West Coast Trip Report

[BOTL76]

Thought I would share my families recent vacation to California. I always enjoy reading others trip reports and certainly has helped my family with our trip planning.

We departed Thursday December 1st and returned Saturday December 10th.

I will try and summarize through different categories.
Transportation/Airports

• Took a morning flight with Westjet out of Pearson.
• While busy, what helped us was checking in online ahead of time. If you needed check-in assistant the lines were very long. Luckily we avoided this, went to a kiosk to print our bag tags and sent our luggage away.
• Security and Customs clearance took about 20 minutes, not too bad. Note download the mobile passport control app in advance, will save you time in the customs line!
• flight was on time and was smooth

We landed at LAX and didn't have to wait too long for our bags. Took a shuttle to car rental place and easily signed out our rental van.

Coming back:

• car rental return was smooth, but had one of the craziest bus drivers but I guess you have to drive crazy around that area
• flight was slightly delayed but check-in and security was only 25 minutes overall,
• flight home was smooth and shockingly only took us 30 minutes after getting off the plane to get through customs, get our bags and leave the airport. I was definitely most surprised about this, I was expecting a dreadful long wait for customs and getting our bags

LA/Hollywood area

• the traffic is seemingly always bad, lots of volume and lots of aggressive drivers.
• many sketchy areas, overall we weren't really a big fan of this part of our trip
• went to Santa Monica Pier and Venice beach. while some kids stuff to do on the pier, the amount of homelessness is crazy. Never felt safe our entire time in this area and definitely won't be back. Deplorable to say the least.

Beach areas we did enjoy

• Long Beach and Del Mar Beach were our favourites and we had a great time visiting both of these places, Kid friendly and nice and clean sandy beaches. Long Beach has a nice aquarium as well.

Theme Parks
We did one day at Disneyland and one day at California Adventure

• While we went on a weekday for each, couldn't believe how crowded it was. However I fully understand people want to start vacationing again plus with the huge population in Cali and popularity of these parks, we understood it was okay to deal with these crowds.
• Utilized the genie plus and lightning lane for both parks. Overall not bad wait time for rides, I think the longest we did was 45 minutes for space mountain (for the second time as we used genie plus for the first time).
• Overall a great experience and had a great time, and was cool to see the similarities and differences between DL/CA and DW.
• highly recommend doing rope drop at each park, plenty of info out there on how to do it, but even with the parks getting busy later on (while also having Genie+ and LL), both mornings at each park we got on ALOT of rides before noon. Made the day go better and could take our time getting on the rest of the rides and picking out some cool eats later in the day.
• note Downtown Disney was crazy busy as well! We did have one dinner at the Grand California hotel but had to book in advance of our trip.
• I was amazed at how many rides/attractions/experiences there are at Disneyland! Plus toontown is currently closed, set to re-open in the new year. So much to do and we didn't get on everything, even with the park being open 8am to 12midnight!
• Another surreal moment was riding Peter Pan at 11pm that night. Posted 30 minute wait, was around that for us, but park is getting ready to close (midnight that night) and being in a relative long line for a simple yet enjoyable kids ride!
  
  Universal Studios
• they had a deal where you buy one day pass, get one day free
• we did the two days since we wanted to ensure we got to enjoy the park
• much different than Florida version. While some good rides, definitely different with no major roller coasters that we enjoy at the Florida parks
• Also Jurassic park was closed boooo
• Backlot tour was the adults favourite
• The mummy ride and Harry Potter ride were the kids favourites
• Definitely can be done in one day
• About to open Super Nintendo/Super Mario world so that will add some new rides/experiences
• has some cool sightlines out into the mountains from different parts of the park

San Diego Zoo

• definitely if your kids love animals this is a great place to visit and experience
• lots of walking so we opted to use the skyliner and also did a bus tour (both included with park admission), this was a big win for the adults while the kids enjoyed seeing a few different things that we wouldn't have seen by walking the entire zoo

Weather

• we lucked out as only had one day of consistent rain.
• most days were sunny/partly cloudy with daytime high between 15-20C
• depending on where we were (we stayed LA/San Diego/Anaheim areas) night time temps dipped to 6-10C
• met other fellow Canadians at hotel pools we were staying at, seems like it was too cold (even though pools were heated) for others not from Northern States/Canada which made for some quality pool time for the kids!

Well thanks for letting me share our most recent trip and hope it helps with anyone planning to visit California. Also not surprising but things are quite expensive in California. Sure some deals to be had, but overall the day to day we found expensive even with lots of advance planning and saving in a few areas (i.e. ensuring we stayed at hotels that included breakfast)

While we enjoyed it my wife and I have agreed Florida is our Disney happy place and will be looking to go back there for our next trip.

 

[MamaLema]

Thanks for sharing. Going in May so this really helps!
Was planning Santa Monica Pier but not so sure now.

 

[BOTL76]

@MamaLema happy to share more if you would like, just let me know.