Santa Monica Pier vs. Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

[GenGen22]

Has anyone ever been to the Santa Monica Pier? If so, what is your opinion of it? Worth seeing?? We have 3 teens/Preteen DS12, DS13 & DD16. We have been to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and the kids love it. I was wondering if this place was comparable or not as good or better...

 

[danaesacto]

I, and my 12 and 14 year old girls, could spend basically all day at Santa Cruz, between arcade games, rides, food and people watching- and a few hours on the beach. Santa Monica was cool to see- baby sharks right below the boardwalk were really neat, but there are just a couple rides, and nothing we felt we had to do. We walked around, took our picture under the Route 66 sign and left. We spent about 90 minutes there and felt we had covered what we wanted to. It is much smaller than Santa Cruz.

 

[GenGen22]

I, and my 12 and 14 year old girls, could spend basically all day at Santa Cruz, between arcade games, rides, food and people watching- and a few hours on the beach. Santa Monica was cool to see- baby sharks right below the boardwalk were really neat, but there are just a couple rides, and nothing we felt we had to do. We walked around, took our picture under the Route 66 sign and left. We spent about 90 minutes there and felt we had covered what we wanted to. It is much smaller than Santa Cruz.

Thank you so much for your input I really appreciate it We're trying to decide if we want to buy the golosangelescard for our vacation because we really want to go to The Warner Bros studio tour as well as Knotts Berry farm and Universal studios but after the WB tour we were trying to fit something else in but are not quite sure of what yet and thought the SM Pier may be fun if it was like SC. But if it's not all that great and we have to drive from Anaheim to Hollywood and then to Santa Monica then maybe we should just stick to Hollywood and find something else to do there.

Thanks