Southern California DL & SD: One trip, or split into two trips?

[frostedpink]

Hi,

We're planning our next vacation and we want to go to San Diego. DD is 5 years old. Is it doable to stay 3 days or so in San Diego, then drive up to Anaheim and do a couple of days of DL? Then fly out of LA? Do you think that would be too much for a 5 year old? I'm wondering if we should just do San Diego and save DL for another trip.

 

[Purrkins]

Totally doable. I think a 5 year old would have a blast!

 

[mdkelkenberg]

I am interested in any info on this also, want to do both but don't want to over do it either!

 

[DLgal]

We did something more complicated when our son was 5. Flew into Orange County, 5 nights there, drove to Legoland one day, DL three days, then flew up to San Francisco, 2 nights there, then flew home. The kids had a blast.

What you are proposing is very do able and easy.

 

[ncc1701]

Doable yes. My suggestion would be to fly into SD and then drive to DL.
Then come back to SD and fly home from there. It is an easier airport to deal with than LAX IMO. (only 15 mins or so to downtown SD) You could also look into John Wayne Airport which is closer to DL.
We have gone to SD a few times and then driven up to Huntington Beach which is about 30 mins west of DL.Then driven back to SD the day before our flight home.

 

[atmail35]

This summer we flew into LAX, did 3 nights at DL, drove to Legoland, spent 2 nights at the Legoland hotel and did one day at the park. We then drove to SD and spent 4 nights there. We flew home from San Diego. My sister lives in in SD so we did minimal sightseeing as we will go back.

It was a lot of packing, unpacking but worked out well. If you can fly Jetblue, the multiple cities is easy.

 

[bjscheel]

We flew into SNA (John Wayne), did 4 nights and 3 days at DL, then took Amtrak to San Diego and stayed 3 nights. We flew home from San Diego. We just booked one-way flights on SW.

We did not have a car, but something you might look into is the cost of a car rental that you are not returning to the same place. It seems like when I looked into renting a car, it was cheaper to rent in SD and return at Anaheim, and much more expensive the other way around. I don't remember for sure- go on a rental website and see what happens when you plug in the different locations.

 

[PHXscuba]

I think combining the two (which are really only about 1.5 hours apart) is more probable the farther away you are from them. For example, I live in Phoenix, so driving between the two is a bigger proportion of my driving, plus I am more likely to go back to either/both since I live within driving distance. But if I was coming from the Eastern half of the US, the distance between them pales and it's more likely you'd only make the trip occasionally.

The suggestion to fly out of SD (or Orange County) is a good one. LAX is a long way out of your way unless you are doing things up there. That's an extra 1.5 hours of driving too!

PHXscuba

 

[atmail35]

We did not have a car, but something you might look into is the cost of a car rental that you are not returning to the same place. It seems like when I looked into renting a car, it was cheaper to rent in SD and return at Anaheim, and much more expensive the other way around. I don't remember for sure- go on a rental website and see what happens when you plug in the different locations.

This is a good point, you need to shop around.

We flew into LAX, took the Greyline shuttle to DL and reserved a car at the Alamo in DTD for when we were ready to depart Anaheim. It was cheaper to rent the car from DTD than LAX. Most car rental companies charge airport fees so I was not paying that fee since I did not retrieve my car from an airport. I returned the car to the San Diego Airport, I didn't feel that it was too expensive returning it to another city. You'll need to price it out for what you need. We only have 3 people traveling, so the shuttle cost was not too expensive.

Also since I didn't need a car at DL, we did not want to pay for parking at the hotel. It worked great.

I looked into taking the train as well, but it was easier for us to just rent a car. I booked my car through Costco. The Alamo location at DTD was great, there was no line when we arrived (3PM) and we were able to hop over to the GCH to get our bags without any issues.