Vilamoura with school-age kids: 6 to 12

Somewhere between six and twelve the sums change. The child swims, lasts three to five hours at a stretch and no longer needs the afternoon nap that used to cut the day in half. In exchange, a whole category disappears: anything visibly built for smaller children is spotted and rejected. Plans of their own, though, are still some way off. The choosing stays with you, it has only got harder, because suddenly almost everything is a candidate.

How long a trip this age can take

Three to five hours work if something happens in the middle that gets the child on their feet. Sitting on its own does not carry five hours at this age either.

The most-booked trip from the marina lasts 2.5 hours and costs €44.10 (811 reviews). It heads towards Benagil and looks for dolphins on the way. For a school-age child it is a sound trip and still the weaker choice, because it consists almost entirely of watching. If you said “cave” at home, explain beforehand that the rock arch is seen from the water, not from inside.

The five hours with brunch and open bar cost €49 (618 reviews), barely five euros more than the trip that is half as long. That is not a bargain, it is a different day: it includes a swim stop, and that is exactly why this tour works from about eight and not with anyone smaller. The child has to swim confidently and want to stay in open water where there is no bottom underfoot. The open bar is a service for adults that you are paying for too.

Three hours through the Ria Formosa to the islands of Armona and Culatra cost €35 (605 reviews). The boat stays inside the lagoon rather than on the open sea and stops at both islands long enough for children to go ashore and walk round a fishing village. The catch is not in the price: departure is from Olhão, some 32 km and just under 30 minutes’ drive east of Vilamoura. Three hours therefore become a good five.

Where the child drives, putts or climbs

Karting Almancil Family Park asks €14 (556 reviews) and sits about 10 km inland, roughly eleven minutes by car. The site has several separate tracks: a junior circuit that the operator lists for roughly seven to twelve year olds, and the adult track from thirteen. The main circuit is 760 metres long and modelled on the former Formula One track at Jacarepaguá; the park opened in 1992 and was inaugurated by Ayrton Senna. Which track the €14 buys, and what height or age limit applies there, is on the booking page and nowhere else.

Family Golf Park in Vilamoura costs €18.50 (288 reviews) and only comes into its own at this age, because mini-golf is now a game with a score rather than a course to run around. Two 18-hole layouts on some 10,000 m², Via Appia and Via Lusitânia, with replicas of Roman buildings. That pairs with Cerro da Vila, the genuine Roman excavation at the western edge of the marina; more on that under what to see.

In the marina’s water sports, parasailing at €45 for ten minutes of flying time is the most expensive experience per minute in the whole place, and for some children still the thing they remember ten years later. Whether yours is allowed up is the operator’s decision.

230 metres under Loulé

The guided tour of the TechSalt rock-salt mine costs €25, lasts two hours and has 1,714 reviews at 4.8 stars – after Zoomarine the most-reviewed offer in the area. Loulé lies about 14 km north, a quarter of an hour’s drive.

Below the town it goes 230 metres down, deeper than anywhere else open to visitors in Portugal. The route covers around 1.3 km of galleries and chambers, the salt in them is roughly 230 million years old, and down there it is 23 to 24 °C all year round. With 35 degrees outside, that is the appeal. The descent is by a small lift through an open shaft, a few people at a time, for several minutes. For a child who dislikes tight or dark spaces this is the wrong booking, and you find out at the shaft rather than before. What is possible for guests with limited mobility is stated by the operator; have it confirmed in advance.

What is not in Vilamoura

Zoomarine near Guia is the region’s most-booked offer with 3,965 reviews, entry costs €28.90 and it lies about 23 km away, 25 minutes by car.

Aqualand in Alcantarilha costs €23 and is a good 31 km off, just under half an hour. Free shuttle buses run from Vilamoura and Quarteira among other places, which makes it the only one of the three parks reachable without a hire car. It opens in summer only. The figure that decides things for a six-year-old is not in the price: under 1.10 metres tall, the park’s rules leave the children’s area, the wave pool, the rapids and the foam slides. A child just below that mark spends the day in a fraction of the park. Measure, and ask the park, before you buy four tickets.

Krazy World in Algoz costs €15.95 and lies about 30 minutes inland. At 4.2 stars it is the weakest result of the three parks, but for six to twelve it has the widest range of things to do yourself: a reptile house, a crocodile enclosure with a daily presentation, 18-hole mini-golf, pedal karts, pony rides and a spray park. Everything else on land is under things to do.

Where paying more changes something

Alongside the entry ticket, Zoomarine runs a dolphin programme that is booked and paid for separately. The operator sets the short encounter from six years, with six- and seven-year-olds only allowed to take part if another participant over sixteen is with them; the longer versions start at eight and require the child to be able to swim. It lasts an hour in total, about twenty minutes of that in the water, which makes it the one surcharge in this age group that turns watching into joining in. What it costs is stated by the operator.

What does not pay is length for its own sake. A full-day tour to Seville or Lisbon at €72 runs twelve to thirteen hours, the greater part of it on the coach. With a seven-year-old that is not an excursion, it is a journey.

When it is a bad idea

The sunset boat party with DJ and open bar at €27 leaves from the same harbour basin as the dolphin trips and is cheaper than almost anything on the water. That does not make it a children’s programme, and the low price is why it keeps being booked by mistake.

The quiet sunset trips work well from about eight, but they have a quirk: their departure times follow the sun and shift by more than two hours between June and October. In high summer you are back late. Plan nothing for the next morning that needs an alarm.

What you have to look up yourself

Not one of the 73 offer descriptions for this place states a minimum age. Operators set different limits – they are on the relevant booking page and should be read there before booking. Why the limits differ so widely is covered in boat trips with kids: what minimum age?, and the overview of the place itself is Vilamoura with kids.

Two things belong in a question rather than a guess: what shade, toilets and life jackets there are on board, and what a child can take in terms of heat and swell. The operator answers the first, the pharmacy or the paediatrician the second.