Theme & Amusement Parks in Aventura

Water features lace throughout Boomers! miniature-golf courses, gurgling cheerfully as putters attempt to elude windmill blades and wacky hazards. These carefully designed courses populate numerous national locations, running parallel to go-kart tracks or lawless bumper-boat lagoons abandoned by the Coast Guard. Inside old-fashioned arcade rooms, video games chirp in response to players' shouts of victory or defeat.

The parks' parent company—Palace Entertainment—maintains 8 theme parks, 11 water parks, and 21 family-entertainment centers tucked into various corners of the nation, making it an expert on providing family-style fun and laundering towels.

Festival of Souls immerses guests in horror-film-worthy scenes across two fearsome attractions that span 58,000 total square feet. Fiendish denizens lurk in the shadowy corridors of Demon Mansion, waiting to chill the spines of voyagers bold enough to plumb its hellish depths. After evading ghouls in the haunted house, guests turn the tables on their bewitched agitators in the Zombie Paintball Safari, during which guests wield paintball guns, climb board a hayride, and enter a 50,000-square-foot Quarantine Zone teeming with the undead. As the blood-splattered, grotesque corpses stagger into view, guests repel them with a volley of paint-filled orbs and unsolicited cosmetic advice.

Even before you climb inside, the GoCar is clearly a car with a personality. The petite, three-wheeled two-seater has a hood that slightly resembles an eager-to-please smiley face, and an open top that seems custom-made for letting the breeze ruffle your hair. Then the real fun begins: built with the company's own software and a compassion for the voiceless robots of America, a talking GPS system guides two-seater GoCars through the city streets of San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon with cheerful, info-rich narration. Second only to having a knowledgeable local jog alongside your minivan, tours zip along at drivers' own pace and accommodate as many pit stops as time allows.

Sock-footed children scamper around 7,000 square feet of indoor space that, like most office buildings, has specified zones for different age groups ranging from infants through preschoolers. In the back area, older kids strengthen eye-hand coordination with video games such as Madden NFL, while bounce houses help youngsters expend their boundless energy. In the playset area, kids can play house in a pretend kitchen, play train engineer on kid-sized railroads, or play Godzilla by sticking their hands in dollhouse windows. Infants and toddlers wander around a simpler play area near the parents' lounge, where guardians can keep one eye on their kids and the other on a TV or computer screen. At the end of the day, all surfaces are purified by a professional cleaning service with hospital-grade disinfectant.

With hands gripped to the wheels of karts capable of cresting 45 miles per hour, up to 12 racers hum around the hairpin turns and straightaways of K1 Speed's indoor track during adrenaline-spiking sprints toward the podium. This brand of excitement can be found at all 15 locations, where racers eschew the fumes and inflammatory skywriting of gas kart exhaust for European, eco-friendly electric karts designed to instantly accelerate out of curves, which are bordered by safety barriers that absorb impacts. To keep everyone in the chase, dialed-down junior karts (available at select locations) safely carry tiny drivers between the height of 48" and 58".

Gymboree offers a bevy of baby-engaging classes in which parents and wee ones work together to build tots' creativity and encourage development through play. Offered in monthly sessions, weekly classes are available for every age from the freshly born sapling to the 5-year-young wise wanderer. This deal includes rhythm-building music classes, imagination-expanding art classes, and Gymboree's most popular class, Play & Learn. The one-month membership (a $75 value, plus $60 membership fee) allows you to take one class per week, with makeups available during enrollment if you miss a class. This deal also includes unlimited attendance at Gymboree's open-gym sessions (contact location for schedule). One Groupon must be purchased for each child, and each child must be accompanied by at least one adult (but more than one adult is welcome).