How is this plan?

[400ixl]

Just use your phone for a sat nav, no need to buy anything. You can get apps that use offline data (on wifi) to plan routes, or apps like Waze for realtime routing if you will have data.

I wouldn't try to do LA, Vegas, South Rin, Palm Springs and San Diego in 2 weeks. Especially if you want to enjoy it.

Venice beach is somewhere you will want to spend a day chilling out on the boardwalk. It has the Muscle Beach and the skate park. Teens will easily lose a day there. Others are Santa Monica, Marina Del Ray and Malibu.

If they are into movies like the Fast and Furious series then the beach used for the final Paul Walker scene is just south of Malibu and there is a Cafe used in the film just up the road as well.

You will want at least one day at Universal (about an hour from Santa Monica).

You will then want another day for Warner Bros Studio Tour and other tourist sites like Hollywood. Again, this is an hour each way from Santa Monica.

So thats 3 days gone.

You will need to shift locations for Disney to Anaheim and then have 2 days there ias a minimum for a first visit.

Thats 5 days at least gone.

Next day is a road trip to Vegas. You could do a pretty boring dash across in about 5 hours from Anaheim, but you will be missing sights like Death Valley.

If you then have 3 days in Vegas seeing the sights you have done 9 days

South Rim is 4 hours the other side of Vegas so best to head across in the morning, spend the day and sunset there, staying overnight. The next day you could drive down to Palm Springs, but would take most of the day to get there. So that's 11 days gone.

Spend the day in Palm Springs and then drive to San Diego. That's 12 days.

Finally you get 1 day in San Diego with one night before you have to drive back to LAX to fly home.

So as you see, by the time you add in all the travelling as California is massive you will not get the time to spend in that many locations. It will be just a rushing around blur if you try to fit it all in and it won't be anywhere near as enjoyable, and you won't get to do half the places you would want to.

[GroovyYvee]

Don’t forget you can take the Pacific Surfliner train between LA and San Diego - a really nice way to see that stretch of coast (plus a nifty way of avoiding some hefty car parking charges - many hotels charge around $35-40 per day!).
Also I don’t think you need four full days for San Diego, plus remember that Las Vegas is VERY ‘adult’...

[mulv2222]

Thanks again for your help everyone

Would we be better to stay in Santa Monica at the beach, or stay elsewhere and travel in to visit?

[400ixl]

Originally Posted by GroovyYvee

Also I don’t think you need four full days for San Diego, plus remember that Las Vegas is VERY ‘adult’...

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Las Vegas is only very adult if you go to the places that make it such. There is a huge amount to do for all ages both on the strip and in the surrounding area. Could list things to keep teenagers going for weeks.

LA is a huge area and Santa Monica is in the north western area and a hour or more from many areas. Hollywood, Universal, Warner Bros etc are all over towards the north eastern side and an hour each way.

Beverly Hills is about 30 minutes each way as a tourist area.

Anaheim is south east and 90 minutes each way.

From Santa Monica you have the coastal town of Malibu in the north and then places like Venice Beach locally.

Most people stay nearer to Hollywood, with Burbank being quite popular as they will spend more time there. Many do a day trip to the coast where you could cover Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice Beach in a day trip. They then move to Anaheim where they do Disney and could do a day trip to the southern coastal areas like Long Beach.

It really depends on what you are planning to do and what importance you place on avoiding travel time.