Unlock the Secrets of Amelia Island with this Family-Friendly Adventure Guide

Best Things To Do in Amelia Island: Discover the Magic of This Family-Friendly Destination

Amelia Island, Florida’s northernmost Atlantic beach destination, offers a wonderful experience for families with teenagers. The beaches are busy enough to find new friends but not so overcrowded that they get overwhelming. There’s lots of peace and quiet in nature, but there’s also a bustling downtown area (Fernandina Beach) with lots of interesting restaurants, shops, and other places to visit.

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We all know how hard family travel with teens can be to get some teens off their phones and engage with their parents. This popular Florida beach community has a lot of opportunities to get them out of the hotel and onto the beach, the bicycle, or into the state park.

We visited Amelia Island with my teenage nieces and nephew, and they had a blast. If you’re headed to the area, here’s a list of the best family activities in Amelia Island with teenagers that we all enjoyed.

Amelia Island Beaches

With 40 public access points, Amelia Island has several beaches that differ in amenities and crowds. If your teen is more outgoing and looking for peers, we recommend heading to the beaches in the center of the island. Some of the beach access points have bathrooms, picnic tables, volleyball courts, and various other amenities.

If they prefer a quieter, more natural setting, there’s beach access at the state parks on the ends of the islands, and the beach access near the state parks also typically has less traffic.

One relatively unique aspect that your teens might enjoy is that many of the access points allow 4-wheel drive cars on the beach (assuming you trust yourself or your teen to not drive into the ocean). Also, since there aren’t any islands, reefs, or sandbars between the Atlantic and Amelia Island, the waves are large enough for good boogie boarding and even surfing but usually still small enough for less experienced swimmers to navigate when it’s not high tide or storming.

There are various stores around the island that will rent kayaks, surfboards, and other watercraft to add even more adventure to your teen’s vacation. There are also places, like Amelia Island Paddle Surf, that teach surfing and even kite surfing and other more extreme water sports.

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Duck Pinz

For a creative and one-of-a-kind experience with your teens, check out Duck Pinz. It’s a bar with miniature bowling inside (a style called duck pins, hence the name). The lanes are shorter, the ball is smaller without finger holes, and the pins are smaller too. My nieces and nephew loved this place!

After we finished a few rounds of that, there is a game room upstairs with darts, snooker, and various arcade games. It also has a balcony in the middle overlooking the bowling lanes. Even though it’s a bar, they’ll allow those younger than 21 to be there.

Fishing Tours

Another great family activity to enjoy with teens is deep-sea fishing. The beauty of the ocean combined with the challenge of pulling in large fish and getting to see things like sharks and stingrays up close make this an ideal experience and memory to have with your teen.

My nephew specifically requested to do this for his 17^th birthday, and it did not disappoint. We actually ended up doing it twice on our most recent trip because it was so much fun. My nephew couldn’t stop talking about catching a stingray and how hard it was to bring it in. We booked with Captain Kenny and highly recommend his charters for a great experience on the water.

Note: You can also find inshore fishing trips near me here.

Live Music

Many of the bars and restaurants around Amelia Island offer great live music on various nights. You can hear a variety of genres from Caribbean music and beach music to rock and country. My nephew is a guitarist and avid rock fan, so we definitely had to check out the scene.

Two places we went were Sliders and Overtime. Sliders is a beachfront restaurant with great views, indoor/outdoor/upstairs seating. They have a stage in the back outdoor area where various bands play live music on some nights.

Overtime Bar and Grill is located near downtown Fernandina and functions as a sports bar, but it has live music on the weekends, and trivia and open mic nights during the weekdays.

We saw our friend and local musician Patrick Haynes play covers at both venues. Check him out. He plays pedal steel for some of the songs! If you want to see what local musicians are playing soon, head to his Facebook page.

Downtown Shopping

When we wanted some downtime, we enjoyed heading to Fernandina Beach on the north end of the island. We explored the interesting shops, walked past historic homes, and enjoyed the view of Fort Clinch from the beach. There’s also a pinball museum with over 50 pinball games.

Bike Rentals

For a more strenuous activity to do with your teens, you can rent bikes to ride on the roads or, even better, on the beach. This is one of my family’s favorite activities. We love the beach wind in our faces and the endorphins from the exercise. We rent from Riptide Watersports. It’s a great place to rent a bike and lots of other beach and watercraft.

A popular guided bike ride to take is to Big Talbot Island State Park. This relaxed ride is an easy 7-mile round trip that takes you along the coastline and offers amazing views of the Big Talbot Island, over the George Crady Bridge, marshlands, various bird species and wildlife, and a glimpse into Florida’s natural beauty. The park has plenty to explore with its beach access, nature trails, picnic areas, and more!

Historical Tours

The last thing most teenagers want to do on vacation is learn. But if you have a history buff, Amelia Island is the right place! It’s the only place in America that’s had eight different flags fly over it. There are stories of battles, pirates, shipwrecks, and colonization from an island that has been inhabited by Europeans since 1565 (far earlier than most places in the US) and Native Americans far longer than that. You can learn more and see a list of tours and sites here.

Of more recent interest, Amelia Island has a beach called American Beach that was purchased by a black millionaire in the early 1900s. He opened it up to African American beachgoers during the Jim Crow era as a safe place to vacation since they weren’t allowed to use many other southern beaches. You can read more about its history here.

Ghost Tours

If you can’t sell your teens on learning more mundane history, maybe they’ll jump at the chance to learn about the supernatural history of the island. Amelia Island is old enough to have tons of tales of paranormal activity and plenty of ghost tours to make your teens need you to rock them to sleep for the first time in years.

As a side note, I’ve always wondered why all ghosts are at least 100 years old. Do they take a while to mature? I don’t know. But as they say, the family that screams together stays together.

The Ghost Tours of Amelia Island is a great place to start. Colleen will take you into cemeteries, historical sites, and past haunted houses, and she’ll equip you with ghost-hunting supplies. Bring your cameras to capture stuff you won’t believe.

Ritz-Carlton Teen Lounge

If you haven’t booked your accommodations yet and you’re bringing teens to Amelia Island, you may want to consider staying at the luxurious Ritz-Cartlon. This sprawling resort has literally everything—beach access, pools, restaurants, bars, fire pits, events, movies, water sports rentals, and really comfortable chairs everywhere.

Of particular interest to your teen, it has a family game room with video games, pool tables, and other features that convert into a teens-only lounge in the evenings. You can spend time together as a family, and then they can hang out with their peers afterward.

Horseback Riding

On the south side of the island is Amelia Island State Park with lots of options for beach exploration including driving on the beach, kayak rentals, and horseback riding. For horseback riding, you can book several different experiences including sunrise, sunset, beach, wilderness, and even private tours.

What could be more epic for your teen than getting to ride a horse on the beach at sunset? Check out Amelia Island Horseback Riding for more information and to book one of these amazing adventures.

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Electric Skateboard Tour

If your teenager has the balance and adventurousness for skateboarding, consider skipping the bikes for an electric skateboard rental—a unique way to transverse the island. You book electric skateboards with large wheels to explore the beaches here. You and your teens (or just your teens, if your joints aren’t ready for this) can explore the beaches, listen to music, and learn the history of the island.

Backwater Cat Adventure on Amelia Island

If you want to take your teen to experience some of the more scenic areas of Amelia Island, check out the Cat Adventure. Guests will drive a motorized catamaran through the marshes of Amelia Island and across state lines to Cumberland Island, GA, possibly seeing wild horses and dolphins along the way.

You’ll also get the chance to stop at an island to go swimming and explore. Only guests 18+ can drive, but you can steer your teens throughout the adventure in a two-seater catamaran. Head here for booking.

Cumberland Island Boat Tour

For a boat tour that requires less work than the Cat Adventure above, check out the Cumberland Island Boat Tour. You can experience the thrill of looking for wild horses, turkeys, dolphins, and alligators (even possible manatees and bald eagles!) in the fresh water and ocean of Amelia Island and Cumberland Island (just across the state lines into Georgia).

Along the way, the Coast Guard-certified captains will tell you the history of Amelia Island and Cumberland from 1565 to the present, including stories of pirates, Rockefellers, Kennedys, and everything in between. Boats leave daily at 10 AM for a 2.5-hour adventure. Head here to book and see pricing.

Conclusion and Further Reading

There you have it. Amelia Island is a great place for families to go to break the normal routine, get some vitamin D, and find adventure on the beach and in the wilderness. Now you have some great ideas for things to do in Amelia Island with kids that will get your teens out of their hoodies and into some experiences that will make core memories and bind you closer together.

For more ideas for what to do in Amelia Island, check out these posts (the links to the other articles once they’re published). And for some other stuff to do with teens in Florida destinations, check out my article about the scariest rides at Disney World or this article on 19 things to do in Central Florida that aren’t theme parks.

Bio:
Alex has three kids and an amazing wife, and he travels frequently with them. On his main blog, he shares tips, insights, and funny stories to help parents everywhere navigate Disney Parks and Disney Cruises. Find his Disney vacation insights here.

For more family travel inspiration, check out our latest posts here:

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