San José · With kids

Interactive rooms inside the old penitentiary at Calle 4 and Avenida 9. Open Tuesday to Friday 8:30–16:30 and weekends 9:00–17:00, closed Mondays; ₡2,500 for children and ₡3,000 from age 15, with daily capacity limits, so buy online before you go.

The city's amusement park, 2 km west of Hospital México, with rides and the Splash Caribe water park attached; tickets go through their own online box office. It is a full day out and easiest reached by taxi.

Five floors of pre-Columbian jade and ceramics on Avenida Central at Calle 13, laid out well enough to hold older children for an hour. Two-for-one tickets on Wednesdays for foreign visitors and Sundays for residents.

The old Simón Bolívar zoo closed in 2024 and reopened in March 2026 as an urban nature park — gardens, trees and green space, with no animals on display. Worth knowing before you promise a child a zoo.

INCOFER runs commuter lines out to Heredia and Alajuela, to Cartago and west to Pavas and Belén for a few hundred colones a ride. It is a peak-hours workers' service rather than a tourist railway, so check the timetable on the day — but for a small child it is a cheap half-hour of train.