Considering a trip to Hammock Beach Resort with Kids? Here’s everything that you need to know!
Looking to take your family to a resort in Florida? We were looking for the perfect spring break locale – something within a 5 hour drive from Charleston and my son specifically requested a lazy river.
After doing a good amount of googling, we landed on Hammock Beach Resort in Palm Coast, Florida.
This resort is located just past Saint Augustine and is a super family-friendly place to go visit and enjoy the beaches and pools.
While it is not an all-inclusive resort, everything that you need is there. It would be very easy to spend a week at this resort without ever leaving. Here’s what we love about it!
Hammock Beach Resort with Kids
Hammock Beach is a family-friendly resort located in Palm Coast, Florida. We went in April for spring break, so keep that in mind when I mention the temperature of things in this post.
The Pools
The pools were such a highlight of this trip. Hammock Beach resort has nine pools.
One thing that I love is that they do not sell guest passes so everyone there is staying there. I’ve been to resorts before they offered day passes and they can be super crowded with people just coming to use the pools. That was not an issue at Hammock Beach, though the pool chairs did get filled up in the sunny mornings.
The main pool is a “heated” pool with two waterfalls and a big water slide. It had a beach entrance and was perfect for a little kids.
Near that heated pool there was also a lazy river. This is a really big lazy river – I was impressed – and it had a lot of different sprayers and squirter’s. The lazy river was not heated and was very very cold. My kids didn’t care at first but they did get cold after a while. Luckily, it was easy to run to the heated pool.
Straight upstairs from the lazy river, there was another section with an adults only pool and a huge hot tub. Seriously, the hot tub is larger than my next-door neighbor’s backyard pool. I loved the hot tub, especially on our cold day.
On the other side of the section, there was a beach entrance style pool with a sandy bottom. To be honest, we only went to this pool once, because it was so so cold being unheated, it was pretty much unusable this week.
Additionally, there is an indoor pool that has two normal sized hot tubs off to the side. I’m not an indoor pool girlie, but it was nice on a rainy day or to really heat up when the kids got cold in the lazy river.
Finally, we found another pool down by the Atlantic Grill restaurant. Every time we saw it it was completely empty, because it was separate from the rest of the complex.
I loved that you could sit by the pool, order food and drinks and just really relax. The pools are what made this place really feel like a resort experience and I give them three thumbs up.
The Beach
I have very mixed feelings about the beach at Hammock Beach. I grew up in North Carolina and have lived in Charleston for over a decade so I am totally used to east coast beaches.
That being said, this beach had a lot of very large rocks, right where the water hit the shore. They were actually pretty cool to look at, and my kids like to check them out for a little crabs or critters.
However, we saw quite a few families with older kids who were hoping to boogie board or similar and were unable to because it would’ve been really dangerous.
With that in mind, the sandy part of the beach was wonderful. There’s tons of seashells – way more than we have at our beaches here in Charleston.
We had a really nice time on the beach.
Know that the water was ice cold the first week of April, but that was to be expected.
I will say that I wish they had a better bathroom situation near the beach. I had to take my kids in their swimsuits down the beach to the stairs, then walk a little ways to the fancy restaurant, which is at the beach and sort of walk into the fancy restaurant in our swimsuits to use their bathroom. Seems like they should have a bathroom by itself closer to the ocean.
The Restaurants
The resort has 9 restaurants in total. This includes a pool bar with food, a coffee shop, a pizzaria and gelato shop, a “fancy” restaurant, and then a little complex with a sports bar, sushi place, and italian restaurant.
Overall, the food was fine but overpriced – exactly what you would expect.
We did not book a room with a kitchen so we ate out every meal except some breakfast items we packed with us. It gets pricey quickly!
I will say we loved having breakfast at the Atlantic Grill. The food was fine, but what was amazing was sitting on the deck overlooking the ocean while eating!
Otherwise, the sushi was actually my favorite meal. It was delicious. And every spot had a kids menu and was very, very child friendly.
My one last gripe is the italian restaurant – they told us reservations only, and that they were all booked until 9pm. I went to sit at the bar and wait for takeout around 6:00 and the place was empty. It definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but we took the food to eat at the picnic tables on the water and had a lovely night anyways.
The Rooms
One thing that I don’t really love about this resort is that all or at least most of the rooms are privately owned condos. I don’t think that I really understood this when we booked our room.
What it means is that all of the rooms are different. Some have been renovated or redecorated, and some are very old.
It also means that we could not change rooms. Apparently we had specifically booked a specific room – like it was an Airbnb or something.
Despite this, you check in at the front desk just like a hotel. It’s just they can’t really help you with anything.
Additionally, there are a lot of units that are more like apartments with multiple bedrooms and a living room. We had just a hotel room style one room studio space. It was not ideal since our kids go to bed early.
Definitely if we go back, I will pick a bigger room.
The Town
I will say that there is not much of a town nearby. If you want to see town, you drive to St Augustine. It is advertised as 20 minutes away but we found it more like 30 minutes away.
If you are visiting for a short trip, I’d just plan not to leave the resort.
The Overall Experience
Overall, we really enjoyed our stay at Hammock beach. As I said, I would return when the water was a bit warmer. I’d book more of an apartment with a kitchen and bedrooms and I’d make my own lunch and breakfast, at least. Otherwise, it was a perfect spring break with the kids!
Highlights of Hammock Beach
- 100% super child and family friendly
- Great variety of fun pools
- Private pools – no day passes so not too crowded
- Easily accessible food
- Free unlimited putt putt
- Nice beach (water not so much but sand and shells were great)
- Super friendly staff
Drawbacks to staying at Hammock Beach
- Beach was very rocky – not good if you want to swim
- Weather was cold in April – not their fault but made for some cold pool days
- Room set up was a bit awkward and the room felt very dated. Unable to switch to a higher floor since I had unknowingly booked a first floor room.
- Food is expensive (but convenient)
- Bit of a walk to the beach from the hotel
Where’s your favorite beach resort?!
Thanks for reading!
Hey there, I’m Morgan, the creative mind behind CelebratingWithKids.com! As a parent of two lively little ones, I’ve made it my mission to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures, sharing playful activities, thoughtful toy reviews, and delightful printables to help families celebrate every moment together. 🎉👨👩👧👦🎈