What to pay for at Bayside Marketplace in Miami

Bayside Marketplace on foot

Bayside Marketplace (downtown Miami, on Biscayne Bay) is a two-level open-air festival mall built under white barrel-vaulted canopies, with palms along the walkways and a boardwalk running the length of the water. Tour boats sit moored at the docks below the rail. Behind them you get the downtown Miami skyline on one flank and the superstructures of the cruise ships berthed at PortMiami on the other.

Doors open at 10 a.m. Monday to Thursday and shut at 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday run to 11 p.m. Sunday is 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Nowhere in the complex has a door policy, and the walk itself sits in the $ band.

Start on the boardwalk, because the water is the reason to be here. Three chain restaurants that older guides still list inside are shut, one of them for good and one for renovations, so plan any meal on site around a name on the current board.

The wheel on the boardwalk

Skyviews Miami Observation Wheel (Bayside boardwalk) stands 200 feet above the water on white spokes and carries 42 enclosed teardrop gondolas. A ride lasts 12 to 15 minutes and the cabins are held at 72°F. From the top you look down the length of the bay and into the glass towers of downtown. It is the one real viewpoint on the site.

General admission is $19. Juniors aged 4 to 11 pay $16, and under-4s ride free with an adult. The glass-floored VIP gondola, the one with the view through your shoes, is $50. Gondolas seat up to eight, so a family or a group of friends rides round in a single pod.

Boats from the Bayside docks

Island Queen Cruises & Tours (Bayside docks) runs the 90-minute Biscayne Bay circuit on double-decker white-and-yellow cruisers, open on the top deck under a striped awning. Passengers crowd the rail for the far shore, where the waterfront mansions of millionaires' row and moored superyachts line the water.

Adults pay $35 and children $25. Booking online takes $5 off per person, and under-3s go for a token $5. Departures leave hourly from late morning, and the ticket office asks you to arrive 30 minutes before yours. There is no dress code.

Thriller Miami Speedboat Adventures (Bayside docks) is the loud way out. You sit in rows of bucket seats in a long low offshore race boat, black and yellow, life vest on, a white rooster-tail wake behind you and the Art Deco shoreline streaking past. The 45-minute bay run starts at $40. A calmer trip up the Miami River is $35. Minimum age is 3, and whole-boat private charters go out alongside the scheduled public departures.

Pier 5 and Black Market

Pier 5 (Bayside boardwalk) is a ship-inspired open-air deck bar jutting out over Biscayne Bay, with more than 200 feet of continuous bar top, one of the longest in Miami. The back wall is racked floor to ceiling with bottles, more than 300 rums and more than 200 tequilas among them. Live Latin, Caribbean, jazz and DJ sets play free on a waterside stage under festoon lights.

It opens at 10 a.m. and serves to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday go to 3 a.m. You can walk in any day. This is the one corner where Bayside gets a night.

Black Market – Bayside (second floor, Bayside Marketplace) works the eighties-Miami sports-bar line in neon pink and teal, with walls of screens, vintage Hurricanes and Dolphins memorabilia, and an open terrace looking down on the bay and the moored tour boats. It fills the second-floor space that used to be Hooters. Hours are 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. most days. Friday and Saturday close at midnight. Park up here before a Heat game at the arena next door.

Eating on site

Kuba on the Bay (Bayside Marketplace) is the sit-down Cuban room, a contemporary Old-Havana dining room with arched windows and tropical greenery opening onto a bayfront terrace, water and skyline framed past the rail. A rum trolley works the floor and a live salsa band plays. It serves lunch and dinner daily in the $$$ band, and you reserve through the restaurant. Book under the current name, since older listings fold it together with its sister site.

IT'SUGAR Bayside (Bayside Marketplace) is a flagship candy store across two floors and 16,000 square feet, with rainbow walls of bulk sweets, a lollipop garden and oversized character statues. The giant branded sections run to Sour Patch Kids and M&M's. The retro and international aisles earn the stop if you want American sweets you cannot buy at home. Entry is free, and this is where to go when a bay squall rolls through.

Garcia's on the Miami River

Garcia's Seafood Grille & Fish Market (Miami River, 15 minutes' walk west) has been a family fish market since 1966 and turned itself into a restaurant on the same dock. The front room is an ice-packed fish counter. Upstairs is a tin-roofed deck on a weathered timber dock, with working shrimp boats and tugs tied alongside.

It serves 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday run to 10 p.m. Reservations are accepted, and the two floors plus the river deck absorb a group. Go early at weekends. Make the walk on the day the food court will not do.

Parks either side of Bayside

Bayfront Park (immediately south of Bayside) is 32 acres of lawn and palms holding the Noguchi-designed Challenger Memorial, the Klondike Fountain and the Tina Hills Pavilion stage with its tiered seating. It is free, unticketed and open daily 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The city's big open-air concerts and its New Year's Eve run here, and free yoga is held Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 p.m.

Use the park for the hour before a boat departure. The lawn sits between the bay on one side and the downtown towers on the other, and it is the green buffer between Bayside and Brickell.

Maurice A. Ferré Park (north of Bayside) spreads 30 acres along the water and holds the best free skyline-and-bay vantage within walking distance of the marketplace, on a paved path lined with public sculpture. PAMM's hanging columns of tropical plants stand on one flank and the Frost Museum's silver dome on the other, with Biscayne Bay and the bridges open ahead. The park opens 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and has a dog park, restrooms and an exercise path. Maps and older listings still call it Museum Park.

The museums in walking distance

Pérez Art Museum Miami (Maurice A. Ferré Park, 10 minutes' walk north) is a Herzog & de Meuron pavilion on stilts over the bay, under a deep slatted-timber canopy, with long cylindrical hanging gardens of tropical plants dropping from the roof and a terrace facing straight out at the water. Adults pay $18 and under-7s go free. Seniors, students and 7 to 18s pay $14. It closes Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science (Maurice A. Ferré Park) pairs a silver sphere planetarium with a cone-shaped three-level Gulf Stream aquarium tank, an oculus window in the top and visitors silhouetted against circling hammerheads. It opens 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day of the year. Adults start at $29.95, with one planetarium show included. The 4 to 11s rate is $24.95 and under-4s go free. Parking on site is a flat $18. Hold this one back for a wet afternoon.

Museum of Art and Design at MDC (Freedom Tower) fills a 1925 Mediterranean Revival tower of pale stone, with an ornate cupola and an arched loggia, floodlit at night and crowded behind by downtown glass. It reopened in September 2025 after a $30m restoration for its centenary, and it holds four permanent exhibitions on Cuban exile and the making of Miami. It opens Wednesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets cost $5 for 13 to 22s. Miami-Dade over-62s go free, and the MDC garage is free on weekdays. For a few minutes' walk, it is the cheapest substantial visit near the boardwalk.

Kaseya Center next door

Kaseya Center (beside Bayside Marketplace) is the curved glass-and-steel arena on the waterfront, Miami Heat branding on the façade, a broad plaza and rows of palms between it and the bay, PortMiami behind. It took the Kaseya name in 2023, and the older arena names still sit in guidebooks. Events are ticketed, and bag rules apply on event nights.

Booking ahead or walking up

Bayside charges nothing at the gate, and the wheel and the scheduled boats sell tickets on the spot. Private two-hour skyline boat trips leave the bay seven days a week, starting at $44 per person and currently discounted from $52. PAMM is the one to settle in advance, because its timed tickets can sell out. Book it online.

Best time to go

Take the water early. Book the 10 a.m. or the 10:30 a.m. speedboat, which run $10 cheaper, and you get the bay at its flattest.

The wheel is an afternoon and evening ride. It starts turning at 1 p.m. Monday to Thursday and at noon Friday to Sunday, and it closes at 10 p.m. After dark the gondolas are lit in colour and the Freedom Tower stands floodlit, which is the hour to walk the boardwalk.

PAMM lets everyone in free on Thursdays after 5 p.m. Between 24 December and 7 January the bay cruise ticket office wants you 90 minutes ahead of your departure. Arena event nights push the Bayside garage rate up and fill the bars, so arrive on foot on those nights.

Is it worth it

Entry and the view across the bay cost nothing, and the money here goes on the water and on the deck bar. It suits a traveller with half a day near the port, and a family who want the boats and the wheel inside one block.

Before you go

PAMM shuts Tuesdays and Wednesdays and the Freedom Tower museum opens Wednesday to Sunday, so check the day before you build an afternoon around either, and reserve your PAMM slot and your table at Kuba on the Bay before you set out. See the Miami guide and the Miami hotel search.