The big ones, and how to pay less for them
Days out with the kids
San Diego has more world-famous attractions per mile than anywhere its size, and all of them know it. The trick is not finding something to do. It is deciding how many of these you actually want to do, and buying the tickets properly before you leave the house.
Tickets first
The gate price is always the worst price
Nobody sensible pays it. Every one of the big parks discounts online, and there are three routes that usually beat even that. Which one wins depends entirely on how many big days you are doing.
- One or two attractions. Buy direct from the attraction’s own site, in advance, for a specific date. Dated tickets are the cheapest tickets, and midweek is cheaper than a Saturday.
- Two or three. Costco Travel sells multi-day and multi-park bundles for the big parks that are usually cheaper than buying the same thing twice. You need a membership, and it is worth checking whether a friend has one before you buy one.
- Three or more in a short stay. A multi-attraction pass, either the Go San Diego pass or Southern California CityPASS, starts to make sense. Both sell either a number of days or a number of attractions. What is included changes, so check the current list against what you actually intend to do rather than the list you remember.
Two other things that catch people. Parking is separate nearly everywhere and is not small; budget it as part of the ticket. And if you are going to the same place twice in a week, do the arithmetic on an annual membership. At the zoo in particular, two day tickets and a membership are close enough that the membership often wins, and it comes with the parking.
Ten minutes away
Close enough to go for half a day, come back to the house, and go out again. Which is the real luxury of being on this side of town.
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Closest
SeaWorld San Diego
On Mission Bay, about ten minutes from the front door, and the fireworks in summer are audible from the house. A full day if you want the rides, a comfortable half if you are there for the animals. Go at opening: the queues and the heat both arrive around eleven.
Ages: works from toddler to teenager, which very little else here manages. The rides skew older, the animal exhibits skew younger.
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Belmont Park
The old wooden roller coaster on the sand at Mission Beach, plus an arcade, a carousel and a ropes course. Free to walk in; you pay per ride or buy a wristband. Twenty minutes on the beach path by bike, and no parking problem if you do it that way.
Ages: the sweet spot is roughly five to twelve. Also the best cheap evening on this page.
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Birch Aquarium
Up on the cliff at Scripps in La Jolla, fifteen minutes north. Small enough to do properly in two hours, which after a theme park is a relief, and the tide-pool tank and the view off the terrace are both better than the size of the place suggests. More on the rest of it on the La Jolla page.
Ages: two to ten, and quietly good for adults.
Balboa Park
Twenty minutes east, and the answer to a hot day, a cold day, a wet day and a day when nobody can agree. Seventeen museums and the zoo in one park, so the hard part is choosing.
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San Diego Zoo
The one everyone comes for, and it earns it. It is also enormous and built on a hill: take the guided bus tour first to see the shape of the place, then walk back to whatever you liked. Go early: the animals are awake and the queues are not there yet. A full day with children, and genuinely tiring.
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The museums
The Fleet Science Center is the one to pick if you can only pick one with children in tow: everything is meant to be pushed. The Natural History Museum has the dinosaurs, the Air and Space Museum has the aircraft, the Model Railroad Museum is far better than it sounds, and the Museum of Us is in the tower everyone photographs. Check the park’s own site for what is open: hours vary by museum and several close one day a week.
Worth knowing: there is a combined park pass that covers most of the museums for a run of days. If you are doing more than two, it pays.
Downtown and the bay
Fifteen to twenty minutes south, and easy to combine, since the three below are within walking distance of each other along the waterfront.
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USS Midway Museum
An aircraft carrier you walk around, tied up on the embarcadero. The audio tour is narrated by people who served on her, the flight deck is full of aircraft you can sit in, and it holds the attention of children who claim not to be interested in ships. Two to three hours.
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The Maritime Museum and the Star of India
A few hundred yards further along: tall ships, a submarine you climb down into, and considerably fewer people than the Midway. Good in combination, or good as the cheaper alternative.
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The New Children’s Museum
Three floors of things to climb on and make a mess with, downtown near the ballpark. This is the one for under-sevens, and the one to have in your back pocket for a day when the weather is wrong.
Worth the drive
Thirty to fifty minutes, so these are whole days rather than afternoons. Leave early, and check what is open before you go. The water parks in particular run on a season rather than a calendar.
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Legoland California
Carlsbad, about thirty-five minutes up the coast, and the most squarely aimed at children of anything in the county: roughly two to ten is the range, and teenagers will be bored. Sea Life aquarium and a water park sit on the same site and are sold as add-ons; the water park is the one worth adding on a hot day, and only then.
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San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Escondido, about forty-five minutes inland, and a genuinely different thing from the zoo rather than a smaller version of it: open enclosures, herds at distance, a tram through the middle. Inland means hot: go in the morning, take more water than you think, and do not do this one in the afternoon in August.
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Water parks
Aquatica down in Chula Vista is the big one and is run by SeaWorld, so it turns up in the same ticket bundles. The Wave in Vista is much smaller, much cheaper and much closer to a town pool, which for younger children is often the better afternoon. Both are seasonal and both keep short shoulder-season hours, so check the calendar before you commit to the drive.
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Cabrillo National Monument and the tide pools
Not a drive at all really, twenty minutes out to the end of Point Loma, and the cheapest good day here by a distance. The view back over the bay is the best in the city, and at a low tide the pools on the ocean side are full of things that move. Check a tide table first; at a high tide there is nothing to see.
Prices, hours and seasons change constantly, and none of the figures above are figures. That is deliberate: a number written here today is wrong by the spring. Check each attraction’s own site for what a ticket costs and what is open on the day you want to go. Nothing here is paid or sponsored, and we have not been to all of them this year.
How to plan the week
Learned the hard way, mostly.
- One big thing a day, at most. Two theme parks back to back is how a holiday turns into a route march. Alternate: a big day, then a beach day.
- Go at opening. Every attraction here is at its best in the first ninety minutes and at its worst between one and three.
- Book the date, not just the ticket. The big parks price by day and some cap numbers. A dated ticket bought a week out is cheaper and safer than turning up.
- Check the weather inland. Escondido and Chula Vista can be fifteen degrees hotter than Pacific Beach on the same afternoon. The coast is the air conditioning.
- Eat before you go in. There is a page on what is near the house, and all of it is better and cheaper than anything inside a park gate.