What’s New in Daytona Beach

Thursday, 11 Jan, 2024 0

Daytona Beach’s 23 miles of Florida shoreline is gearing up for a busy 2024.

Now is the perfect time to (re)experience all that Daytona Beach has to offer, including a host of new hotels, attractions and activities. Discover all that’s new in Daytona Beach, Florida this year.

Attractions

The Daytona Aquarium & Rainforest Adventure will be opening in Daytona Beach in early 2024 as the destination’s first aquarium offering an interactive educational experience. The 55,000-square feet will have nearly 40 separate tanks including a 110,000-gallon shark tank and a 12,000-gallon stingray touch pool. There will also be habitats for alligators and crocodiles, frogs, and lizards. The indoor rainforest will be coming in phase 2 and is planned to open within 8 to 12 months after opening. The rainforest will have animals like sloths, armadillos, tamarins, Toucans, and other various types of birds.

Spanning a mile of Intracoastal Waterway, the Riverfront Esplanade is a premier gathering space and botanical garden in downtown Daytona Beach. Composed of more than a mile of waterfront running trail with benches and swings overlooking the Halifax River, the Riverfront Esplanade also features a dog park with an agility course. The northern end of the Riverfront Esplanade opened in 2022 while the southern end of the green space opened in October 2023. The southern end walkways run through a creek with waterfalls, gardens with flowers.

The Marine Science Center, located in Ponce Inlet, opened a new Raptor Education and Conservation Exhibit, which is dedicated to the permanent raptor residents of the center, who, due to injuries, cannot be returned to the wild. The carefully crafted habitat provides a safe and enriching environment for these birds. Additionally, the center will soon complete a renovation of their exhibit that pays tribute to the history of the Volusia County’s Artificial Coral Reef program and educates visitors about its importance.

Pictona at Holly Hill, which opened in July 2020 and completed another multi-million expansion in 2022, is the largest pickleball facility on the east coast of Florida. The state-of-the-art campus features 49 pickleball courts, each having 8-foot sides and 10 feet behind base lines. The complex includes 13 covered courts, one of which is a Championship Court with seating up to 1,200 spectators during tournaments. A new addition to the facility is a nine-hole putting course located in the northwest corner of the venue.

The Museum of Arts and Sciences, a Smithsonian-affiliated museum, has new exhibits planned for 2024 as well as a renovation of its Lowell and Nancy Lohman Planetarium. The new exhibits include Megalodon: Largest Shark that Ever Lived (Feb. 3 through July 21), which will transport guests through the world of the gigantic prehistoric shark. There is Planetarium 2.0: Bringing Space Down to Earth (June 29-Sept. 1), and Audubon’s Birds of Florida at the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art (Sept. 21 through March 2).

The Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center completed significant renovations to its lobby, box office and art gallery as well as new seats in its auditorium

Per a tradition that began close to 30 years ago, Daytona International Speedway will welcome a new winning DAYTONA 500 car for display for the year, complete with the confetti, dents and scratches. The car will be on display inside the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America for the next year and visitors will be able to view the winning machine as part of the Daytona International Speedway Track Tour.

Welcome to Rockville, one of the biggest rock music festivals in the United States, returns to Daytona International Speedway on May 9-12. The festival is expanding by adding a fifth stage and 50 bands to feature 150 bands in total over four days. The musical lineup for 2024 edition of Welcome to Rockville will include Foo Fighters, Mötley Crüe, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Queens of the Stone Age, Cypress Hill, Sum 41 and many others.

New airline service

Low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines has begun non-stop service twice per week between Daytona Beach International Airport and two new destinations – New Haven, CT and Wilmington, DE. In addition, visitors can continue to fly directly into Daytona Beach International Airport via Delta (Atlanta, ATL) and American Airlines (Charlotte, CTL) year-round. American Airlines has seasonal non-stop flights from Washington Reagan National Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth. Interstate access (I-95 and I-4) also makes getting to Daytona Beach easy and convenient.

The Daytona Beach area ranked #1 in Travel Channel’s “Top 10 Attractions in Florida” and was named a Tripadvisor Best Weekend Getaway in Northeast Florida. TripAdvisor also named Daytona Beach to its “10 Most Affordable Beach Vacations on Florida’s East Coast.”

The Daytona Beach Destination Guide is available at: DaytonaBeach.com.

TravelMole Editorial Team

Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.

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