Theme & Amusement Parks in Pembroke Pines

Sprawling across an indoor arena, Pump It Up's giant inflatables beckon kids to slide and bounce during private parties and open play. Technicolor bouncy castles send their inhabitants soaring, obstacle courses foster good-spirited competition, and ceiling-to-floor slides let sock-clad kiddies pretend they're escaping a giant gumball machine. Occasionally, Pump it Up's staff dims the lights and turns up the music to transform their facility into a glow-in-the-dark party catered to tweens and teens.

Pump It Up's staff supervises the arena during parties, giving parents time to relax and play patty cake uninterrupted. They can also help customers design personalized parties inside a private room with options such as pizza, drinks, goodie bags, balloons, and ice cream.

Imagine standing eye level with a giraffe, holding out your arm for parrots to land on, or massaging the shoulders of an endangered rhino. At Zoo Miami, these experiences happen every day, fulfilling the institution's mission of bringing people and animals as close as possible. More than 2,000 animals—from chimps to tigers to koalas—populate the African exhibit, Asian exhibit, Australian exhibit, and the most recent addition, the Amazon & Beyond exhibit. Many of the individual exhibitions don't use cages, but are instead bound by moats throughout more than three miles of walking trails. This setup allows guests to get closer to animals as they romp in their habitats. More than 1,200 plant species populate these habitats, which are re-creations of the animals' native environments.

Guests can use free WiFi to download a free mobile app for iPhones and Androids. The app then delivers functions such as location beacons so that family members keep track of one another, show times, and GPS-enabled maps that show the nearest dining venue or restroom. Transportation options within the zoo range from an air-conditioned monorail to tram tours, which provide behind-the-scenes insights such as which animals have recently had babies, what they named the babies, and each baby's first word. Developed specifically for kids, a children's zoo offers camel rides, a butterfly garden, and a playground split into water- and jungle-themed areas.

The zoo uses its resources to create symbiotic education and conservation programs. These efforts have raised funds and awareness for a cheetah conservation program in South Africa, the preservation and research of harpy eagles in Panama, and a program that trains Belize farmers in trapping relocating jaguars instead of killing them. This symbiotic approach in programming, which has helped Zoo Miami maintain accreditation from the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, is best illustrated by two of the zoo's mascots, Kaz the rhino and Pio the red-billed oxpecker, who rely on each other for survival in the wild.

At the center of Playtown Cafe’s child-size indoor town, servers escort gourmet sandwiches, wraps, and flatbreads to parents and kids seated at café tables. As their parents continue to munch and mingle, children frolic in and out of small storefronts painted in bright colors, pretending to run a bakery, create masterpieces in an art gallery, and shoplift from La Boutique. Youngsters dress up as superheroes and princesses in the boutique; play air hockey, arcade games, and dual Nintendo Wiis inside the garage; and manipulate a train set in the building zone, which is designed to resemble an unfinished house.

To burn off boundless stores of energy, kids can cross the play-city’s traffic-free road to cavort in a turf-floored indoor park, where staffers monitor them as they scale climbing walls, cross blue climbing bars, and shoot down wavy orange slides. Playtown’s staffers show an additional commitment to safety as they oversee a separate play area and ball pit designed just for toddlers, which is free of boogie monsters.

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.