Louisiana Plantations, Baton Rouge and the Gulf Coast With Kids: The Honest Way to Do It

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

Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge the River Road runs past the old sugar plantations, and how you visit them matters. Beyond that the state has a battleship, a giraffe safari and a Gulf beach that most travelers never find.

Plantations with kids

Whitney Plantation is the one to choose. It is the only plantation museum focused on the lives of the enslaved people who lived there, with memorials, the original cabins and a tour that treats kids with respect and tells the truth. It suits kids over about ten. Laura Plantation nearby is a Creole house with a strong story told through one family and it works for slightly younger kids. Oak Alley has the famous avenue of oaks for the photo and has added exhibits on slavery. Do Whitney and one other, and talk about it in the car afterward.

Baton Rouge

The State Capitol is the tallest in the country and the observation deck is free, with the bullet holes from Huey Long’s assassination on the tour. The USS Kidd is a destroyer moored on the river that kids climb through. The Louisiana Art and Science Museum has a planetarium. LSU’s Mike the Tiger lives in a habitat by the stadium and you can see him for free. The Knock Knock Children’s Museum is one of the better ones in the South.

Global Wildlife Center

North of the lake near Folsom, a safari park where a covered wagon drives through a herd of giraffes, zebras, bison and camels that come right up for food from the cup in your hand. Kids of every age lose their minds over the giraffes.

Grand Isle

Louisiana’s only inhabited barrier island, two and a half hours south of New Orleans at the end of the road. A state park with a beach, a fishing pier and a campground, and a town of houses on stilts. It is not the Florida Gulf. It is brown water and shrimp boats and a beach that families from the state have gone to for a century. Fishing from the pier is the activity.

Creole Nature Trail

In the southwest corner around Lake Charles, a drive through marsh and along the Gulf with alligators in the ditches, birds everywhere and a beach at Holly Beach. The Adventure Point visitor center gives kids the map.

Practical

The plantations are an easy day from New Orleans with a car or on a tour. Baton Rouge is another hour. Summer is very hot and humid, so fall through spring is the time.

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