Rainy day moves

Tropical weather on the Gulf is mostly fast-moving — most "rainy days" are a few hours of weather and a recovery. But when it parks, you need indoor options. Here's the short list.

Inland and indoor

• OWA Tropic Falls (Foley): indoor waterpark + outdoor amusement park. The Tropic Falls indoor side is a real waterpark, not a lobby with a slide. Half-day or full-day pricing. More on OWA →
• The Wharf (Orange Beach): shops, restaurants, ferris wheel, mini golf, movie theater. Not as deep as OWA but if you're already on the AL side it's a much shorter drive. More on the Wharf →
• Movie theaters: Tanger Outlets Foley has a theater; Pensacola has bigger options 30-45 minutes east.
• The Naval Aviation Museum (Pensacola): free, world-class, the kind of place a kid remembers. Indoor, lots of aircraft, the IMAX is genuinely good.
• Pensacola Children's Museum: downtown Pensacola, smaller-format but well-run.
• Arcades on the strip: several arcades along Perdido Beach Blvd and at the Wharf. Old-school redemption tickets, the works.
• Bowling: Pensacola has a couple of options, Foley has one. Always available, always dry.

The bookstore-and-coffee rainy day

If your family is the lower-key version of this — a coffee shop with WiFi, a bookstore, a long lunch — the inland Baldwin and Pensacola options are better than what's on the Key itself, where the tourist-economy means most places are designed for beach-day customers.

The rainy-day-on-the-beach option

If it's a soft rain and a warm day, the beach is still the beach. Pop-up tent, a deck of cards, the rain comes and goes. Some of our best memories with the kids are on the soft-rain days when nobody else was on the sand. As long as there's no lightning, you're fine.

If lightning's around, get inside. Don't make it interesting.