you experience it that can make all the difference. Whether it’s a launching pad for more sight-seeing, or an efficient way to take in the many spectacular sights of Sydney for those on a limited stay, a guided Sydney city tour can be the most comprehensive and time-efficient way to experience it.
A common issue though, and in every major city you visit around the world, is that most Sydney city tours are generally designed with tightly timed, one-size-fits-all itineraries for large groups of tourists. There’s no room for flexibility, which we believe is particularly important for families and why we suggest opting for a private, custom tour.
As well as showing you must-see Sydney sights like Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, Bondi Beach, and historic precinct The Rocks, our private Sydney city day tours are fully flexible with tour schedules, pace and specific places of interest or fun family activities that can be built into any tour.
Fancy a dip and a catered picnic at a pristine, non-touristy beach that only a local would know about? Or a luxury boat charter on the harbour for some family fun? Or a private surfing lesson for the kids (and big kids)? Or a pit stop at Sydney’s best playground for the kids to expend some energy? We can arrange all of this for your family, and so much more. Your Sydney experience is all about you, so feel free to get in touch to discuss how we can customise the perfect day out for your family.
Your Sydney Guide only offers fully private tours, which means your family will be the only ones on your tour and have your very own local tour guide with expert knowledge and warm hospitality, driving you in comfort for a true Sydney experience. Have a look at some glowing reviews of families that have toured with us here.
And we gladly welcome and accommodate guests of any age – from babies to seniors. Suitable car seats for babies and young children can be arranged if notice is given prior to the tour date, and we are very understanding of travellers with particular needs such as parents with young children and seniors with reduced mobility.
Once you’ve found your feet, you’ll no doubt want to explore our spectacular harbour and surrounds more. Again, it’s how you go about it that will have you sailing into sight-seeing happiness.
Take the Sydney Harbour Bridge, for example. You can climb to the top of it with BridgeClimb (for ages 8 years+) for a truly spectacular view and see this amazing feat of engineering up close along the way. Or you can sail under the bridge (nicknamed the ‘coat hanger’) on a famous Sydney ferry. Or walk across it, heading north and down to Milsons Point. Here, you’ll have a different vantage point, viewing the bridge’s underbelly and looking back across the harbour to see the front of the Sydney Opera House (an angle less seen by visitors), and the CBD.
And while you’re there, have some family fun at Luna Park, Sydney’s iconic amusement park, for more spectacular harbour views via a trip on the Ferris wheel or the Big Dipper rollercoaster.
Or take to the skies on The Sydney Tower Eye’s Skywalk Tour, the highest outdoor viewpoint in Sydney at almost 270 metres, for a 360-degree view of the harbour and city, and beyond to the Blue Mountains. Or go even higher on a thrilling heli flight for the ultimate birds-eye view of Sydney.
When it comes to our most famous harbourside landmark, the Sydney Opera House, exploring this iconic UNESCO heritage-listed building from the outside is always the first port of call. But what many visitors to Sydney may not know, is that entry inside the Sydney Opera House is only possible via a paid, guided tour or if attending a performance.
We highly recommend taking a tour to fully appreciate the architectural wonder of this Sydney jewel, and to see a truly different window onto the harbour. See our review of the Sydney Opera House tour here.
And we’d advise booking well in advance for all of the above-mentioned attractions.
All of these options can be added to your itinerary for our Sydney city private tours, but please note that all fees for entry and attractions are extra and not included in our tour prices.
For more Sydney attractions, head to our Sydney Travel Ideas page.
While we obviously love to introduce visitors to our beautiful city, we also believe it’s great to venture out of Sydney while you’re here and experience Australia’s diverse landscape – from stunning wilderness areas to pristine beaches.
You may not realise that there are several beautiful regions not far from Sydney which can be enjoyed within a day trip.
The stunning Blue Mountains, for example, is only around 1.5 hours west of Sydney and a great place for a family adventure. This spectacular region is 1 million hectares of UNESCO-protected national park famous for its stunning valleys, cool temperate rainforests, crisp elevated air and quaint villages.
On our Blue Mountains private tours, not only will we take you to remote viewpoints that will take your breath away, but there’s a wide variety of activities we can build into your itinerary based on your family’s interests and comfort level.
From a ride on Scenic World’s railway deep into the lush rainforest of the Jamison Valley, to hiking, mountain biking, canyoning, a spot of birdwatching, a scenic heli flight or a gourmet meal in tranquil bush surrounds, we can accommodate you.
South of Sydney is one of our best kept secrets, the Royal National Park, under an hour’s drive from the CBD. The oldest national park in Australia (and the second oldest in the world), this is an amazing region to explore on a family day trip from Sydney, famous for its pristine beaches, coastal rainforest and dramatic sea cliffs.
On our Royal National Park Tour, your family can explore the area on a guided hike through lush rainforests, paddle in a canoe on tranquil waters, go mountain biking, take a refreshing dip below a waterfall, cycle along the ocean, swim with dolphins, or go whale watching among just some of the options on offer.
Or head north up the coast just 2.5 hours from Sydney to the stunning coastal region of Port Stephens, famous for its sparkling beaches, sand dunes and aquatic life. Family-focussed activities we can build into our Port Stephens day tour include sand dune quad biking and sandboarding, beach walks, dolphin watching and more.
Please note that the exact options available on these tours may depend on the time of year of your visit.
Up the top of the bucket list for your family vacation to Australia will no doubt be experiencing our beautiful and diverse wildlife.
While Sydney’s best-known animal attraction, Taronga Zoo, is well worth a visit and does have its fair share of Australian animals, it’s more of a general zoo with animals from all around the world.
To really get up close and personal with our beautiful and diverse wildlife, we suggest our guests visit Featherdale Sydney Wildlife Park as it specialises only in Australian animals. About a 35-minute drive west of Sydney en route to the scenic Blue Mountains, and an optional stop on our Blue Mountains tours, at Featherdale you’ll have the opportunity to encounter up close (and in some cases, even hand-feed), Australian animals, which little and big kids alike will love.
It’s cuteness overload with close encounters on offer with koalas, kangaroos, wombats, echidnas, and penguins among other animals, and your family can also get a selfie with the very smiley, Insta-famous quokkas.
Featherdale is a great place for the whole family to learn about Australia’s wildlife, the park having the largest collection of Australian native animals in the world, caring for over 2000 animals including 68 endangered species.
Another option we suggest is Symbio Wildlife Park, about an hour’s drive south of Sydney and an optional stop on our Sydney South Coast tours. While it also houses exotic animals like meerkats, Symbio offers some great behind the scenes encounters with iconic Australian wildlife.
But zoos and wildlife parks aren’t for everyone, so if your family would like to see some Australian animals like kangaroos truly in the wild, we can tailor some of our tours to include a safari experience for your family to find some near Sydney.
If you’re short on time for your Sydney stay, Taronga Zoo would be the most convenient option, doubling as a fantastic viewpoint of the harbour. Just keep in mind that you’ll need at least half a day to do it justice.
We’re often asked by parents on our Sydney tours what the best playground in Sydney is. Sure, vacationing is a leisure activity in itself, but it can be a busy business so it’s important for the kids to have some playtime downtime between all the sight-seeing.
Hands down (or hands-on?!), the best playground in Sydney’s CBD is located in Darling Quarter (adjacent to the Darling Harbour precinct) and is about a ten-minute walk from Town Hall train station. Suitable for toddlers to teens, it features a giant eight-metre-wide slide, a 21-metre flying fox, balance ropes, spider’s web climbing frames, giant ring swing, supernova roundabout, tunnels to explore, sandpit and digger.
And water fountains, pumps, streams and jets, so it’s probably an idea to bring a change of clothes for the kids!
The playground is also conveniently located near other attractions such as the Chinese Garden of Friendship, IMAX Sydney, and plenty of family-friendly restaurants for a post-play bite to eat.
Out of some 100 beaches lining Sydney’s harbour and coastline, our pick for the most family-friendly is Shelly Beach, just a short coastal walk from another of our most famous beaches, Manly Beach.
Shelly Beach, which forms part of Cabbage Tree Bay, is the ideal beach trip for families with young children as it’s a small, sheltered beach with calm, pristine waters for a swim and snorkel, golden sand for sandcastle-making and has ample trees for shade. There’s also lots of handy amenities nearby such as picnic areas, toilets, change block, and showers, playground, park, and The Boathouse Café.
And there’s also a variety of family-friendly eateries on The Esplanade, the main thoroughfare that runs along Manly Beach (that actually encompasses three beaches – South Steyne, North Steyne and Queenscliff).
To get to Manly, it’s an easy and picturesque 30-minute ferry ride from the CBD leaving from Circular Quay (Sydney’s main ferry terminal) and alighting at Manly Wharf at the western end of The Esplanade.
Manly Beach is also a stop on some our Sydney city day tours, as well as other iconic beaches such as Bondi Beach and Balmoral Beach, also a great beach for families.
For family-friendly Sydney museums, you can’t go past the Australian Museum, Australia’s oldest museum (and situated opposite Australia’s oldest park, Hyde Park).
Over some 190 years, the Australian Museum has accrued a vast collection of almost 22 million objects and specimens (including the largest bird and moth on earth), and features many exhibits that children, and all ages alike, will enjoy.
Among the many highlights, the museum’s dinosaurs exhibit will be a major drawcard with its real dinosaur skeletons, life-size models and fossils. And there’s interactive displays where you can smell the Mesozoic world, make dinosaur calls, and even see the world from a dinosaur’s perspective. The exhibit houses the world’s first anatomically correct model of a T. rex too.
Apart from special exhibitions, the Australian Museum is totally free to enter, and easily accessible via public transport or by foot in Sydney’s CBD.
After a big day of Sydney sight-seeing, the family is bound to be famished. And you’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to family-friendly restaurants during your Sydney vacation.
A great place to start is the Darling Square precinct, adjacent to Darling Harbour, brimming with a diverse range of cuisine from around the world. Just a morsel of options on the menu: Korean BBQ, Italian, Malaysian, American-style fried chicken, Japanese and Hungarian.
And for the ultimate family fun, visit Haidilao Hotpot in the nearby Exchange Building (the one with the stunning ‘bird’s nest’ design) where meals are served by robot waiters, staff stretch noodles to make them ‘dance’ and you can have a plushie toy join you for a meal.
For some high-end family dining and spectacular harbour views, head to Circular Quay and one of Sydney’s top restaurants, Café Sydney (on the top floor of Customs House), where all ages are welcome. Or opt for gourmet Asian fusion fare in the historic Rocks precinct at Luna Lu where the kids can feast on chicken bao buns and wagyu beef teriyaki skewers. Be sure to try their signature dessert, the decadent ‘Luna’s Opera House’, inspired by the iconic Sydney landmark. And for a relaxed, local vibe, drop by The Australian Heritage Hotel for gourmet pizzas with crocodile, kangaroo and emu toppings! We’d advise booking in advance for Café Sydney and Luna Lu.
So, there you have it. We hope these tips are helpful for you as you plan your family Sydney vacation. We’d love to welcome you with our selection of private Sydney tours, so feel free to get in touch with us to discuss how we can tailor a perfect Sydney experience to suit the whole family.
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