Theme parks

Many families visiting California want to spend at least one day at Disneyland. If big crowds aren’t your thing or you weren’t planning to head that far south, fear not. California has quite a few other theme parks to choose from. To get more info from a pro, I asked Alex Miller, author of California Theme Parks, and employee of the Walt Disney Company, to write about three theme parks throughout...

The right hotel can be the home-away-from-home experience you always hope for in a vacation or it can be  the nightmare you must return to after an exhausting day of seeing sights. For us, the hotel isn’t often that important when we plan to be out doing things most of the day. But with five days of high intensity activities, I felt that finding a good hotel for this trip would be pretty important....

For our last summer fling, which coincidentally nears my oldest’s 5th birthday, I thought what better place to go than Disneyland, the “happiest place on earth”!  As our vacation approached I busily learned all I could to make this a successful trip. I planned to apply some of the well-known traveller tricks: 1) plan for half-days in the park and half-days relaxing, 2) try to eat meals...

My first opportunity to take my then-3 year old out without his new brother attached, I chose a trip to Marine World.  My hope was to let him see some incredible animal shows (what kid isn’t amazed by seeing animals up close) without having to wait around a lot in between shows trying to entertain him. To my amazement, this wish was granted even better than I could have expected. The shows are each...

This is one crazy fun theme park that is all about hands on. I must say that from a Mom perspective, one of my favorite aspects is the design of the park. Nearby many of the rides that my four-year old could go on (but my just toddeling toddler could not) were lego type statues and artwork that the younger one was thrilled with playing with, pounding on, or crawling through. Plus there were a ton of features...