It’s that time again for talk­ing about options of sum­mer fun things to do! For the past cou­ple of years a large group of blog­gers have teamed up to bring you great budget-friendly, fam­ily fun ideas for things to do around cities across the nation! I’ve cov­ered both Ari­zona & Omaha in the Stay­ca­tion series for the past two years & am thrilled to do it again!

Indoor Play– Stores/Museums/Restaurants

Stuff­in­g­ton Bear Factory

How fun to go see how teddy bears are made! You can drop-in and tour the fac­tory for FREE every day (Mon­day — Sat­ur­day at 1pm)! There are addi­tional touring/field-trip options, includ­ing the addi­tion of stuff­ing your own bear (for a fee). Get all info on the Stuff­in­g­ton Bear Fac­tory tours here.

Play­grounds Fun Zone

This is our absolute favorite play place! They often run deals & spe­cials, so be sure to check out their web­site. For more info & pic­tures, you can read our full Play­grounds Fun Zone review here.

Harkins Sum­mer Movie Fun — Kids can enjoy a movie a week for 10 weeks, for less than $1 per film! Talk about a great way to enjoy a few hours in a nicely air-conditioned area for lit­tle cost! Harkins the­aters are our favorite! This year is going to be our first year doing this!

Cer­reta Candy Com­pany- This long-time, family-owned busi­ness in His­toric down­town Glen­dale offers FREE tours Monday-Friday at 10am and 1pm! I remem­ber tak­ing tours there as a kid, see­ing how the fab­u­lous candy is made, enjoy­ing some del­ish sam­ples, and then some­times get­ting to make a Choco­late Pizza at the end (for an addi­tional fee). Grandma & Grandpa took the boys here after Baby Brother was born and they had a great time! Edu­ca­tional and yummy! A win-win!

- Peter Piper Pizza 

 

We call the Cabela’s here (at West­gate) “the indoor zoo”. There are hun­dreds of ani­mals on dis­play in dif­fer­ent loca­tions of the store (albeit no longer living)–very much like a museum and store all in one! We enjoy hav­ing a piece of fudge and walk­ing around the store check­ing out all the ani­mals. You can check for spe­cial events–there are often edu­ca­tional presentations!

Ari­zona Museum of Nat­ural His­tory - My boys call this the dinosaur museum, but there is much more to it than just dinos! It’s great fun!  Organ Stop Pizza — This awe­some restau­rant is very close to the Museum of Nat­ural His­tory, so we always plan to have din­ner there if we’re mak­ing a trip to the museum. The orig­i­nal Organ Stop used to be in the heart of Phoenix and my mom actu­ally worked there in the 70s! It’s SUCH a fun place! You can check out a fun video from there over on Dis­ney Men­tor Moms!

Musi­cal Instru­ment Museum — It’s only been open a few years and has much acclaim! We had the plea­sure of check­ing it out for the first time a few months ago and absolutely loved it! You can see our review of the MIM here. Our favorite spot was the Expe­ri­ence Gallery where the kids could play a vari­ety of instru­ments. They loved this!

*New*- But­ter­fly Won­der­land - I am SO excited to check this out this sum­mer! It’s open­ing May 25th and is slated to be America’s largest but­ter­fly atrium!! How fun to be able to go to an indoor rain­for­est in the mid­dle of the Ari­zona desert!

Chase Field — Base­ball is the sport of the sum­mer and Chase Field, home of the Dia­mond­backs, offers some rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive fam­ily fun. Single-game tick­ets can be pur­chased for less than $10 each and each year there are var­i­ous fam­ily pack­age deals that include food & drinks and/or other spe­cial pro­mos. Many night games also include a fire­works show fol­low­ing the game.Chase Field is very fam­ily friendly, espe­cially with the St. Joseph’s Sand­lot. Fea­tures include a kids’ play­ground, tod­dlers’ play­ground, bat­ting cage, future field, Baxter’s Den and more! For some extra fun for the base­ball fans in your life, then take a take a tour of Chase Field!

Uni­ver­sity of Phoenix Sta­dium — if base­ball isn’t your thing, maybe a tour of the Uni­ver­sity of Phoenix Sta­dium, home of the AZ Car­di­nals, would be fun for foot­ball enthusiasts.

Out­door Water Play

Splash­pads:

• Splash Play­ground at Tempe Beach Park
• The foun­tains at the Scotts­dale Quarter
• Kid­splash Foun­tain at Desert Ridge Marketplace
• Splash Zone at Enchanted Island Amuse­ment Park
• Yakulla Cav­erns Splash Pad at the Phoenix Zoo
• Splash Pad at Rio Vista Com­mu­nity Park
• Inter­ac­tive fountain/splash pad at Westgate

Wet ‘n Wild Phoenix - Located in the North Phoenix area, this is a fun place to cool off over the sum­mer. Last year, they opened a whole Wet ‘n Wild Jr. area. This is per­fect for younger kids! The boys had a blast play­ing here!

Resorts:

Keep in mind that the sum­mer is “off-season” for hotels & resorts here. So, you can often score great deals of $149 or less per night at some really high-class places (plus some­times resort cred­its & other bonuses too). Here’s a short list of some that are known for hav­ing some great fam­ily activ­i­ties and water play fun:

• The Westin Kier­land (we stayed there this spring and it’s won­der­ful! You can see our full Westin Kier­land review here)
• Ari­zona Grand Resort (for­merly known as the Pointe at South Mountain)
•  The Pointe Hilton at Squaw Peak
• JW Mar­riott Resort at Desert Ridge

Want to do a lit­tle explor­ing of other parts of Ari­zona? Then, be sure to click over to last year’s list of great places to visit all over the great state of Ari­zona!