Advice for a West Coast Novice

[stardoman]

We love San Diego and have been there twice, the first time for 3 nights and the second time for 7 nights. It still didn't feel like long enough. We enjoyed taking the train to the border wtih Mexico and then crossing the bridge into Mexico. Easy to enter, much harder to get back into the US though.

We did the Warner Bros tour in LA and spent nearly a whole day there as my boys wanted to try everything and read everything. But they are huge movie fans.

I booked tickets for Universal directly from their website and this got up early entry into the park. My family said that they would not get up that early, so I changed the time on all the clocks so they thought it was 2 hours later than it really was. They only realised when they noticed the time on the clock in the car when we were parking It was great though as we had been on every ride by 11am and then spent the rest of the day doing the other things.

We only had one day in Disney though and this was not enough.

If you decide to go up towards San Francisco there are a couple of things we really enjoyed. One was a place called "Mystery Spot" which is in Santa Cruz. Its only a half day thing but its amazing. We spent the other half of the day whale watching in Mouterey.

The second place is called Winchester House and is in San Jose. Such a strange place with staircases that go nowhere and rooms with one entrance and six exits. My son was 12 when we went and says it was the highlight of the trip.

I hope you have a great time.

[jdouds]

So much on west coast to see , we would say widen the net and perhaps do PCH, Monterey, San Fran and yosemite.

[Buzz242]

We've had several trips to California with varying length stays at Disneyland, I would say 3-4 days is plenty. We don't stay at Disney hotels as there are so many hotels within walking distance of the parks. Places that we've stayed that we love are San Francisco, Monterey and San Diego. We've visited LA on each trip but generally stay in Glendale or Burbank as they're quieter. I would agree that you should read many of the trip reports and make a list of places you want to see.