Labor Day 2026 falls on Monday, September 7. Colorado spends this particular weekend shutting down its summer season, so a handful of places you've been meaning to get to all year are running their last days.
The Rockies are home at Coors Field for part of it, Lakeside opens for one of its final afternoons, and the weather in early September does that thing where you want a jacket at breakfast and nothing at all by noon. Five places below are worth the three days. All of them come with a GetOut membership, which means no ticket math at the gate.
What's Open Labor Day Weekend in Colorado?
Is Lakeside Amusement Park open on Labor Day? Yes. September 7 is one of only three Mondays Lakeside opens all season. Gates and the toddler rides in Kiddies' Playland open at 1pm, with the main rides starting an hour after that.
Are the Rockies playing at home? They host St. Louis at Coors Field on Friday, September 4 and Saturday, September 5.
Is Elitch Gardens still open in 2026? It is. The River Mile headlines have been circulating for years now, but the park is running its 2026 season and nobody has announced a closing date.
What happens if it rains? Downtown Aquarium and Boondocks both run indoors and both are open every day of the weekend.
Do I need reservations? No, though holiday crowds are what they are. Showing up in the first hour after opening will do more for your day than anything else on this page.
Lakeside Amusement Park
Lakeside has been operating on Sheridan Boulevard since 1908, which makes it the oldest amusement park in Colorado still sitting where it started, and the last White City style park left anywhere in the country. That's a category most people have never heard of until they walk through the gate and see the Art Deco towers with the neon coming up over the lake.
September 7 is closing day for the season. Gates and the toddler rides open at 1pm, main rides at 2pm, and then that's it until next May.
Parking is free, the way it always has been. You can bring a cooler and picnic on the grounds, though they'll ask you to leave glass, alcohol, and anything requiring a flame at home. If your family isn't planning to ride much, you can pay $5 at the gate and buy ride coupons at fifty cents apiece, which adds up to a cheap evening whether or not you carry a membership.
Nothing about Lakeside is polished. Kids who've only been to corporate theme parks go quiet when they walk in. If the park lands well and you want somewhere to take that energy next, we've rounded up the wider list of outdoor activities for kids in Colorado elsewhere on the blog.
Good for kids old enough to find an old place interesting.
A Rockies Game at Coors Field
The Rockies host the Cardinals on the Friday and Saturday of the holiday weekend. Late-season games at Coors are easier to get into than anything in June, and the crowd moves at a gentler pace.
A ballgame also solves the problem of a group that spans four generations, since a grandparent and a six-year-old can sit through the same nine innings for completely different reasons and both walk out happy. The park sits in LoDo, so dinner beforehand or a walk after works without much planning. Taking the train to Union Station spares you downtown holiday parking.
Soccer runs on the same membership if baseball season ends before you get around to it, and we've written up what taking kids to a Rapids match actually looks like.
Good for out-of-town family and anyone who wants a fixed start and end time.
Downtown Aquarium
This is what you switch to when the forecast turns on you. Downtown Aquarium is open 10am to 8pm daily, sits entirely indoors, and will hold a family's attention for two or three hours.
More than a million gallons of exhibits, somewhere around 500 species. The touch tank at Stingray Reef is what kids describe on the drive home, and the Mystic Mermaid shows in the Under the Sea exhibit will stop a toddler mid-sentence. There are Sumatran tigers in there too, which catches people off guard when they arrived expecting fish.
It's on Water Street just off I-25, so you can fold it into a downtown day without much driving. Aquarium in the morning, Rockies at night, and Saturday is handled. There are more indoor options across the state on the membership if the weather stays bad longer than a day.
Good for toddlers through tweens, and for hot afternoons.
Boondocks Food and Fun
Boondocks in Northglenn covers eight acres of indoor and outdoor attractions, which is the answer to a family where nobody agrees on anything. Go-karts run on two tracks split by age. There are bumper boats, a pair of 18-hole mini golf courses, a two-story laser tag arena, a ropes course, bowling lanes, a soft play area for the smallest kids, and an arcade holding more than a hundred games.
Doors open at 10am seven days a week and stay open until midnight on Friday and Saturday. The restaurant on site means nobody has to leave and come back.
Worth knowing: on a GetOut membership Boondocks is a monthly redemption rather than a yearly one. A family that shows up once a month has covered the cost of the pass well before spring.
Good for mixed ages and teenagers.
Pueblo Zoo
Everybody drives west on a long weekend and I-70 makes that obvious by about nine in the morning, so point the car south instead.
Pueblo Zoo takes up 25 acres inside Pueblo City Park and keeps more than 420 animals across roughly 140 species. It's accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. WPA and CCC crews built the original core between 1933 and 1940, which is how the grounds ended up on the National Register of Historic Places. You'll see lions, red pandas, otters, penguins, both kinds of camel, and a farm animal area, all along flat shaded paths you can push a stroller down.
The size is what makes it work with young kids. You can finish this zoo in two hours without anybody falling apart. Parking costs nothing, and holiday crowds stay lighter than they'd be up north.
Under two hours from Denver on I-25, with Colorado Springs about halfway if you want to break up the drive. That same highway keeps running south past Trinidad and into New Mexico and West Texas, where GetOut runs its own membership if the holiday turns into something longer than three days.
Good for younger kids and a slower pace.
Adding Elitch Gardens
Elitch Gardens sits on the Colorado membership as an add-on. The upgraded tier runs $74.95 a year against a standard $49.95 and folds in one annual admission.
What people are searching for is whether Elitch is closing. Kroenke Sports & Entertainment owns the land and the River Mile plan has been talked about for years, though no site development plans or building permits have been filed and nobody has put a date on it. The park opened for 2026 and described it as its longest season yet. Coasters and water park both run through the holiday.
If a full theme park day is the thing your weekend is built around, take the upgrade. Otherwise the standard membership already has plenty to work with.
Three Ways to Build the Weekend
Staying in Denver. Rockies on Friday night. Downtown Aquarium Saturday morning, then over to Boondocks once the kids get restless. Lakeside on Monday for closing day.
Taking it easy. Aquarium Saturday, then Sunday down to Pueblo and home by mid-afternoon. Show up at Lakeside right at 1pm on Monday, before the crowd builds.
Going all in. Elitch Saturday. Boondocks on Sunday when everyone's sore from walking. Monday evening at Lakeside for the neon and the last rides of the year.
What This Costs Without a Membership
Run it for four people. A Lakeside wristband is about $35 for anyone over 48 inches tall, so one afternoon there clears $120 before you've bought a single funnel cake. Pueblo Zoo adult admission sits near $14. Stack aquarium tickets, a Boondocks pass, and Rockies seats on top of that and the weekend gets expensive fast.
A GetOut membership costs $49.95 a year per person and covers more than 81 venues around Colorado, which is why most families cover the cost somewhere on the second or third outing. There's a 120 day risk free window if you want to test the idea. Everything runs through the app, and how redemption works takes about two minutes to read if you've never used a pass like this.
The money is one thing. What shifts with a membership is how the conversation goes at home on a Sunday morning, because when admission is already handled, driving to Pueblo stops being a budget decision and turns into a question of who's making sandwiches.
If the Weekend Involves a Longer Drive
A lot of Colorado families treat Labor Day as a road trip rather than three days close to home. GetOut runs memberships across more than thirty regions, so the pass doesn't have to stop where the state does.
Going west over the passes puts you in range of the Utah membership, which picks up the Wasatch Front and everything around Salt Lake. Families pointed the other direction on I-70 to see relatives end up somewhere near Kansas City, and that membership works the way this one does.
If you're already looking past this weekend toward fall break, Arizona is the membership people pick up in September so October has somewhere warm in it.
Colorado Labor Day Weekend FAQs
What's the best last-minute Labor Day plan in Colorado? Lakeside on Monday afternoon. It's open, it's cheap at the gate, and there's nothing to book.
Do these work for toddlers? Downtown Aquarium, Pueblo Zoo, and Boondocks all handle under-fives well. Lakeside has its own Kiddies' Playland that opens an hour ahead of the main rides.
Can I bring guests on a GetOut membership? Membership works per person. Gift options are available at checkout if you're covering visiting family.
How many venues does the Colorado membership include? More than 81 across the state, reaching Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Pueblo, and the Western Slope.
Is a membership worth it if we only go a few times a year? Two or three outings covers the cost. Most families who buy one end up going more often than they planned, since the deciding gets easier.
One Last Thing
If you're reading this the night before and want the simplest possible answer, take Monday afternoon at Lakeside. It's open, you don't have to book anything, and the season ends when the lights go off.
After that the calendar turns over quickly in Colorado. Aspens start going in the high country within a couple of weeks of the holiday, and the first fall colors show up in places you can reach with kids in the car.