Indoor Activities for Kids in NYC When It Rains

Choose the place by what your child needs from a wet day in New York: something to climb, something to discover, something to make, or somewhere calm. A toddler needs a room the bigger children can't take over, and a child who has been indoors since breakfast needs height and noise. The answer is often closer to home than the tourist lists suggest, because Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island all have places worth the trip.

Venues with a card below are ones we list, and the card carries the admission price we hold and when we read it. Museums and libraries carry no card here, so check their own sites for tickets and opening times before you set off.

Where can they run, climb and jump until they're tired?

After a morning indoors the need is physical. Look for height, something to bounce on, and a floor big enough that you aren't refereeing.

Royal Magic Castle in Flushing is a large modern floor with a laser tag arena, a sand room, a dressing-up area and interactive projectors. Its pass runs on a clock at weekends and holidays but has no time limit on a school day, which makes a wet weekday in term time the best version of a visit. The rate also depends on your child's height, so ask for the one that applies before you pay.

Just Kidding's South Shore site on Staten Island sells its play passes bundled with tokens, and the play area is zoned by age group rather than left as one open scramble. Socks are compulsory, so pack a pair for each child.

Catch Air in Middle Village is an indoor playground whose equipment skews young, and the venue's own page says it is built for younger children. The ticket covers the whole day, and outside food is generally not allowed, so eat before you go or plan to buy lunch there.

PlayWell in Brooklyn splits its space rather than giving you one big hall: a gym area for running and climbing, a swing and zip-line section, and separate rooms with a play kitchen and books where a child can step out of the noise without leaving. Everything is padded and the play area is shoes-off.

Kiddo X Wonderland, also on Staten Island, is run by an owner who is out among the parents rather than behind the desk, and reviewers keep calling it the cleanest play space they know. Claw and quarter machines wait for a child who tires of climbing, and slippers sit outside the bathroom door so nobody walks back onto the play floor in wet socks, which on a rainy day is exactly the detail you want.

Where does a small child get the floor to themselves?

On a crowded wet afternoon, the risk for a toddler is the big kids. The rooms worth choosing keep the scale small on purpose, and two museums further down, in Manhattan and Brooklyn, keep spaces just for their youngest visitors.

Chelsea Forest Play in Manhattan is a wooden forest build with astro-turf underfoot, and its activities rotate, so a return visit finds a different room. It is pitched at toddlers and preschoolers, the staff play with the children rather than watching from a desk, and it runs by reservation, so book before you set out.

House of Wonder in Clinton Hill is a small, deliberately uncluttered room of good toys, with a coffee bar along one side, and a regular praises it for keeping a crawler and an older sibling happy at the same time. It fills up: several visitors describe being turned away at the door, so on a rainy day check its live status before you leave home.

Where will they learn something without noticing?

A museum built for touching does on a rainy day what a playground does, and a child comes home knowing something. The spaces below are permanent rather than changing exhibitions, so they will still be there when you are.

At the American Museum of Natural History, the fossil halls are the reliable draw for a dinosaur-mad child: two dinosaur halls with Tyrannosaurus rex and Apatosaurus, and the Titanosaur stretched across the orientation center.

The Children's Museum of Manhattan on the Upper West Side is built on hands-on play, and it keeps PlayWorks, a space set aside for its youngest visitors.

Further up the Upper West Side, Play Street Museum is a much smaller room of pretend play, filled with costumes, props and themed stations. Admission buys a timed session and reviewers say the clock runs fast, so arrive at the start of your slot.

Brooklyn Children's Museum in Crown Heights keeps two permanent exhibits that suit a wet day: Totally Tots, a run of play areas for its youngest visitors, and Neighborhood Nature, which brings children to life science through a garden and the museum's diorama habitats.

The New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn is set in an old subway station, and its platform level is lined with vintage subway and elevated cars, which is as close to heaven as a train-obsessed child gets.

The Bronx Children's Museum, for years a museum on a bus, now has a permanent home in the Powerhouse Building at Mill Pond Park, where families play and learn through exhibits rooted in the Bronx.

On the Intrepid, stay below decks: the Exploreum is an interactive space designed for families, where a child can climb into a helicopter and lie in a sailor's bunk, and the Space Shuttle Pavilion houses Enterprise.

The Staten Island Children's Museum at Snug Harbor is one you play rather than look at. Children build a house, perform a show, captain a ship and run a conveyor belt.

What if they'd rather make something than run around?

Some children spend a rainy day best with their hands busy. A making space gives a child a project instead of a circuit, and it travels well with a sibling who wants the same.

The Met's 81st Street Studio is a dedicated art-and-science play space inside the museum on Fifth Avenue, built around exploring what things are made of, and it makes a good break between galleries.

At the New York Hall of Science in Queens, Design Lab hands children raw materials and engineering challenges to solve, and Connected Worlds, an immersive animated world about how ecosystems balance, is next door in the same building.

The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria suits a child who loves cartoons and games. Its core exhibition, Behind the Screen, lets visitors play classic arcade and console games, turn their own movements into a flipbook and make a stop-motion animation.

Where is it calm enough for a reset?

Some wet days the need is the opposite of energy. A child who is overtired, overwhelmed or simply done with crowds needs somewhere with fewer people and lower voices.

A library children's room is the classic answer. Queens Public Library's Children's Library Discovery Center, inside the Central Library in Jamaica, mixes books with hands-on interactive exhibits and learning labs. Brooklyn's Central Library at Grand Army Plaza, the borough's main library, has its own Youth Wing for children.

If your child finds a busy play space hard, Complete Playground in the Financial District sets aside the start of every day as a sensory-friendly hour, and later in the day it is a big multi-floor room of mazes and games. For a child who struggles with noise, the early slot is the one to aim for.

Why stay in your own borough?

In the rain, the crossing is the part that goes wrong: a transfer in a wet station, a stroller and no elevator, a child soaked before you have arrived anywhere. Outside Manhattan there is usually a good answer closer than that.

Brooklyn has House of Wonder, PlayWell, its Children's Museum and the Transit Museum. Queens has Royal Magic Castle, Catch Air, the Hall of Science and the Museum of the Moving Image. The Bronx has its Children's Museum, and Staten Island has Kiddo X Wonderland, Just Kidding and the Staten Island Children's Museum, none of which needs the ferry if you live there.

If all you need is somewhere near home to run around, our indoor playground pages for New York City, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island carry the fuller lists, with prices on every card. And if the rainy day is also a birthday, our guide to NYC birthday party ideas by age takes that question age by age.

Getting across town in the rain: what helps?

Plan the route around elevators rather than distance. Carrying a stroller down wet stairs with a child on your hip is the worst part of a rainy outing, so check which stations on your way have elevators before you leave, or bring a carrier or a stroller you can fold with one hand.

Pack for the arrival as much as the journey. A small play space may have nowhere to hang wet coats, so a bag for them helps, and a spare pair of socks for everyone saves the day when shoes leak, above all where grip socks are required on the floor. Leave the umbrella at home if you have a toddler in tow: a hood and boots leave both your hands for the child.

Book anything that takes bookings, because rain fills small rooms early and the walk-in places are the first to turn people away. Check the food rules before you pack lunch, since some play spaces don't allow outside food. And if the forecast turns, have a second choice in your own borough, so a closed door doesn't cost you the afternoon.