Best day for Seaworld?

[mad hatter fan]

We are planning a long two week trip including travel days to So. Cal. in late July. After much deliberation we have decide to stay in Anaheim at the Park Vue the whole time and make day trips from there for our non DLR days. We will be doing 6-8 days at DLR, a couple of beach days, spend most of one weekend with family (they may join us at the beach), and also probably 2 days in San Diego.

My question is which days of the week are better for Seaworld considering both lines and the drive? For example, are weekends much much worse for lines or should we for sure avoid Sundays because of bad traffic in the evening at the end of a weekend going north?

We are already familiar with the drive from previous trips (my aunt lives in San Diego) but haven't done it for a day trip to Seaworld. We have done legoland that way in the past and it worked fine.

Any advice for us? Thanks!

 

[skiingfast]

Seaworld is a much longer drive of no carpool lanes than LL. This will not be fun if you drive during traffic. You could leave early, like 6am on weekday or go on a weekend. Coming home, since it's Summer it's nice to be there late, so traffic shouldn't be a problem. I like SW at night because you are sitting are not sitting in the sun, and the lighting looks nicer at some of the shows.

As far as crowds, just like DLR it's worse on weekends. However I prefer to be in SW on the weekend. Compared to the Disney Parks SW has few rides, more shows and walk through attractions. So if crowds are larger you wait a lot longer for rides, worse to do at DLR. You wait the same for shows, because you are waiting for thier long cycles to repeat. You wait almost the same for the walk through attractions.

Granted you are meeting family for the beach days, but if you can, go to the beach during the week they are much less crowded.

 

[lk2500]

I agree with skiingfast. It's a trade off of driving in rush hour traffic on a weekday vs bigger crowds on a weekend. Since it's a lot of shows the crowds don't affect the time you wait all that much. The crowds will affect the amount of time you stand in line for the rides, especially the new Manta coaster that opens in a few weeks.

I see you've been to DL a few times so you probably already know this. But, since your kids are older you might want to also consider Knotts or Six Flags Magic Mountain if they enjoy thrill rides. You can do those parks in the morning/afternoon and still leave plenty of time for DL in the evening/night for a day or two.

 

[rtfelt]

I see you've been to DL a few times so you probably already know this. But, since your kids are older you might want to also consider Knotts or Six Flags Magic Mountain if they enjoy thrill rides. You can do those parks in the morning/afternoon and still leave plenty of time for DL in the evening/night for a day or two.

You could probably do this with Knotts, but certainly not Six Flags. I still wouldn't recommend it with Knotts, which has plenty of rides to keep you occupied through the day. Keep in mind that my experience with Knotts is that weekends are MUCH, MUCH worse than weekdays. Even a greater difference than at DLR. As far as Six Flags, this is an all day affair because of the travel. During the week it can take you as much as 3 hours to get there because you have to go right through LA and its accompanying traffic. It's not that bad returning home late at night, and you can actually make it back in an hour because there's no traffic. Here again the weekends are horrendous. We are talking 3 hour lines for the big rides across the board throughout the park. There's no FP, so it can be miserable. When my daughter went there last spring on a Saturday, each ride took 1.5 to 3 hours. They were there from when it opened to when it closed and only got on 5 rides. If you go during the week it's much better. It has some incredible thrill rides, and my teenagers prefer it to any park.

As far as SeaWorld, I can't really compare the crowd levels--I haven't been there enough, but I live in South Orange County and drive South on the 5 on Saturday a lot in the summer to go to the beach. The traffic can be just as bad as on weekdays with everyone else going to the beach too. There's also a fair number of people who go to San Diego for the weekend.

 

[lk2500]

You could probably do this with Knotts, but certainly not Six Flags. I still wouldn't recommend it with Knotts, which has plenty of rides to keep you occupied through the day. Keep in mind that my experience with Knotts is that weekends are MUCH, MUCH worse than weekdays. Even a greater difference than at DLR. As far as Six Flags, this is an all day affair because of the travel. During the week it can take you as much as 3 hours to get there because you have to go right through LA and its accompanying traffic. It's not that bad returning home late at night, and you can actually make it back in an hour because there's no traffic. Here again the weekends are horrendous. We are talking 3 hour lines for the big rides across the board throughout the park. There's no FP, so it can be miserable. When my daughter went there last spring on a Saturday, each ride took 1.5 to 3 hours. They were there from when it opened to when it closed and only got on 5 rides. If you go during the week it's much better. It has some incredible thrill rides, and my teenagers prefer it to any park.

As far as SeaWorld, I can't really compare the crowd levels--I haven't been there enough, but I live in South Orange County and drive South on the 5 on Saturday a lot in the summer to go to the beach. The traffic can be just as bad as on weekdays with everyone else going to the beach too. There's also a fair number of people who go to San Diego for the weekend.

We actually did this 2 years ago and it worked out fine. We left the FFI Anaheim and drove up to SFMM in time to hit the gates at opening. We rode all the rides we wanted on a Tuesday by around 4pm, grabbed some ice cream at Wendy's, and then it took us about 2 hours through rush hour traffic to get back to the FFI (about 6:15PM). Then grabbed some dinner, rested for a bit, then hit DL until closing.

We did the same thing with Knotts on a Wednesday.

Then did SFMM again on a Thursday but it was way more crowded. We only rode X2 twice and Tatsu once (which is really all we wanted to do) and then headed back to DL. If you want to ride X2 it's imperative to hit the gates at opening and sprint to the ride entrance as soon as the gates open.

It's doable but a long day. I'm going to try the same thing this year but plan on purchasing Flash Passes.