Newport Harbor Duffy Boats

Last Updated on April 24, 2019

For my husband’s birthday, I got him a Groupon for a Duffy boat rental in the Newport Harbor. He had told me he got to rent a Duffy Boat with some people from work and it was a lot of fun. I thought our family would really enjoy it also. We scheduled our ride on the Newport Harbor Duffy boats about 3-4 weeks in advance because reservations can fill up quickly on the weekends when the weather is nice. Who am I kidding? It’s Southern California! The weather is nice like 90% of the year!

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Details

After I purchased the Groupon for the 90-minute Electric Boat Rental, I called Newport Fun Tours to reserve our spot. They have select times available on the weekends for Groupon use. Make sure you know you can stick to your reservation time because they are not very flexible when it comes to rescheduling. For the most part, the scheduling was fairly easy.

We decided to pick up sandwiches from Jimmy Johns in Costa Mesa. We packed bottled waters and beers in an insulated bag similar to the one below. Next time, I think it would be great to bring a picnic backpack, especially if my husband and I come just the two of us. I really like this one.

Pros

• It is family friendly. Kids are welcome and will be given life jackets to wear.
• You can bring your own food and drinks.
• You can borrow a blue tooth speaker to be able to play music from your phone.
• The boats are not hard to drive.
• It is very relaxing and the views are great!

Cons

• It can be hard to tell where the dock is to return the boat. We had to look at the map a few times.
• Sometimes it can be busy on the water with much bigger boats coming by.
• The life jackets were very old and worn and not sure how they would have held up if they were actually needed.
• The parking structure is very tight to park in.
• Reservations are not easily rescheduled.

Review

Overall I would still definitely recommend the Newport Harbor Duffy Boats as a nice leisurely family activity. I would not recommend bringing very active young children because there is nowhere for them to go and 90 minutes can be a long time for young ages. We were grateful to have my in-laws there to help with our 1-year-old because he was getting antsy. My older kids really enjoyed it and had fun “driving” the boat with Daddy.

There are a few companies that do Duffy Boat rentals and we might try another company next time. We enjoyed having the seagulls land on our boat and hang out for a while. This would really be fun during the Christmas holidays when all the huge houses put their lights up.

The teething necklace I am wearing in the picture above was very handy when keeping my toddler busy. Here is the link if you want to check it out.

If you would prefer to go check out the Newport Harbor Duffy boats as a day date check out my post here about how to find a babysitter.

If you need some tips about what to pack in your diaper bag to keep the kids busy, you can check out my post here.