So my wife, sister in law, and their cousin chose Dauphin island for the family summer trip. My wife's family had vacationed at Isle of Palms, SC for almost 100yrs till covid hit and then rental prices doubled.
The families (Fort Worth, Atlanta Ga) have never been to the Alabama coast. It appears that there are not any grocery stores on the island so I assume we will hit a neighborhood walmart in Theodore Al or Greers cashsaver in Bayou la batre on the way in. We have a set of grandparents in their mid 70s, 2 families w/ kids ranging from 6, 4, 3, less than a year, and then 2 newly married couples.

Would appreciate recommendations on:
restaurants: (doesn't look like there are many or decent ones)
attractions: I seem to remember reading about the ferry to Fort Morgan but heard it could take a while to get there. I also read that the Alabama aquarium is closed for renovations till sometime in July.
Check out Fort Gaines
I'm thinking for a decent dinner or attractions we will need to go to Gulf Shores or Orange.

Thank you for your help as always!

We rent a house on the beach in Fort Morgan every other summer (8 trips) and took the ferry to Dauphin a few times when our kids were younger. You are definitely on the sleepy side staying over there, but there is a marina and likely some fishing charters you could take from there.

Ferry ride to FM is about 40 minutes, then from there, it's probably another 20 drive to Gulf Shores and the bulk of the "action", although there are a couple of restaurants in Fort Morgan. There are also 3 golf courses along that road of that's your thing. When they are running 2 ferries, it runs every 45, but it's often down to 1 (especially during the week) so you'll want to check that day to make sure you time your plans right. Their Facebook site is good for updates

This is all pretty spot on. Get your groceries and plan to do a lot of cooking. We drove into Mobile and ate at Felix's the night we wanted to go out to eat. We did get on a really good fishing charter "Deliverance." Other than that the bird sanctuary was ok. Had some decent beach front and fishing and there was a gator in the pond there. Its definitely a low key place but that can be a good thing.

The aquarium being closed kind of sucks, but tbh, it's pretty rinky-dink and probably a 45 minute deal. On our first couple of trips there when my kids were younger, we'd walk on the ferry from the FM side, walk over to the aquarium, and then be back on the ferry scheduled 90 min after we got dropped off, with plenty of time to eat a hot dog/snack at little snack shop by the ferry.

Thank you everyone for the advice. I had a feeling it was going to be bare bones.
After looking at yelp dauphin island the handful of restaurants look pretty mediocre. Can you recommend any Mobile restaurants or Gulf shores restaurants (via the ferry)?
Yes the pictures of the sea lab looked pretty rinky dink.

Felix's Fish Camp is Mobile is great.

Was just there a few weeks ago.

Greer's Market on Dauphin Island Pkwy @ Fowl River Rd has everything you would probably be looking for as far as grocery. Maybe a 30 minute drive, it wasn't bad and we went twice.

Best restaurant for us was Pirate's Bar & Grill. Pirate's (different place) Pizza & Wings had good pizza. There was a BBQ place that was okay. Most places close down pretty early (7-8PM) and can sometimes run out of certain food items or close down early. When you are on an island, some things just operate a little differently and run on island time.

Fort Gaines was good but gets hot quick. Aquarium was closed. Bird sanctuary was not exciting enough for our group. Took a fishing charter and caught a few sharks which was lots of fun.

Our beach house was right near the ocean. Best thing we did was rent inner tubes for the week and enjoyed the cool water and clean beach. Only one day with jelly fish in the water and that didn't keep us from going out there with them. Keep an eye on the beach warning flags. Two days we were there were double red. Didn't really deter us from finding ourselves in the water, but we did exercise much more caution those days and made sure that anyone in the water was glued to their tube.

We had a big family vacation there a time or two and loved it. Having it there kept some of our central Texas family from having to drive so far east . We like sleepy beach areas. We go to the beach for the beach only. There was some kind of estuary reserve or something like that - it was pretty neat . Everybody enjoyed that. Otherwise we were on the beach. I cook breakfast, everyone fixes their own lunch and we trade off cooking in the evenings. Great fishing there too - the boys surf fish and we started bringing a boat to the beach years ago.

Was in Mobile, AL about 5 years ago.

Best Oysters I've had in my entire life was at Bluegills https://www.bluegillrestaurant.com/

If you got kiddos - might be worth checking out LuLu's in Gulf Shores. HUGE play area for kids and a great patio for big families https://lulusfunfoodmusic.com/location/gulf-shores/