Need advice for a first-time trip to DL/San Diego area

[mermaidwannabe]

Hi! This is my first time posting on the DL board. My family of 5 (DH, me and three DDs) went to DW for the first time last year and fell in love. Although we had a WONDERFUL time, we thought we should expose the kids to southern Cal this year instead of returning to DW/FL, but it's hard not returning there.

Just wondered if anyone could give advice for spending part of the time at DL and part at the coast nearby at an oceanfront condo. We'd want to go to SeaWorld, Lego Land and possibly the San Diego Zoo. We would have @ 10-12 days total. We aren't sure how long to spend at DL. I've just started looking into all of the hotels, etc. and am a bit overwhelmed. I know it'll get better just like it did when researching DW.

Thanks for any input!!

 

[Syn&Bri'sDaddy]

Check out www.CityPass.com. Visit DL/CA (3Day Hopper), Universal Studios, SeaWorld, and SD Zoo or Wild Animal Park for about 30% off of gate admission price. Buy it at Costco for an additional 10% off.

 

[mermaidwannabe]

Thanks! I checked it out, and it would work great for us. We belong to Costco, so that's even better! I've been checking out www.vrbo.com for possible condos, so I'm making progress there. Can anyone offer advice for which hotel to stay at near DL? As long as we're close to the park and the kids have a cool pool, we'll be golden.

 

[amw]

We're planning the exact same trip For the "San Diego" part of the trip, my husband wanted to stay near the beach. So far, Carlsbad Inn is looking good to us. They have one and two-bedroom condos. And, what really appeals to me is that they have organized family activities everyday. It's near Legoland, and about 30 minutes drive to Seaworld or San Diego.

http://www.carlsbadinn.com/default.htm

There are also condo rentals in Oceanside that looked reasonable. Same sort of location:

http://www.northcoastvillage.com/home/index.php?section=Amenities

If anyone has personal feedback for either, I'd like to hear about it. (?)

As for the DL part of the trip, we'd rather give up walking proximity for a separate kids' sleeping area and a decent pool. The hotels we currently have short-listed are:

Hampton Inn & Suites Garden Grove
Residence Inn Anaheim
Courtyard by Marriott (slated to open in Spring 2006 with kidsuites)
La Quinta Inn
Marriott Anaheim Suites
or Anaheim Desert Inn & Suites, if we want walking distance

Our basic demands are 2-bedrooms, clean, preferably with a nice pool, and breakfast. Also, we like to be under $150/night. Any feedback on those would be appreciated too.

Happy planning

 

[Syn&Bri'sDaddy]

www.resortime.com for resorts, complete with a kitchen (at least eat breakfast inexpensively instead of hitting Denny's/IHOP every day). Not sure how close you can get to the parks. We did a timeshare exchange to get into Capistrano Beach, about 30miles south of DL. It was also 60miles from Universal and SD, so it was central overall. It was a bit of a pain tho, all the driving, and returning to the room for a break isn't as easy. Be sure to make the carpool lane your friend, as these folks are very fond of sitting in 20mile backups for some reason.

Allow an extra hour to any travel time for parking, tram, and getting to the gates.

 

[MrShiny]

We've done this type of vacation a few times and it is great. In fact, we generally fly Southwest and have often flown in and out of San Diego (much better than LAX, and more direct flights than SNA or ONT).

Definitely get a City Pass - it covers 3 days at DL (which is just about the perfect amount of time, even when it is busy. About the only time you'd want more is when the park might close because of capacity), San Diego Zoo or Wild Animal Park (I'd do the Zoo if you haven't done either), Sea World and Knott's Berry. It doesn't cover Legoland, but if you have kids under 12, that's a must!

We also spent a day checking out the Hotel Del Coronado and it's beach - amazing! Well worth the side trip.

As for staying at DL, if you want a themed experience like you'd get at WDW, the only choice is the Grand Californian. If not, I'd opt for one of the motels on Harbor - very close and very cheap! We stayed at the Del Sol and Candy Cane - both very nice and great values. Both a closer walk to the gates of DL than the Disney hotels (of course no one can get closer to DCA than GC).

We've stayed at all 3 Disney Hotels, and they are very nice, but only the GC has that other place feel of WDW hotels.

The weather is so nice there in summer - you don't get nearly as tired as you do summers at WDW.

 

[arliepooh68]

How old are your daughters??? Legoland is really geared towards younger kids, my oldest was kind of bored at 10 going there. the only thing the he really enjoyed was the fact that they have cars they can drive on a mini street, stop signs, lights,etc, that are not on tracks.

Seaworld is always great. The San Diego Zoo is a must if you have never been there, I actually prefer the wild animal park myself, but the zoo itself is a must at least once.

 

[mermaidwannabe]

Thanks for the helpful replies. I've checked out both the Carlsbad Resort, which looks very nice, and the North Coast Village condos. Some of those condos (at NCV) are right on the beach, but the price is almost double in June what it is in May, so I'll have to keep that in mind.

Thanks for the tips on the DL hotels. We stayed at the Polynesian at DW, which was very pricey but worth it. This trip, however, has to be on a budget, so I think we'll check out some of the hotels you all mentioned near DL.

My girls will be 10, 7.5 and 4.5 when we go next year. I am definitely getting that City Pass. What a good deal. We've never been to the Zoo or SeaWorld, so those are musts. The Wild Animal Park looked neat too, but I don't want to duplicate the zoo or would it be? Legoland looks fun, but I'm not sure if my DD10 would enjoy it or not. I'll have to see how much it is. I'm sure it's worth going to, but what exactly do you do there?

Oceanside (where NCV is) looks like a great beach. Anything right on the beach will be great for us. And we'll definitely have to have a kitchen. Besides not being able to eat out the whole time, we don't like to for every meal anyways.

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether I should get a condo for the whole time and then drive to DL for the three days, or should we fly in, go first to DL and stay at a hotel, then rent a car and get our condo? Here in Montana, when something is 60 miles away, then you're there easily in an hour. I know it's not like that there, and I'm not totally oblivious to traffic as I lived in San Francisco ten years ago, but just wondering if the drive would be too much from Oceanside back and forth for three days.

I've looked at www.vrbo.com, www.cyberrentals.com and the resort website mentioned above, and there seem to be plenty of condos that could work. I'll have to figure out if it's worth it to take the kids out of school to go in May to get a price break. I did that for DW, and it really stressed me out that we took them out of school for two weeks, so I don't know if I could do that again.

I'll keep looking and will post if I find any good websites. Thanks so much for everyone's input!!!!

 

[Syn&Bri'sDaddy]

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether I should get a condo for the whole time and then drive to DL for the three days, or should we fly in, go first to DL and stay at a hotel, then rent a car and get our condo? Here in Montana, when something is 60 miles away, then you're there easily in an hour. I know it's not like that there, and I'm not totally oblivious to traffic as I lived in San Francisco ten years ago, but just wondering if the drive would be too much from Oceanside back and forth for three days.

We stayed 30miles from DL last week, so it was three trips to DL and back (actually four, as we misplaced our tickets on day three and had to return to look for them; turned out they were buried in a camera bag). USH and SDWAP were each about 60miles away. We visited SW, also about 60miles away, "on the way" to the resort, so that doesn't count as an extra trip. So, we spun the odometer to the tune of over 200miles during the week. Heck, we do that every weekend to my mother-in-laws', so I guess that wasn't anything unusual for us. lol

It wasn't that bad (cuz we're psycho-drive-everywhere-lunatics anyhow), but it did make for very long days. We made friends with the carpool lane, so we did the 30miles in 30-45mins. With DL open from 10-8, we left at 8am and returned after 9pm (it took about an hour to park/tram/get to gates).

I'll have to figure out if it's worth it to take the kids out of school to go in May to get a price break. I did that for DW, and it really stressed me out that we took them out of school for two weeks, so I don't know if I could do that again.

I wouldn't want to make it a practice of taking the kids out of school, but we were in a use-it-or-lose-it situation with our timeshare. We had wanted to go during Thanksgiving week, and thus they'd only miss three days (and how much do they really do during that week anyhow?), but that didn't work out so last week became our only choice. My folks never took me out of school for vacation, so I have that ingrained in me with respect to my kids. If the deadline could have been stretched another month, we could have gone next week, which will be Spring Break. Try not to stress about it, but do weigh everything, and be sure to get homework for them to work on. Ours didn't like having to do homework, but they did it anyhow.

 

[arliepooh68]

In my opinion they are two very different places. The wild animal park is a place where you see groups of animals in a more "natural" setting.

if i could figure out how to send pics I would send some from the park.

also at the park you have a chance to feed the lorikeets which is so much fun!

 

[Syn&Bri'sDaddy]

In my opinion they are two very different places. The wild animal park is a place where you see groups of animals in a more "natural" setting.

if i could figure out how to send pics I would send some from the park.

also at the park you have a chance to feed the lorikeets which is so much fun!

I didn't take a whole lot of pics at WAP (it was the final day of our trip, so I guess I was pictured-out lol), but I can upload some of mine tonight. I couldn't get bodies out of the way fast enough for a pic with my digital camera, but I think my wife got a pic of one of the lionesses "sniffing" my daughter's hand (through the glass, of course) with her film camera. I did get a nice closeup of the lion.

The tram had to stop for about a half-hour in front of the bonobos (aka pygmy chimps; they share 98.5% of DNA with humans) exhibit, so I have quite a few pics of them. It was kinda like in the movie Jurassic Park where the tram stopped in front of the TRex exhibit ; lol, they had to cut the power to move an animal across the track, so we were stuck. But it was fun, watching the bonobos play.


Arlie, you should be able to post pics after you post a few more times (some rule that you have to post a number of times before you can include pics and links).

 

[mermaidwannabe]

I'd love to see pictures! Will it be through a link in your post if you can do it?

Oh, I checked out The Candy Cane Inn and it has received very good reviews, so that may be where we stay when at DL.

Thanks for the info about the parks and driving.

 

[arliepooh68]

Once i am able to post here i will post. We have annual passes for it, so whenever we go I always bring my camera, cuz you never know with animals what you are going to get. I have some cute ones of the new baby lion cub. . . I have some of the cheetahs. I have never had the experience of being stuck on the tram, not once. . .

 

[tmt martins]

I also think Citypass is going US instead of Knotts ( Goodthing IMHO ) there are also a lot of nice Beach Amusment parks to hit for a down night .We did this in June and it was a great time.

 

[brenda1966]

We did a trip like this last October.

We flew in and out of LAX because we got great airfare. We stayed at the Hojo's on Harbor and loved it -- my DD who's 4 loved the swimming pool and us adults loved the hot tub. We had 5 in the room so we used a rollaway and it worked out fine. We spent 4 days at DL/CA and 1 day at a beach and visiting a cousin. Then we drove to San Deigo and spent a few days there going to the beach, USS Midway, and Sea World. Then we headed back to DL for a final 1/2 day before catching our flight out of LAX.

I highly recommend staying near DL and not commuting to the park. With young kids you might want to go nap or leave the park for a swim. I'd rather spend that precious hour commute time on sleeping or being in the park!

We did a 5 day hopper and used 4.5 days and really enjoyed that. 3 days would not have been enough for me. That extra 1.5 days let us enjoy a character meal (the princess one at Ariel's grotto) and repeat several favorite rides (like Soarin).

We skipped the zoo and wild animal park as we'd been to the zoo lately. Sea world was fun, but my DD preferred DL and kept asking to go on rides. The main focus of our trip was DL so adding that last 1/2 day on the end left that as our last memory of our trip and was a brilliant idea (mine) if I do say so. LOL.

 

[mermaidwannabe]

Oh my gosh, DL has Soarin'???? We LOVED that ride in DW; it was at Epcot, so I just assumed it wouldn't be at DL. My whole family is going to be excited about that one.

Thanks for the info regarding how many days to stay at DL. I thought three would be plenty, but maybe I'll switch to 4 and possibly 5. The condos all seem to be Saturday to Saturday, so I'll have to coordinate that. I'm sure it will be cheaper for us to fly into LAX from Bozeman. We never get great deals from here, but I'll be checking on the 330-day mark ( I think that's when they are the best deals supposedly).

I'm going to check out the hotel you mentioned too. If the place has a decent pool, my kids are happy...therefore, DH and I are happy.

We did a Pooh character breakfast and a Princess Storybook Lunch at DW, and they were okay; I barely enjoyed my meal though because I was so hyped to get pictures...not very relaxing. Maybe this time, I would be more mellowed. It was my first time ever to a Disney park. I've heard that at DL you don't have to stand in lines quite like you have to at DW to see the characters. I hope not...it was crazy, and we went in late April when there weren't as bad of crowds. Hopefully, the second week of June won't be too crowded.

 

[Syn&Bri'sDaddy]

Some of my SD WAP pics:

Bridge/waterfall
View from the tram1
View from the tram2
Bonobos family
Elephant1
Elephant2
Peekaboo, I see you!
Forget about letting sleeping dogs lie!
Her bite is worse than her, umm, bark.
This is the last time I use valet parking!
You lookin' at me?

 

[mermaidwannabe]

Syn and Bri's Daddy - THANK YOU for those pics! I think we'll have to include that as part of our trip -it looks incredible.

 

[bjakmom]

Another thanks for the wonderful WAP pics!!! We're doing a DL/SD trip this summer, too. Taking DNeph (an animal lover extraordinaire!) and hitting USH, SDzoo, SW, Legoland, WAP - then 5 days at DL/CA! Your posts are making us sooo excited !