On Sunday we loaded up my f-i-l's car and headed from Palm Desert to Carlsbad to take in Legoland. We took the Palms to Pines Hwy (74) and while it was beautiful, I was glad that the switchbacks only lasted for about 10 miles or so (Gravol, anyone?).
About two hours later we ended up at the Sheraton in Carlsbad which is directly adjacent to Legoland and has its own private entrance to the park. We quickly dumped our luggage in the room and headed to the park to take in what we could in the four hours left until closing time.
Ahhh, Legoland. This place is AWESOME and was worth every penny! If you have kids under 10 and are planning a trip to Southern California, you should definitely set aside a day to check it out. A keen interest in Lego is not a prerequisite (though it would be that much better); there are lots of rides that are fun and not too scary and a couple of roller-coastery rides that are great for the target age group. The magic height to go on the rides seems to be 36", though there were a few that were open to 34" and they have many suggestions of "What to do when you're 2." When we visited the crowds were negligible and the most we waited for any ride was 5 minutes. There were water play areas, good quality shows (not Disney, but decent), lots of Lego stores, good food at the usual theme park prices and it was all very well-laid out. One of my favourite things at the park was Miniland where they have re-created bits of the USA out of Lego in astonwishing detail i.e. Manhattan, New England, SF, Hollywood, New Orleans, and the Vegas Strip!
The Statue of Liberty (taller than me)
The Venetian from the Vegas Strip
Trevor on the Bionicle Blaster
Amy battling the Dark Force
Gavin is teamed up with someone his own size.
We'll definitely try to get back there while Trevor and Amy are young enough to enjoy it and Gavin is old enough to appreciate it!
The hotel (the Sheraton Carlsbad)...meh. It's a four star hotel, and the facilities were lovely, the view was amazing...the room was nice-ish, but freezing, the guy who checked us in had a hard time finding the reservation, not sure why. The restaurant billed itself as family friendly but really, not so much. The ambience is more like fine dining and I was very self-conscious of the level of noise of our kids (which really was very appropriate for a "family" restaurant). The prices were definitely higher end and our server was very pushy about selling and light on the actual service aspect of his job. For the price of the food, the quality was poor. Dave's prime rib was very average and my pasta was dried out and chewy. All in all we were pretty disappointed with the hotel and next time we would stay at a lower end place and catch a shuttle to the park (or walk a mile or two).
So here we are back in Palm Desert about to fly home tomorrow morning. It's a perfect desert day and it will be very hard to face the reality of cold, wet, dark, windy November at home...
No comments:
Post a Comment