Aruba With Kids: Eagle Beach or Palm Beach, and Why It Is Outside the Hurricane Belt

By Nicole Damiano, ASTA Verified Travel Advisor with FG Luxury Travel · Updated September 2026

Aruba is a small Dutch island off Venezuela that sits south of the hurricane belt, which means the beach week you book for September is the beach week you get. The water is calm every day, the wind is constant and cooling, and it rains for ten minutes a year. It is the easiest Caribbean island for a family, and I book it more than any other.

The choice is Eagle Beach or Palm Beach. Eagle is the wide, quiet, low rise beach with the fofoti trees on the sand and the resorts set back. Palm is the high rise strip with the big hotels, the water sports, the restaurants and the pier. Families with small children go to Eagle. Families with teenagers go to Palm. Both have water so calm a toddler can stand in it.

Five nights minimum. A week is the natural length. The all inclusives on Palm are the easy version. A condo on Eagle with a kitchen and a car is the version families come back to.

The days

One day around the island in a rented jeep. The California lighthouse at the north end, the natural bridge that fell and the small one that did not, Arikok national park for the natural pool in the rocks, the caves with the drawings, and Baby Beach at the south end, a lagoon so shallow it is a bathtub.

One boat day. A catamaran to the Antilla wreck for the snorkeling over a sunken German ship, with a slide off the back and a rope swing. De Palm Island for the water park and the flamingos. The submarine for the kids who will not put a face in the water.

The rest is the beach. The butterfly farm, the donkey sanctuary, the aloe factory tour for a rainy hour, which will not happen. Then Eagle Beach at sunset every night, because it is the best sunset in the Caribbean and it is free.

Planning Aruba with kids? Start with the full Aruba family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.