The best family hotels in Nashville
Written November 2026
Nashville is Music City, and the music is for kids too: the Country Music Hall of Fame hands out Young Explorer kits and has recording booths in its education center. Away from the honky-tonks there's a zoo with a train and a carousel, and the Adventure Science Center has planetarium shows. One hotel puts out free dinner every evening, and another has a whole water park inside.
Downtown and SoBro
Lower Broadway is the middle of downtown, a street of honky-tonks with live music, and SoBro is the newer neighborhood just south of it, with the convention center, the symphony hall and the big hotels. From here you can walk to Broadway, the Ryman, the arena and the museums, and the river is a few blocks east.
Drury Plaza Hotel Nashville Downtown
SoBro
Dinner is on the house at the Drury. The 5:30 Kickback puts out hot food every evening, with enough on it to feed the kids. The pool up on the roof is half indoors and half out, with a whirlpool, and the Kitchen + Bar on the eighth floor has live music every night and stays open late.
The King Suite has a door between the bedroom and the living room, where the sofa pulls out into a queen. Broadway is about a five-minute walk, and Wasioto Park is under half a mile away on the river, with sand play and a slide built into the embankment.
- Cribs
- Yes
- Suites
- Yes
- Fridge
- Yes
- Pool
- Yes, indoor
- Free breakfast
- Yes
Embassy Suites by Hilton Nashville Downtown
SoBro
This is the biggest Embassy Suites in the country, 30 stories tall, and the pool is at the very top. It's glassed in, with doors that open onto a deck, and the water is warm and shallow from end to end, with views over the whole city and a bar that serves food.
In the suites a door closes the bedroom off from the front room with the pull-out sofa. The hotel is across the street from the Music City Center and a block or two off Broadway, and Martin ArtQuest, the art-making space inside the Frist, is about 1,100 feet away.
- Cribs
- Yes
- Connecting rooms
- Yes
- Suites
- Yes
- Fridge
- Yes
- Pool
- Yes, indoor
- Free breakfast
- Yes
- Laundry
- Yes
Midtown and Vanderbilt
Midtown runs between downtown and Vanderbilt University, with students and people from the music business in its restaurants and bars, and Music Row, where a lot of the songs you know were made, right next to it. Lower Broadway is about 2 miles away, and Centennial Park, home of the Parthenon, is the neighborhood's big park.
Homewood Suites by Hilton Nashville Vanderbilt
West End
Homewood Suites sits on West End Avenue right across from Vanderbilt, and Centennial Park is about 1,700 feet away, with a playground, a steam locomotive to look at and a lake full of ducks.
The hotel runs a free shuttle downtown, and it will do your grocery shopping at no charge.
- Cribs
- Yes
- Suites
- Yes
- Fridge
- Yes
- Kitchenette
- Yes
- Pool
- Yes, indoor
- Free breakfast
- Yes
- Laundry
- Yes
Kimpton Aertson Hotel
Midtown
The pool on the Aertson's eighth-floor roof has a zero-depth end where the lounge chairs sit right in the water. It looks out over the Vanderbilt campus, and people who live in the apartments in the building swim there too.
It's a stylish, grown-up hotel, best with teenagers. Lower Broadway is about a mile and a half down the street, and Elliston Place Soda Shop, a soda fountain since 1939 with milkshakes and banana splits, is about a third of a mile off.
- Cribs
- Yes
- Suites
- Yes
- Fridge
- Yes
- Pool
- Yes
Music Valley and Opryland
Music Valley is the Grand Ole Opry's neighborhood, by the Cumberland River. The Opry House is here, Opry Mills (the mall with Madame Tussauds and a Lionel train store) is next door, and the General Jackson showboat leaves from close by.
Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center
Music Valley
Gaylord Opryland has nine acres of indoor gardens with waterfalls and an indoor river, and riverboats take you through the Delta atrium while a guide talks about the plants and the fish. SoundWaves, the indoor and outdoor water park, has Half Note Cove for little kids (a play structure with small slides and a shallow pool), a splash pad called Quarter Note Cove and a FlowRider for surfing. A room on its own doesn't include it: SoundWaves comes with the SoundWaves Experience Package.
The Interior Atrium View rooms have one king or two queens and a balcony over one of the three atriums. The Garden Conservatory side is the quieter one. The resort's free shuttle goes to Opry Mills, and Slick City, with indoor slides and a soft-play Junior Jungle for kids 5 and under, is about half a mile from the resort.
- Cribs
- Yes
- Connecting rooms
- Yes
- Suites
- Yes
- Fridge
- Yes
- Pool
- Yes, indoor
- Waterslide
- Yes
Photo credits
Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center: Antony-22 (CC BY-SA 4.0)