Pre-Disneyland: San Diego (June 20-25, 2025)
I was going to try to keep this short but realized I couldn’t… so this will probably take a few posts.
The whole reason we took this trip was actually so that our younger son could see koalas for his birthday. Our main focus was San Diego. Then, we added a few days at Disneyland. And, since it was going to be our first trip to California, decided to add a few days at the beach at the end of the trip to relax.
June 20: Arrival
We flew into Long Beach. This airport was so mellow. We loved the southern California vibe right when we landed. Car rental was easy. We arrived on a Friday afternoon and knew traffic to San Diego was going to be heavy. We toyed with staying in Long Beach for dinner to wait for traffic to ease up, but we were coming off a 12+ hour travel day and living on east coast time. So, we drove straight to San Diego. Most of the traffic was through Camp Pendleton, and it took us around 2 hours. We arrived at our rental house in Old Town around 6:30pm, dropped our luggage, and headed straight to Ralphs to pick up some groceries. After a quick trip to the supermarket, we grabbed some burgers from a restaurant right next to our little house and brought them back. Dinner, showers, bedtime. Whew! We made it to California!
June 21: USS Midway and Padres Game
We watched a few Youtube videos of top attractions in San Diego so that our kids could help us decide which attractions to do (because there is so much to do!). The USS Midway was near the top of their list. Our rental house was a 2 minute walk from the Old Town trolley stop, so we could just hop on a trolley downtown. We all loved the Midway. It was fascinating. My guys are really into history and big museum guys, so we got there when we opened at 10am and spent almost 4 hours there. We could have spent even more time but wanted to get to Petco.
Then, we walked the Embarcadero a bit and hopped back on the trolley to go to Petco Park. My husband loves baseball, and it’s his dream for our family to see a game in every major league park in the country. When we planned our California itinerary, we planned the dates of the trip to ensure that we could see the Padres, Angels, and Dodgers at home. For Father’s Day, we got him a baseball stadium passport book that he can get stamped at every park. Petco was going to be the first stamp in the book! And it was the coolest baseball stadium I have ever been to. We got there early so that we could watch batting practice. In the middle of the game, the boys were getting a little restless, so I took them to check out Gallagher Square. They spent at least three innings playing on the wiffle ball field, climbing through the play area, etc. It was so family-friendly, and, if we lived in San Diego, we’d be season ticket holders. My older son was on the jumbotron and the Padres won - woohoo!
June 22: San Diego Zoo Safari Park
While planning our trip, we learned that the San Diego Zoo had two parks! Once we made this discovery, we knew that our animal-loving kids would want to do both. We actually had to extend our trip and arrive a day earlier to get them both in, and I am so glad we did. My kids were most excited about the Safari Park because they had platypuses (apparently the only place in the world you can see them outside of Australia and New Zealand). We headed there first, waited patiently for an hour for them to come out (I don’t think this is normal - the zoo staff seemed to think the platypuses were a little sleep because they had just switched the park hours to an hour earlier), and then watched them frolic around for awhile. The rest of the Safari Park was great too. I think the highlight is just the natural beauty. We spent time walking through the gardens, and it was so neat to be among the cactuses! I am not sure why, but I had no real sense of how mountainous southern California is. Being at the Safari park just really beautiful and unlike any other part of our trip. We ate lunch at the Watering Hole restaurant overlooking the savanna and liked seeing the animals. The tram was also very cool. But, more than anything, I will remember it for being so scenic (and also for how dedicated my kiddos were to seeing the platypuses and their sheer joy in seeing them!). Our family is split on which was better, but I liked it more than the San Diego Zoo.
June 23: San Diego Zoo
Today was the day - koalas to celebrate our younger son’s birthday! We were also excited because the zoo has Night Zoo during the summer and extends their hours to 8pm. We treated this day like a Disney day - arriving right when it opened, touring until it got hot, taking a midday break, and returning in the late afternoon for some evening touring. I found a detailed itinerary and map online with a route for minimizing uphill walking and modified it a bit to accommodate a break. We literally did it all. We got super lucky because we got to see a panda on the move and watched it climb a tree. We also saw a koala on the move (which is even luckier because I think they sleep, on average, like 22 hours a day). My favorite part of the whole zoo was the Africa Rocks section. It felt so natural and was beautifully landscaped, and I really loved some of the aviaries. Towards the end of the night, we had some parts of the zoo all to ourselves. And, we ended with their nighttime performance, which was really cute. We have taken my kids to the Bronx Zoo several times, and we had a family debate about which was better. I still pick the Bronx Zoo (maybe it’s nostalgia - I just love their monorail and all of Jungleworld), but the whole rest of my family picked San Diego Zoo.
June 24: La Jolla, Cabrillo National Monument, Balboa Park (and Fleet Science Center)
This was our last full day in San Diego, so we had to fit a lot in! Each member of our family had a different wish list for this California trip. My husband wanted to go to the three baseball games, my older son wanted to see as many Marvel characters as possible, my younger son was all about animals, and I wanted to see some west coast lighthouses. (As a New England girl, I love visiting lighthouses wherever I can). Today was my day to check a few things off!
La Jolla - I wasn’t even sure we’d stop here. I knew my kids would like the seals and sea lions, but we also see seals at home. But, once my kids saw that you could kayak to the La Jolla sea caves and see sea lions along the way, they felt otherwise. Thank goodness we listened to them - kayaking through the caves in La Jolla was without a doubt the highlight of the whole trip for my husband (who hates to kayak!) and me. It was honestly so amazing. We used La Jolla Sea Cave Kayaks for the tour, and our guide was outstanding. We saw leopard sharks, garibaldi, cormorants, sea lions, and were lucky enough to have calm surf that we could go through the caves. Hands down, the absolute best!
Cabrillo National Monument - My kids went to their first national park site this past spring (Castillo de San Marcos National Monument and Fort Matanzas National Monument in St Augustine) and became OBSESSED with Junior Ranger Programs. (So much so that my youngest had a junior ranger-themed birthday party at a local nature center right before we left for vacation). So, we knew we had to stop here so that they could do the program and get a badge. But we also had to stop because Cabrillo has lighthouses! We were able to tour through Old Point Loma Light. Then, we drove down to the tide pool area to see New Point Loma Light and walk along the cliffs a bit. This was stunningly beautiful.
Balboa Park and Fleet Science Center - My youngest really wanted to see Balboa Park. For some reason, he was especially excited to see the organ pavilion. So, to end our day, we stopped by and walked through. My kids had also seen the Fleet Science Center on a Youtube video and really wanted to visit and - as luck would have it - it was open late the evening we were there. And, even better, they do half-off admission in their last 2 hours of the day. And, best of all, we are members of another science center that has reciprocity so that we could go for free! It was cool to learn about the local ecosystems and see some dinosaur bones. I’m not sure this was a “must see”, but the kids had the energy for it and you can’t beat free!
June 25: Torrey Pines, Angels game
This is where the San Diego part of my trip report merges with Disneyland. On our way to Disney, we stopped for a hike at Torrey Pines. Before leaving for our trip, several people had told us that, if we do one thing in San Diego, we should hike Torrey Pines so we left San Diego early in the morning to have enough time to see it. We drove up to the top (for some reason, it seemed that a lot of people parked at the beach and then walked up to the top of those cliffs - that seemed like a lot of extra work with minimal reward, the best views are at the top!) We spent an hour hiking to Red Butte and Razor Point. The sun was strong, but it was incredibly beautiful. We were definitely glad we stopped!
The Angels game started at 1pm, and our seats were behind the bullpen. This was cool because the kids liked seeing the pitchers warm up. However, it also meant no shade. I also forgot all of the sunglasses in the car. We did discover that the Angels have “family gear” available for $9.99. So, as much as it killed my kids to wear Angels hats while they played our Red Sox, they relented. And now it’s a souvenir! My husband got his second stamp in his book. We watched the Red Sox play dreadfully. Then, we cut our losses to head to Disneyland.
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