How to Spend Three Nights in San Diego with a Young Kid

This October, we took a three-night and four-day road trip to San Diego with our six-year old daughter. We had a great time. Today I’m sharing how much we spent and some of the best things to do in San Diego if you’re travelling with a younger kid.

The best time of year to visit

San Diego is known for having awesome weather year-round, so there really isn’t a bad time to visit.

The summer months are one of the more popular times to visit and the most expensive. School is out, which always raises travel costs. Additionally, since San Diego has such a mild climate, folks from hotter climates nearby (like Arizona) often descend upon the city in the summer to avoid the desert heat and enjoy California’s famed beaches.

We originally planned to visit in July to do just that. However, the hotel prices were astronomical during the weeks we wanted to visit so we started exploring alternatives. We ultimately decided to push our trip to October during our daughter’s Fall break.

This turned out to be a great decision. Hotel prices were several hundred dollars cheaper per night, and San Diego brought back it’s “Kids Free October” this year.

Apparently this is a promotion that San Diego has run in the past. It’s a great deal if you are travelling with kids and want to visit the many amusement parks and attractions in the area.

During “Kids Free October,” kids stay, eat, and play for free all month. While you still need to tickets for the adults in your party, you’ll save between $55 – $100 per kid at popular attractions such as the San Diego Zoo, Legoland, and SeaWorld. Most of the city’s museums also participate, with a typical savings of $20+ per ticket. These savings really add up if you’re visiting several attractions or have multiple kids.

Although we proactively decided to keep it simple and not visit the amusement parks on this trip, we still saved a lot of money with this promotion, which helped us to come in below my original budget for the trip.

Lodging

We originally planned to stay in downtown San Diego, as we used to love exploring new cities on foot when we travelled as just a couple. Unfortunately, we haven’t done much travelling since becoming a family of three.

However, San Diego is massive and very hilly. It’s also a lot more expensive to stay downtown, especially if you’re looking for a multi-room suite. We’ve learned that suites are key if you have young kids who go to bed early. We made the mistake of not splurging on a suite when travelling to Aruba when our daughter was one. We won’t do that again. One night, maybe. More than one night, and it’s worth the upgrade for a two room option.

After realizing we’d still need to drive most places and considering how walkable the city would be with our 6-year old (not very), we opted to stay just north of San Diego in the coastal town of Del Mar. This moved saved us $400 dollars in hotel and parking costs as compared to the downtown option we were considering. The drive downtown was still just 15-20 minutes, which worked for our plans, since several things we wanted to visit were north of the city.

How we spent three-nights in San Diego with a young kid

Since we only had about three days to spend in San Diego, we limited our activities to just a handful. I highly recommend this approach when travelling with young children. There is so much to do that you might be tempted to cram it all in, but kids get tired and overwhelmed easily.

I find it much more enjoyable to travel and enjoy things at a slower pace. This also helps avoid frustration when the inevitable meltdown occurs. You’ve got plenty of time to take a pause.

The San Diego Zoo

One of the highlights of our trip was visiting the San Diego Zoo.

There’s a reason this zoo is world-famous! I’ve been to a few other zoos over the years, including the world’s oldest zoo in Austria, and the San Diego Zoo is pretty spectacular.

The park is huge at around 100 acres. It hosts over 12,000 animals of 650 species or subspecies groups. While you can no longer see the Giant Pandas here, there are so many wonderful animals to see in the elaborate (and large) habitats created for them. Our favorites were the giraffes, koalas, polar bears, lions, elephants, tigers, and flamingos.

We spent the majority of our first full day in San Diego at the zoo, walking over 5 miles. I was seriously impressed with how far our daughter walked without complaining. If your kid can’t or won’t walk that far, the zoo does have free shuttle buses and rentable strollers to help you get around. There is also the Skyfari Aerial Tram that can take you from one side of the park to the other and offers some awesome views of the zoo and Balboa park.

The zoo also has plenty of animal-themed play structures throughout the park, if you find your kid has energy to spare.

If you are planning a visit, make sure to download the Zoo’s app. This app was super helpful in getting us to where we wanted to go within the park.

Little Italy (downtown San Diego)

One evening we spent a couple hours walking around the Little Italy district in downtown San Diego. Little Italy is a 48 square block section of downtown filled with cafes, restaurants, breweries, shops and art galleries. It’s easy to walk around and even easier to find something great to eat or drink.

Had we been sans child, we probably would have spent a little more time exploring this district and other areas in downtown San Diego. The Gas Light District is another famous downtown area; however, I’d read mixed reviews recently about the safety in that corridor, so we opted to skip it this time.

With a young kid, this was the right amount of time for us to spend exploring downtown San Diego. You may want to prioritize things differently, depending on the make up of your travel companions.

La Jolla Coves

On our second full day, we stayed north of the city and explored the coastal towns.

We had fun watching the sea lions and walking along the rugged coastline in La Jolla in the morning. This is a free activity that the kids are sure to enjoy. The photo of the sea lions sunbathing at the top of this post is from La Jolla.

Downtown La Jolla is easily walkable from the coast and has a few cute cafes, shops and restaurants.

Torrey Pines State Reserve and Beach

Mr. RFL and I have always enjoyed hiking when we travel. Now that our daughter is getting older and has more endurance, we can enjoy more hikes as a family.

Torrey Pines State Reserve is a great place to get out in nature and do some family hiking. There are several trails of varying difficulty, including some that descend from the rocky cliffside down to the beaches below. We spent a couple hours hiking on various trails and enjoying the gorgeous ocean views.

At the bottom of the reserve is Torrey Pines State Beach, where you can walk along the sandy beach and get your feet wet in the Pacific Ocean… or spend the whole day.

Balboa Park

Our final stop before heading back to Phoenix on the last day was Balboa Park.

Balboa Park is a massive 1,200 acre urban park full of beautiful grounds, several museums, miles of walking trails, and plenty of other things for kids to do.

The weather wasn’t ideal when we visited, it was gray and misty. However, we still enjoyed our time exploring an admittedly very small section of the park.

There are several museums to choose from within the confines of Balboa Park. We spent a few hours at the Fleet Science Center. This museum is definitively geared towards young children, with plenty of hands on activities and a rotating nature-based Imax movie included with admission.

Just before leaving, we ate a picnic lunch and gave our daughter a little playground time before the 6-hour drive home.

What we skipped

Because we chose to limit activities, there are two very popular attractions that we decided to skip on this trip: Legoland Theme Park and SeaWorld.

Since our daughter is pretty young (and small for her age), we didn’t think the amusement parks would be worth the hassle of long lines this time. That said, we have several friends who’ve taken their kids to Legoland and had a blast. We also know people who’ve enjoyed SeaWorld, though recent reviews online were not as kind. These are two attractions you might want to consider if planning a trip to San Diego with a young kid.

How much we spent

Overall, this trip cost us a total of $1,285. Here’s a break out of how that money was spent.

Overall, it was a really fun trip. Not our most frugal though, at $428/night or $321/day.

However, we’re tracking to be way under our travel budget for the year, so I’m not worried about it.

That’s how we spent three 3-nights in San Diego with a kid in October. Have you ever been?

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