Is This the Best Family Resort in the U.S.? The Boca Raton Resort Review

A ton of my clients always ask for the best USA resort for families, whether it’s for spring break or an easy weekend getaway, and without a doubt, this is always on my top recommendations. This GEM of a resort in South Florida just turned 100 years old, and went through a $375 million remodel. It looks like a pink palace that belongs in France, and holds four Forbes Five Star awards, which no other resort in the Americas can say. And it’s still, somehow, very under the radar.

Welcome to The Boca Raton. I think it is the most underrated family resort in the country right now, and I do not think it’s going to stay that way for much longer!

Why The Boca Raton is still flying under the radar

For decades this place was the Boca Raton Resort & Club, a Waldorf Astoria, and it was enormous, a little dated, and heavily booked with conferences and corporations. If you last saw it in 2015 you remember a lot of beige carpet and a lot of name badges. Palm Beach families booked The Breakers, instead, and that was that.

Then MSD bought it in 2019 for around $875 million, dropped the Waldorf flag, renamed it The Boca Raton, and started gutting and rebuilding it one hotel at a time. The Beach Club, the Tower and the Harborside Pool Club came first. The Cloister guest rooms are finishing up this fall. The golf course is in the middle of a full restoration.

So what exists today is essentially a brand new resort! The people who know it is new are locals, club members, and the small group of luxury travel advisors like me who have been sending clients here. And honestly, the rates and the availability have not yet caught up to how good it is.

READ NEXT: the best family resorts in the U.S. and the Caribbean

The Difference Between the Different Hotels at the Boca Raton Resort

This is the part that confuses people, and it matters enormously for booking. The Boca Raton is not one hotel. It is 337 acres with five separate hotels on it, split across two sides of the Intracoastal Waterway.

On the mainland side, which everyone calls Harborside, you have the Cloister (the original 1926 Addison Mizner building), the Tower, the Yacht Club and the Bungalows. That side holds the Harborside Pool Club, Spa Palmera, the golf course, the racquet club, the marina and most of the restaurants.

Across the water on the barrier island sits the Beach Club, with half a mile of private Atlantic beach, its own pools, its own restaurants and its own fitness club. A fleet of water taxis runs between the two sides all day, and the ride itself is about five minutes and is genuinely one of the best parts of the day for a four year old.

Every guest, in every one of the five hotels, has access to all of it. Where you choose just changes your commute and your vibe, and nothing else. 

The Harborside Pool Club: the water park that sells the whole trip

The water park is AMAZING and is the reason I put families here. The Harborside Pool Club is a real water park, not a resort pool with a slide bolted on.

• A 450-foot lazy river with zero depth entry at one end, so you can walk in with a toddler on your hip
• Two five-story water slides. Riders have to be 48 inches, which is the one rule that catches families with little ones off guard
• A FlowRider wave simulator, almost 40 feet of it, with instruction. My kids would have lived on this
• Three pools: a family pool, a quiet pool with a hot tub, and a cabana pool
• A Kids Splash Zone built around a climbable pirate ship with water cannons and mini slides, which is the zero-to-five headquarters

The cabanas are fab. There are 32 of them across the pools, all with butler service, and four of them are Kiddie Cabanas done up as Mini Chef, Princess, Mermaid and Pirate. If you have a little girl, book the mermaid one!!!

The kids clubs, honestly

Three separate clubs, for three separate ages!

• Banyan Bunch is the real kids club, ages 4 to 12, with actual programming (yoga, salsa, origami, storytime). It is not complimentary, so build it into your budget rather than assuming
• The Break is the 11 to 15 hangout at the pool club, with VR gaming, podcast recording and a T-shirt press. This is where your middle schooler disappears to
• The Game Loft and the arcade-style Game Room (pinball, air hockey, shuffleboard, racing sims) cover the teens and the rainy afternoon

A family with a 3 year old and an 11 year old gets very well served here, which is not true at most resorts this luxe!

Tower vs. Beach Club vs. Cloister: how to choose where to stay at The Boca Raton

The Tower: best for families who need space

The Tower is the 27-story building you can see from half of Boca. It sits right next to the Harborside Pool Club, which for a family with kids under ten is the whole argument. You walk out, you are at the lazy river. No water taxi, no shuttle, no negotiating.

The Tower also holds the most flexible suite configurations on the property, and the club level suites come with access to Top of the Tower, where they serve breakfast for suite guests, afternoon drinks and hors d’oeuvres, with a private lounge and a dedicated concierge. On a trip with grandparents, that lounge pays for itself in peace.

The best selling room in the entire resort is a Tower Ocean View three bedroom suite, and once you look at what it sleeps, you understand why.

The Beach Club: best for families who want the ocean out the door

Forbes Five Star, freshly rebuilt, sitting directly on the Atlantic with half a mile of private sand, three oceanfront pools, cabanas with attendants, and watersports right off the beach. Marisol handles indoor-outdoor all day dining and Onda runs seasonally on the sand.

The trade is the commute. You are on the barrier island, so the water park, the spa, the golf and most of the dining are a water taxi ride away. For a family with beach-age kids who want to walk out of the room and into the surf, it is the right call. For a family whose kids will want the slides five times a day, the Tower is easier.

The Cloister: best for the history, and for real connecting rooms

The Cloister is the original 1926 Mizner building and the heart of the whole place. It is where the shops, Spa Palmera and several of the restaurants live, so you can do an entire day without getting in a cart. The guest rooms and suites are being reimagined right now, 297 rooms and 28 suites, finishing this fall, with a design that leans into 1920s South Florida (including hallway carpets patterned with monkeys, a nod to Mizner’s pet monkey, which is the kind of detail I love).

It is also, and this is the part nobody writes about, the only hotel on the property where two guest rooms truly connect. More on that below, because it is the single most useful thing in this entire review.

The Yacht Club: adults only, so not your family pick

Forbes Five Star, adults only, with its own restaurant on the eighth floor, butler service and access to the private pool at Spa Palmera. I book this constantly for couples and girls’ trips. If you are traveling with kids, this one is not on your list, though it is very much worth knowing about for the trip you take without them.

The Bungalows: best for long stays, big groups and dogs

Low-rise, quiet, dog friendly, with two bedroom suites that have kitchens. If you are staying a week or more, traveling with a nanny, or bringing the dog, this is the one. The courtyard has a putting green under a huge banyan tree and it is an easy, contained place to let little kids run.

So which one do I book for families?

Mostly the Tower, sometimes the Beach Club. Kids under ten, the Tower. Teenagers who want the beach and the FlowRider equally, the Tower. Beach-obsessed family with older kids and no interest in slides, the Beach Club. Connecting rooms non-negotiable, the Cloister. Ten days or a dog, the Bungalows.

Connecting rooms at The Boca Raton:

This is the kind of thing I sort out for you before you book. Tell me what you want and I will come back with the configuration that works best and put the request in directly with the leisure sales team rather than leaving a note on a reservation and hoping. Send me your dates here and I can get you booked (with free VIP perks and travel-advisor-exclusive rates!)

• The Cloister is the only hotel on property where two guest rooms genuinely connect to each other. Those rooms have two full-sized beds. Full beds, not queens. That is the trade you are making for a real connecting door
• The Yacht Club, Beach Club and Tower all have rooms with two queen beds, and none of those two-queen rooms connect to another two-queen room. What the team can do is request rooms near each other on the same floor. Requested, not guaranteed
• The Tower is where the connected suites live. The configuration I book most for multigenerational families is a one bedroom suite plus two studios all connected by a shared entry vestibule, which gives you three bedrooms behind one door. One of mine sleeps eight across a king suite with a sofa bed, a double queen studio and a corner king studio with a sofa bed, with room for a crib in any of the three bedrooms

So if your entire trip depends on a door between your room and your kids’ room, you have two options – Cloister connecting rooms with full beds, or a Tower vestibule suite. 

Spring break at The Boca Raton: what you need to know

Spring break is the hardest week of the year to get right here, and it is also the week I book it most. A few things I have learned:

• Peak season runs November through May! The resort’s ideal length of stay is four to five nights, and that is genuinely the sweet spot. Three nights and you will not touch half the property
• Book roughly 9 months out for spring break or more. The connected Tower suites go first, because every multigenerational family wants the same thing
• Reserve dining, cabanas, spa and racquet clinics before you arrive. The resort tells advisors this directly, and in peak weeks it is not optional. The cabanas at the pool club sell out
• Fort Lauderdale is your airport, about 25 minutes by car. Not Miami, not West Palm. FLL is cheaper to fly into than PBI most of the time and closer than MIA
• Know the golf situation. The course closed in April 2026 for its Brian Silva restoration and is projected to reopen this fall. If golf is the reason someone in your group is coming, confirm the status before you book

If you are still deciding between Florida and somewhere a plane ride further, I laid out the full range of options in my guide to the best family resorts in the U.S. and the Caribbean, and for the Caribbean side of that decision, St. Barths with kids is a great post on our last spring break there!

Spring break and holiday weeks at The Boca Raton are exactly the weeks where having a luxury travel advisor is so important because the good configurations and the cabanas are gone long before the rates move. Hotel bookings with me are always free! It’s just perks for you.

The food, with a kid-reality check

There are more than a dozen restaurants and bars, which sounds like a lot until you have a family of five and three of them are hungry at 5:30pm.

The ones I would actually plan around:

• Flybridge is the Forbes Five Star one, up high, and it is the reservation you make for the night the kids are at Banyan Bunch
• Principessa Ristorante is the Italian, and Italian is the great equalizer with children. This is your safe family dinner
• Japanese Bocce Club is sushi and sake and, yes, bocce. Weirdly great with kids who are old enough to be entertained by a lawn game
• Flamingo Grill is the chophouse, for the adults-heavy dinner
• Marisol at the Beach Club is your all-day, indoor-outdoor, come-as-you-are lunch, and Onda runs seasonally right on the sand
• Sadelle’s handles brunch, and it is worth burning one of your breakfast mornings on

Beyond the water park

The beach and the water. Half a mile of private Atlantic beach, chairside food and drink service, and watersports off the sand: surf lessons, banana boats, bike rentals. The marina is a 30-slip setup and you can charter a yacht or a catamaran for the afternoon, which is the single best splurge on the property if you have a family that likes being on the water.

Racquets. Twelve tennis courts and twelve pickleball courts, with clinics and lessons. If you have a kid who plays, this is a real facility and not a couple of courts by the parking lot. Putting a 9 year old in a morning clinic is the cheapest two hours of peace you will buy all week.

Spa Palmera. 50,000 square feet, 44 treatment rooms, Forbes Five Star, and modeled loosely on the Alhambra. Book it for the morning your kids are at the pool club with the other parent. I have no notes on this other than go.

Golf. The Donald Ross course is being restored by Brian Silva, an architect who specializes in bringing Ross courses back to their original routing. When it reopens it is going to be a genuinely serious golf reason to come here. Right now it is a reason to check the date.

The honest cons

I am not going to pretend this place is perfect, nowhere is!

It is huge. 337 acres and over a thousand rooms. If you hate resorts where you have to think about logistics, this will annoy you. The water taxi is charming the first four times and then it is a thing you have to time.

The club membership dynamic is real. This is a resort and a private club at the same time. On a busy Saturday the pool club has members in it, and members know exactly where the good chairs are.

Not everything is included. The kids club is paid. The cabanas are paid. Valet is paid. The resort fee exists. This is a resort where you should decide in advance what you are buying, or the incidentals will surprise you at checkout.

It is not a beachfront resort unless you book the Beach Club. Four of the five hotels are on the Intracoastal side. Beautiful water, not the ocean. Know which one you bought.

So is it the best family resort in the U.S.?

For a family that wants a real water park, a real beach, a Forbes Five Star spa, twelve pickleball courts, a kids club, a teen hangout and a serious restaurant lineup, all inside 337 acres and twenty-five minutes from a major airport, I cannot name a better one in the country right now. The Breakers is wonderful and it does not have the water park. Orlando has the water park and not the beach or the spa. This is the one place that does the whole list.

Ask me again in two years and the secret will be out and the rates will reflect it. Right now it is the best value in family luxury travel in America, and I say that as someone who books family resorts for a living.

The Boca Raton with kids: quick answers

Is The Boca Raton good for families?

Yes! The Harborside Pool Club (450-foot lazy river, two five-story slides, a FlowRider, a pirate ship splash zone), a private half-mile beach, a kids club for ages 4 to 12, a separate teen hangout and twelve pickleball courts put it near the top of my U.S. list.

Which hotel at The Boca Raton is best for families?

The Tower, for most families. It is steps from the water park and it holds the largest connected suite configurations. The Beach Club wins if being on the ocean matters more than being on the slides, and the Bungalows are the pick for long stays, nannies and dogs.

Does The Boca Raton have a water park?

It has the Harborside Pool Club, which functions as one: three pools, a 450-foot lazy river with zero depth entry, two five-story water slides (48 inch minimum), a FlowRider wave simulator, a Kids Splash Zone with a climbable pirate ship, and 32 cabanas with butler service.

Can you get connecting rooms at The Boca Raton?

Only in the Cloister, where two guest rooms with two full-sized beds each genuinely connect to one another. In the Tower, Beach Club and Yacht Club, the two-queen rooms do not connect, though rooms near each other on the same floor can be requested. The Tower’s multi-room suites connected by a shared entry vestibule are the best option for a big family that needs three bedrooms behind one door.

Is The Boca Raton on the beach?

The Beach Club is, directly, with half a mile of private Atlantic sand. The other four hotels sit on the Intracoastal side, and a water taxi runs guests over to the beach all day.

How far is The Boca Raton from the airport?

About 25 minutes from Fort Lauderdale (FLL) by car, which is the airport I book for almost every client going here.

When is the best time to go?

Peak season is November through May, and spring break and the holidays are the two weeks to book about a year ahead. Four to five nights is the right length of stay.

Is the kids club included?

No. Banyan Bunch is a paid kids club, and the cabanas and valet are extra too. Budget for it rather than discovering it on the bill.

A few more family trips I get asked about

If you are working through your options this year, these are the ones that pair with this post: my full Palm Beach travel guide for the area around Boca, our stay at the Four Seasons Palm Beach if you want the smaller, quieter Florida option, where to stay in Cabo with a toddler, how to book Sea Island, and my guide to traveling with kids and having help, which is the most useful thing I have written for anyone planning a trip like this. And if the flight is the part you are dreading, my toddler flight tips are here for you.

How to book The Boca Raton (and why you should book it with me)

Booking a hotel through me costs you nothing. No fee, no markup. What it gets you is a set of perks attached to the exact same room you were about to book yourself, plus someone on the inside when you need the connecting configuration, the crib, the cabana, the dinner reservation, or a fix at 6pm on a Saturday.

At The Boca Raton specifically, here is what comes with booking through me:

And the practical part, which is worth more than the perks: I book directly with the resort’s leisure sales team rather than through a call center. That is how the connected Tower suites get held, how a crib actually shows up in the right bedroom, and how your family gets VIP’d on arrival instead of being one of a thousand rooms.

Fill out this inquiry form here and I’ll help you plan your trip, or you can go directly to my travel portal and see my exclusive travel advisor rates and book yourself with all of my perks included! The password is always JETSETTERS (save this page to your bookmarks for future trips!)