Things to Do in Irvine with Kids

Balloon free; carousel $4

Great Park Balloon & Carousel

Ride a tethered helium balloon 400 feet up for skyline views, then a spin on the carousel and a romp at the huge play areas. At 118 feet tall and filled with 210,000 cubic feet of helium, it's one of the largest tethered helium balloons in the country and carries up to 16 passengers at a time. The Great Park Carousel nearby got a full repaint in 2021 and rides are free.

Pretend City Children's Museum

A miniature city of 17 interactive learning spaces — designed by architect David Rockwell — where kids run a grocery store, hop in a fire truck, tend a farm, or check in at the health center and police station. Built for ages 0-10, it's a nonprofit museum and a genuine lifesaver on hot or rainy days.

~$18.50/person

K1 Speed Indoor Karting

Electric go-karts race on an indoor track, with junior karts (48-inch minimum height, capped around 20 mph) for younger racers and 20-horsepower adult karts for teens and grown-ups. Staff measure every junior driver on-site and reserve final say over who races, so it's worth confirming a first-timer's height before building a trip around it.

~$25 per race

Theme Parks & Rides

Boomers! Irvine

Mini golf, go-karts, batting cages, and an arcade in one spot — the reliable birthday-party-energy outing for mixed ages.

Attraction passes ~$30

William R. Mason Regional Park

A lake with turtles and ducks, bike paths, and huge picnic lawns — the easy, central Irvine park for a relaxed afternoon outside. The park opened in 1973 and grew to its current 339 acres by 1978, when the 9-acre lake most visitors remember was added. Across Culver Drive, an adjoining 123-acre wilderness area offers a quieter, undeveloped hike for families who want to extend the outing.

Parking $3–$5

Bommer Canyon Trail

A gentle former cattle-camp canyon with wide dirt paths and shady oaks — an easy, scenic hike that older kids can handle. The canyon was a working headquarters for the Irvine Ranch's cattle operation for over a century, and the restored, sycamore-shaded Cattle Camp at its center still stands as a rustic waypoint. The Irvine Ranch Conservancy has managed the preserve since 2005, running it as open, self-guided trail land for hikers, bikers, and (seasonally) horseback riders.

Wagon tours ~$28; varies by season

Tanaka Farms

A working farm run by the same Japanese American family since the early 1900s, Tanaka Farms offers a guided wagon tour through the fields with stops to pick produce, plus a petting corral kids adore. Its seasonal strawberry tours (March through June) and watermelon tours (July and August) are the marquee draws, letting families pick and eat right off the vine.

Shopping & Treats

Irvine Spectrum Center & Giant Wheel

An open-air center anchored by a giant observation wheel, a hand-crafted Italian wheel that arrived in 2002 as the center's signature icon, one of only three fixed wheels in Southern California alongside Santa Monica Pier and Disney California Adventure. Carousel rides, splash fountains, and a big lawn round out easy evening fun with dinner options.

Free entry; wheel/carousel ~$5

Theme Parks & Rides

Wild Rivers Waterpark

Dozens of slides, a wave pool, and a sprawling kids' lagoon at the rebuilt Wild Rivers, which reopened in 2022 at Irvine's Great Park after an 11-year absence, nearly 50% bigger than the original 1986 park it replaced. The big summer splash-day splurge, open in the warm months.

~$50+/person (seasonal)

~$15 admission + skate rental

Great Park Ice Public Skate

The Anaheim Ducks' official practice facility, this 280,000-square-foot complex — the largest ice facility in California, with four rinks including one Olympic-sized sheet — opens several of its rinks for public skating sessions. It's a cool, indoor energy-burner on a hot OC afternoon, with an arcade and restaurant on site.

Arts & Culture

Irvine Fine Arts Center

An 18,000-square-foot city art centre in Heritage Park with rotating local-artist exhibitions and ceramics, painting and printmaking studios. Free to walk into; the family art camps are charged.

Free to visit; classes charged separately

Irvine Historical Museum

Irvine's oldest surviving building, an 1868 ranch cookhouse, now a small volunteer-run history museum. Volunteer-staffed, so their own site asks you to ring before coming.

$2 donation suggested

Katie Wheeler Library

A library rebuilt as a faithful replica of the 1876 Irvine family ranch house, with a children's room, a wraparound porch and an orange-grove setting. Worth the visit for the building alone.

Heritage Park Library

Irvine's largest library branch, next door to the Fine Arts Center in Heritage Park, with a big children's collection and a used bookstore. Moved from county to city operation in 2025.

University Park Library

A neighbourhood library on Sandburg Way, two minutes' walk from Adventure Playground — which makes it the obvious swap when the weather turns mid-outing.

Beall Center for Art + Technology

A free UC Irvine gallery devoted to interactive digital and electronic art — screens, robotics and sound installations. Short, free and genuinely unusual for a rainy hour.

Arts & Culture

Great Park Gallery

A free city gallery inside a restored El Toro air base building at Great Park, with rotating exhibitions and working artist studios alongside.

Hangar 244 Heritage & Aviation Exhibition

A 10,000-square-foot former El Toro hangar showing historical photographs and a nine-minute archive film about the Marine air station that became Great Park.

Admission not published

$42/hr per lane Mon–Thu, $54/hr Fri–Sun (up to 6); shoes $6

Irvine Lanes

A forty-lane bowling centre on Michelson with animated scoring, an arcade and late-night blacklight bowling. Priced by the lane-hour rather than per game.

Arts & Culture

Irvine Barclay Theatre

A 750-seat theatre on the UC Irvine campus with a family performance series alongside dance, music and touring shows. Tickets are priced per production.

Priced per show

San Joaquin Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary

Over 300 acres of freshwater ponds with flat, genuinely stroller-friendly loop trails. More than 300 bird species have been recorded here, so bring binoculars if you have them.

Turtle Rock Nature Center

A five-acre city preserve with a paved interpretive trail through riparian, desert and woodland habitats, a native plant garden and a stone labyrinth. The building is a front desk — the visit is outdoors.

Adventure Playground (Irvine)

A free drop-in playground in University Community Park with sand pits, building blocks, slides and natural play areas. Not to be confused with Huntington Beach's paid, summer-only version.

Quail Hill Trailhead

Parking and restrooms for the two-mile Quail Hill Loop — a wide, mostly flat grassland walk that suits younger legs. Almost no shade, so go early.

Farm + Food Lab

A free teaching garden at Great Park with themed beds, an orchard, a pollinator garden, an aquaponics demonstration, a seed library and free-range chickens.

Recreation swim $5 adults, $2.50 children

William Woollett Jr. Aquatics Center

A city aquatics complex with two 50-metre pools, a diving pool and a water slide. Recreation swim is seasonal, so check the schedule rather than turning up in October.

Colonel Bill Barber Marine Corps Memorial Park

Forty-two acres beside the Civic Center with three playgrounds, an amphitheatre, tennis courts, ball fields and enough open lawn to lose a football on.