Where to Stay in Fort Lauderdale With Kids, Judged on Published Lifeguard Cover

The one area where a family gets a guarded ocean beach 365 days a year from the city they came to visit. Ocean Rescue publishes cover from Fort Lauderdale Beach Park to NE 18th Street across 20 towers, every single day including holidays, and the City states plainly that signage marks the unguarded parts of its own public beach. Behind it runs a continuous wide paved promenade with the signature white wave wall, a free daily shuttle along its length, and three active state water-quality sampling points at Sebastian Street, Bahia Mar and Birch State Park.

On published evidence this is the strongest family beach on this coast. The City of Hollywood publishes lifeguard hours of 9am to 6pm year round and 9am to 7pm on holidays and special events, 21 towers, nine first-aid stations and 35 state-certified emergency medical staff. The Broadwalk itself is a car-free brick promenade running nearly two and a half miles, with a splash pad, a playground and restrooms at Charnow Park on the promenade, and three active state sampling points.

The best-documented beach in the county after Hollywood, and cheaper on the water. The city publishes that swimming areas are guarded seven days a week from 9am to 4:45pm along 1,200 yards of beach with 17 full-time staff, that the public beach is open 365 days a year, and, in the clearest single statement of its kind on this coast, that restrooms, showers, a picnic shelter with tables, barbecue grills and a children's playground are located on the beach. The Beach Playground is published as ADA accessible and the city runs a dedicated beach wheelchairs page.

The shortest walk to restaurants of any area here, on the City's own published high street of shopping, dining and museums, with the Riverwalk linear park running west along the New River and the eastern end of the boulevard running straight into the guarded beach. Three Water Taxi stops sit in this area, more than anywhere else, so this is where that service genuinely works as local transport rather than sightseeing.

The strongest transit position of any area on this page by a distance. Broward Central Terminal is here, and every Broward County Transit route radiates from it, including Route 1 straight to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, so this is the only area where a family reaches the airport, Tri-Rail and the whole bus network without changing. Both free weekday LauderGO routes run through it, and the Riverwalk is a continuous flat paved waterfront path on both banks of the New River.

A small, walkable, low-rise beach town around Commercial Boulevard with one active state water sampling point, its own turtle lighting ordinance, and rip current guidance written more clearly than its neighbours manage. It publishes a Town Accessibility Services page and asks visitors to avoid flash photography and flashlights around nesting turtles, which the City of Fort Lauderdale's own sea turtle page does not.

The nearest beach to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Port Everglades, with two active state water sampling points and a state park inside it, Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park, published as open 8am to sunset 365 days a year. Broward County's Secret Woods Nature Center sits here too, 57 acres with a nature trail, a pollinator garden and no gate fee.