Help me pick a hotel in SD

[MrsPinup]

My DH, DS9, and DS7 and I are spending over a week in So Cal in late June/early July. We have a timeshare through my work in Anahiem, but decided to spend a night in SD at the end of our trip so we could spend more than one day there.

Here are my main details:
- I bought the Safari Park promo on Living Social for us
- A friend who lives in SD suggested spending Sunday at the beach and just relaxing and then hit up the Safari Park on Monday (and then head home to Nor Cal after we are done.)
- She also suggested staying in Hotel Circle since it is close to the beaches.

There are so many hotels in that circle, I cannot choose. It doesn't need to be a fancy hotel since we are just staying a night - but we don't want to stay in a slummy hotel either.

What hotels can you recommend and does my plan above seem to be a good idea?

 

[MrsPinup]

BTW - I was looking at the Travelodge in the hotel circle and it seemed decent. Opinions?

 

[sonnyjane]

Hi there! Is it just the Safari Park and the beach that you're looking for? If so, I have to ask why you'd stay all the way down here? I basically live in Hotel Circle and I'm a solid 45 minutes from the Safari Park, which is northeast of here.

Why not check out a beach and hotel farther north so that you're not driving so far out of the way?

 

[MrsPinup]

Hi there! Is it just the Safari Park and the beach that you're looking for? If so, I have to ask why you'd stay all the way down here? I basically live in Hotel Circle and I'm a solid 45 minutes from the Safari Park, which is northeast of here.

Why not check out a beach and hotel farther north so that you're not driving so far out of the way?

Yeah, she told me there was some distance between SD and the Safari park. We have friends in SD we would like to see, plus let the kids check out the beach part of town.

 

[chttyangel]

We stayed in hotel circle; it was the perfect location for us. We were doing zoo, Seaworld, Old Town, Gas Lamp and Coronado, Corvetter Diner thou. We stayed at the Ramada; I would NOT recommend this one. Worn down, not the cleaniest, unfriendly staff. There were several others in the same area that looked nice thou. I know that does'nt really help with where to stay but maybe will help cross one off your list.

 

[Montserrat]

If you are only going to the beach and Safari Park, stay in Carlsbad. You can then go to the beach and from the Carlsbad, you can take the 78 to go to the Safari Park. There's a Best Western and Hilton Graden Inn that usually has good prices. Hotel Circle is far from the Safari Park.

 

[alcie27]

If you're set on Hotel Circle take a look at the Doubletree in this area. They have family suites that have one room with a king or 2 queens then an adjoining room with bunk beds. We're staying there in June so I can't comment on the cleanliness/condition of the hotel but the room layout seems nice with kids.

 

[ConnieB]

The TraveLodge is slummy! We were there in 2010....the bathroom was disgusting....maid came to clean again and it was only a little better. Rust stains in the sink and tub, missing most of the baseboard. We had two beds...one was so worn on one side you could literally SEE the slope standing away from the bed! Thankfully there were only 3 of us, so that bed had just one of us. The carpets were filthy. The TV barely could maintain a station...we'd get fuzzy more than we could see....not that we stayed around in the room much, but it was something to do while we took cold showers.

And yes, we asked about being moved, but the room they showed us was in worse shape. I stupidly had prepaid for it to save a buck so leaving wasn't an option.

Oh...and we had no hot water all 3 nights.....just love taking a cold shower for 3 mornings. They wouldn't do anything about it because it was a weekend (we stayed Fri/Sat/Sun)....but they promised to have it fixed on Monday....but who cares we were leaving that morning anyway.

We knew we would never stay there again, so we went down and looked at a few other hotels.....and I have to say we're pretty easy going about inexpensive hotels, but we looked inside 4 different hotels and decided we needed to up our budget for any future stays.

Stay away from TravelLodge, Knights Inn, Days, and Motel 6.

 

[lk2500]

Also check the Mission Valley area, which is pretty close to Hotel Circle and also close to a lot of restaurants, shopping mall, etc... We stayed at the Doubletree by Hilton Mission Valley back in 2008 and it was a very nice hotel, might be out of your price range though. (I had a bit of a discount through my employer)