A family week in Side splits into three kinds of day
Side sits on a stretch of coast where three holidays overlap. The resort belt — Side itself, Kumköy, Evrenseki, Çolaklı and the hotels either side of the Manavgat river mouth — is the beach-and-pool holiday. The ancient town and the river town of Manavgat supply half-days that need no planning at all. And the Taurus mountains start immediately behind the hotels, which is where the booked full days go.
With children, the useful planning unit is not the attraction but the day. A week holds four or five unstructured beach days, two or three easy half-days and one or two full excursion days, and the mistake families make most often is stacking the two full days back to back. If you would rather see the week mapped attraction by attraction without reference to ages, we keep an honest week-long plan for Side; this page does the opposite and plans by them.
- Unbooked days: the beach, the pool and the sea in front of your hotel
- Half-days on the belt: the ancient town, the harbour front, the river town of Manavgat
- Full days inland: the Taurus mountains and Green Canyon, or white water in Köprülü Canyon
Under four: free on paper, and the honest question behind it
Every day tour we sell carries children aged 0-3 free of charge; the night jeep safari is the exception, because it starts at twelve. That is a price band, not a recommendation, and we would rather say so here than let a family work the difference out halfway up a mountain track. The full-day jeep safari runs eight hours, much of it on unsealed roads, and in summer the jeeps are open-topped. Whether that suits a two-year-old is a judgement only the parents can make — a price list does not take that decision for them.
On the rafting days the bands say it more plainly: infants of 0-3 travel free, and the child rate — the first age those days are priced for at all — begins at four. For families whose youngest is still very small, the resort belt does most of the work — sea in the morning, shade in the afternoon, the ancient town in the evening.
Four to twelve: the age the inland day was built for
From four a child pays the child rate and, far more to the point, gets everything the day was designed to give. On the full-day jeep safari that takes children from four the child rate is EUR 10 against EUR 20 for an adult, lunch at a lakeside restaurant by Green Canyon is included for both, and hotel pickup and drop-off come with the price. There is also a second full-day jeep safari at the same price — the same day with a zoo stop added, where a photograph with a lion cub is possible, that ticket paid on site rather than included. Families choose one or the other at booking: the classic day does not go there.
Three parts of that day belong to children in particular. Summer departures run water fights between the jeeps in the convoy, and it is worth knowing how the summer water fights actually work before you decide. There is a swim stop at Oymapınar village with freshly made Turkish pancakes and a drink. And after lunch there is an optional one-hour boat trip on Green Lake at EUR 5 per person, paid on the day, which brings an adult's day to EUR 25.
Out of season the same tour is a different day, which matters if you are travelling in winter: the jeeps run covered and there are no water games at all.
- Side Jeep Safari, 8 hours: 0-3 free, 4-12 EUR 10, 13+ EUR 20 — lunch and hotel pickup included
- Optional Green Lake boat trip: EUR 5 per person, paid on the day
- Side rafting and jeep safari combo, 7 hours: children 4-11 EUR 17, adults 12 and over EUR 28
- Nine-hour rafting and jeep combos from Evrenseki, Kumköy and Manavgat: child EUR 24, adult EUR 40
Teenagers: the adult rate at thirteen, and two days that begin at twelve
Teenagers are the age the resort belt loses first, and the two answers to that are water and rough ground. The seven-hour rafting and jeep safari combo from Side puts them on roughly twelve kilometres of river in Köprülü Canyon with helmets, paddles and life jackets provided and lunch included, and counts guests from twelve as adults at EUR 28.
The other is the night jeep safari for ages twelve and over: five hours, EUR 35 per person, dinner on board and a catamaran cruise with music, running from early June to mid-November. It is built for that age on purpose and is not suitable for younger children — a day to plan around rather than to bring the whole family to.
One thing worth settling with a teenager in advance: guests do not drive. The night jeep safari states that as a rule, and on the full-day safari every jeep in the convoy has a professional driver at the wheel.
Mixed ages: one week for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old
Most families are not one age band. The trick is to find the single day everybody shares and split the rest. The full-day jeep safari is usually that day: it takes children from four, it gives a teenager the off-road sections, the riverbed crossings and the viewpoints above Green Canyon, and it gives the adults lunch by the water in the middle of it.
The days that will not stretch are the ones limited by their own age bands — the night safari at twelve and over, and the rafting days, where the child rate only begins at four. Split those: one parent takes the older child while the other keeps the beach day running. Everything is priced per person and paid on the day, so dividing a family across two days costs nothing extra to hold. When you want the arithmetic worked through example by example, the full family FAQ for the jeep safari does exactly that.
What the resort belt gives you beyond the pool
Between the booked days, Side gives families more than most beach destinations do. The ancient town stands in the middle of the modern resort rather than behind a fence out of town, so walking through it is an evening activity rather than an expedition. The harbour front is a flat, pushchair-friendly stroll. Manavgat, a little way inland, is a working river town rather than a resort, worth an afternoon with older children, and the river carries the waterfall everybody has heard of.
We run jeep and rafting days; we do not run the museums, the water parks or the boats on the river, and we will not print opening hours, ticket prices or age rules for places we do not operate — your hotel desk has that for the week you are actually there.
Where our own days fit, honestly
Here is the family-relevant range in one place, with the age bands as they are actually sold rather than as they are usually summarised. Two of these lines carry hard age limits; the rest are a question of stamina rather than rules.
Families based further east have their own version of the mountain day: the Alanya jeep day to the Dim River runs eight hours from April to November with pickup from Kestel to Okurcalar, takes children from four at EUR 17 against EUR 30 for an adult, and keeps the summer water fights, a village and mosque visit and a swim stop with lunch beside the river.
- Side Jeep Safari, Taurus Mountains — 8 hours, 0-3 free, 4-12 EUR 10, 13+ EUR 20, lunch and hotel pickup included
- Side Jeep Safari with the zoo stop — the same 8 hours and the same prices, the same day plus a zoo stop where a lion cub photograph is possible, ticket paid on site
- Side Night Jeep Safari with dinner and catamaran cruise — 5 hours, EUR 35, ages 12 and over only, early June to mid-November
- Side rafting and jeep safari combo — 7 hours, infants 0-3 free, child 4-11 EUR 17, adult 12+ EUR 28
- Rafting and jeep combos from Evrenseki, Kumköy and Manavgat — 9 hours, child EUR 24, adult EUR 40
- Alanya Jeep Safari to the Dim River — 8 hours, 0-3 free, 4-12 EUR 17, 13+ EUR 30, April to November
Booking around children who change their minds
A family booking costs nothing at the moment you make it: no prepayment, no card taken online, the family total handed over in euros on the day, and free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure. With small children that matters more than the price does — a bad night or a temperature the evening before stops being an expensive problem.
Pickup and drop-off are from your hotel, at the main entrance gate, and the exact time is confirmed after booking rather than published here, because it differs from hotel to hotel. Guiding runs in English, German and Russian as well as Turkish, so a child's question usually gets answered in the family's own language. Carry some cash in euros for the parts that are not included: the Green Lake boat trip, drinks, and the Manavgat Waterfall entrance if the day's programme takes it in — that stop depends on the programme and we do not promise it.
Then the packing, which with children is mostly a change of dry clothes: read what to pack for an open-jeep day before the morning itself.