Vermont's Woodstock Inn Family Resort
Kid-friendly Luxury and Active Sports in the Green Mountains
Jul 5, 2009
Although it’s a full service resort, with three restaurants, golf course and full fitness center, the Woodstock Inn is committed to offering families an experience that keeps all ages happy. The emphasis is on quality time spent doing things together, but supervised activities are planned for children during the evening, so parents can enjoy leisurely fine dining or a casual bar dinner in the tavern.
But children are more than welcome in the elegant dining room, which has a fountain and pool in its center. The Red Rooster offers kids an extensive and creative children’s menu of nine main dishes, including salmon and fried, grilled or steamed shrimp, and the wait staff treats them as guests, not as a nuisance.
Family-Friendly Sports
The concierge is equally tuned to families, and can arrange for bicycles rentals in all sizes or even kayak trips that include children as young as eight. Or they have maps of the carriage roads and trail on nearby Mount Tom, part of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park, and a 10-minute walk from the inn on a rout that goes through a covered bridge.
Free Admission at the Billings Farm
Guests staying at the Woodstock Inn simply show their room cards to get free admission at the Billings Farm and Museum, also within walking distance. Programs all day long introduce them to this 19th-century farm, where they can visit the herd of 60 Jersey cows and their calves. At 3:30 pm every day, milking time, kids can learn how cows are milked.
They can wander through the 1890s farmhouse and learn how butter was made and kept in an icehouse, watch videos of old-time ice harvesting and maple sugaring in the lively museum, and learn historic crafts – stenciling, cornhusk dolls, wool crafts that they can take home. Rangers lead free nature walks through America’s oldest managed forest, now the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. Inside the park, the Rockefeller Mansion is open for tours by reservation, and its magnificent gardens are open free.
Family Packages at the Woodstock Inn
The resort itself has plenty of activities to amuse the entire family: indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a complete fitness center, golf course, hiking trails, gift shop and three restaurants. In the winter the Inn’s ski area, Suicide Six, is free to guests on weekdays, and the golf course becomes a cross-country ski center with equipment rentals for all sizes.
Family packages at the Woodstock Inn include the full breakfast buffet, plus free admission to both VINS, a nearby raptor rehabilitation center with eagles, owls and other large birds and frequent programs where visitors can learn more about the birds and see them in action. Free tickets are also provided for the whole family to the Montshire Museum, a science and natural history center especially designed to engage children.
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