When you head to Galveston Island on the coast of Texas, you may be picturing a hotel where you can stroll over to the sand and sea to lounge on the beach. You can’t do that from your room at Moody Gardens Galveston Hotel, but you can visit a great aquarium, visit a “rainforest pyramid,” watch a 3-D film, play golf, go to a waterpark, or ride a paddlewheel boat.
View from a room at Moody Gardens
So you will have plenty of ways to keep the family occupied if you stay at Moody Gardens or if you’re there for some kind of convention like I was, where you won’t be at the beach during the day anyway, there’s plenty of entertainment when the sessions and meetings are done.
This is officially the Moody Gardens Hotel, Spa, and Convention Center. So there’s a full convention center on site with more than 100,000 square feet of space, full catering, and parking for 1,000 cars.
Food & Drinks at Moody Gardens
The hotel itself is well-equipped, with a restaurant serving all meals and a bar right off the lobby. They offer some signature cocktails and a several Texas craft beer choices on tap.
Next to that is an area with a pool table and foosball table. Plus there are various private dining areas scattered around, including a lovely spot on the top floor with a view of the whole area.
My group was especially impressed with the banquet food here, which is seldom a highlight when you’re attending a conference. Everything served was scratch-made and tasty, a nice change from rubber chicken and items out of Sysco cans, We got some fresh seafood, dishes with local touches, and items with some real spice, including at breakfast.
Less dependable was the store and coffee cafe off the lobby, which seemed to be closed as much as it was open during our visit.
Fitness and Fun
If you want to spend the day at the beach, Moody Gardens Resort has you covered: they run a regular shuttle to the beach and back so you can enjoy some island time in the waves. For something closer, this Galveston Island resort has a large outdoor swimming pool area with lounge space and umbrellas all around it.
It’s a quite large pool that seldom gets crowded, with a bridge going over it and a big hot tub at one end. In the deck area there’s outdoor table tennis and giant chess. There’s a swim-up bar set-up, but apparently occupancy wasn’t high enough to warrant it when I was there as it wasn’t ever open.
There’s also an indoor lap pool and you have access to a full fitness center on site with a range of equipment. In a nice change from the norm, this hotel has airport-style water bottle refilling stations by the elevator so you don’t have to use any throwaway single-use plastic.
The hotel rents out complimentary bikes to ride as well and I took a spin one day to get some outdoor exercise. You could get to the beach on a bike as well if you didn’t want to depend on the shuttle. The miles of beaches on Galveston Island are all open to the public and the hotels are on the other side of the road, so you can stop anywhere you want.
The golf course here is one of the highest-rated in Texas and it’s also one of the most eco-friendly. It was the first course in the continental United States to be seeded with paspalum, a salt-resistant grass, and all the water used to irrigate it is gray water from the city of Galveston.
Moody Gardens is best known for all its entertainment options, including a full-blown waterpark with all kinds of slides and pools that families enjoy in the summer months. For a more educational slant, two big pyramid structures house entertaining nature-focused exhibits. One is focused on the rainforest, with a full tropical bird aviary, while the other is an impressive aquarium.
I didn’t make it to the rainforest or the movie theater, but I did get to spend some time in the Moody Gardens Aquarium. The jellyfish room was one of the coolest ones I’ve ever been in, with some interesting designs to show them off. We also got to get up close to a waddling penguin that one of the caretakers brought into a room to let him wander around and check us out. See info and ticket prices here.
If that’s not enough, there’s also a Discovery Museum with rotating exhibits, a ropes course, a zipline, and a paddlewheel boat offering cruises.
Rooms at Moody Gardens
The guest rooms at Moody Gardens are spacious and inviting, with far more personality than you’ll find in a lot of the chain hotels across from the beach. They are outfitted with patterned curtains, interesting light fixtures, and furniture that’s more colorful than the neutral and safe choices you usually see. This is one of the few hotels I’ve been to recently that looks more interesting at night instead of less.
That layout above is the norm, with a sofa that can fold out into a bed, an armchair, and a desk area if you need to get some work done. With a buffer of land around the whole building, the rooms are quite quiet as well.
Amenities include robes, a fridge, iron and ironing board, and a coffee maker. The TV is not a smart one, but it does have some premium channels.
Booking a Stay at Moody Gardens Galveston
Rates at Moody Gardens Galveston range from $200 to $350 depending on the season and the view. If there’s not a convention going on, there’s likely to be availability since this hotel has 433 rooms.
You can see more info an reserve at the official hotel website, where there are some packages with activities, or check prices online at Booking.com.
Review and photos by editor Tim Leffel. He paid for a group package stay at Moody Gardens for the North American Travel Journalists Association’s annual convention put on by Visit Galveston.
