Southern California Trip 2025: Part I - Sea World, Universal Studios, Newport Beach, and San Diego
For the kids' spring break, we took a 2 week trip to southern California. Since we do the discount den deals with Frontier, we have to do our flying on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Usually we get back a few days after the kids' break, but this time we decided to leave a day before the kids' break. Our Uber driver friend Jonathan gave us a ride to the Denver airport.
We boarded on time, but we arrived late since the plane had to circle in the air for a while. Apparently a small plane had come in from a small, local airport that was causing the issue. Once we landed and made it to baggage claim, we waited for our bag around the carousel only to have it break down before getting all the bags out. It took quite some time before we could find anyone that could help (no one was at the Frontier front desk). Eventually someone went down below and just started tossing the bags up manually. We then took the bus to get our rental car, and the line was long and slow with only 1 person working. Eventually two more came, but not until we were most of the way through the line. Once we finally had our car, we went to Jack in the Box around 2:45pm. This wouldn't normally be a popular lunch time, but the drive thru line was huge! We just couldn't seem to catch a break from long waits that afternoon!
Since our resort was 40 minutes away, and Sea World was 10 minutes away, we went to Sea World for the last couple hours they were open. We started off at Electric Eel so Allison could ride her first ever 54 inch coaster. We then went over to their new ride - Arctic Rescue. Arctic Rescue was fun, but it's a low to the ground launch coaster like Manta, and Manta is better. I didn't think it added much to the park. I'm surprised they didn't do a flying theater like Sea World Orlando built recently in their Arctic area.
We explored the Arctic area after Wave Breaker then walked over to Manta. We saw this Elmo cotton candy and got a picture of Tyler pretending to be sad they'd turned Elmo into Cotton Candy (though Tyler really struggled to keep a straight face). Manta was great, and we would have done it more if we'd known it would be our only opportunity to ride it the entire trip. When we came back to Sea World 9 and 12 days later, it was closed both days.
Allison wanted to ride Electric Eel again, and afterwards we went over to see some morary eels and a huge Japanese crab.
There are a few kids' rides just past the eels and crab. Allison found a friend to ride with, so she was happy to stick around until closing. On the way out, I let the nibble fish chow down on me.
We then went grocery shopping and drove to our resort. It was nice and roomy with plenty of storage and a gorgeous ocean view room (which was too dark to appreciate when we arrived but we did enjoy it the rest of our stay). The kids' room had a twin bed and a full bed, which is much better than having them share a bed. We got them dinner then got to bed as soon as we could since we knew we'd have a long drive to Universal the next morning.
We intentionally planned our Universal day for the next day since it would be a long drive early in the morning, and coming from Colorado, it would still feel like an hour later to us. I woke up well before everyone else and let them continue sleeping, but by the time I went to wake them up around 5:30am, Googlemaps said the commute would be 3 hours. We'd paid an extra $25 per person to get an extra hour in Super Nintendo World, and with the expected traffic, it looked like we'd only get into the area 10 minutes before it opens to everyone else. Thankfully the carpool lane helped us a LOT. It's a long walk from the entrance down to Super Nintendo World, but we made it there just a few minutes after 9. Oscar waited in line to purchase us some power up bands at the Universal shop while the kids and I went straight to Nintendo World.
It's just mindblowing! You really feel like you're walking right into a video game. We tried to do the Bowser's Challenge ride, and Oscar met up with us in line, but it went down after about 10 minutes. We didn't want to waste our extra hour waiting an undetermined amount of time, so we decided to leave the line and do the interactive experiences with our bands. While we waited for an elevator with a group of disgruntled customers who'd complained to the staff, we were all given a fast pass to return anytime later that day.
There were also a lot of great photo ops. Next time I go to Universal I want to wear a Mario or Princess Peach related shirt.
You have to get 3 keys in order to do Bowser Jr's Shadow Showdown (which is amazing!). This first key had the longest line because it takes the most amount of time to do. It's a game with clocks where you run around tapping every clock that's lit up. They let us all do it as a group, and even let Oscar participate, though he didn't have a band.
The Goomba windup key was much quicker.
It's so fun to watch all the characters moving around.
The 3rd key (which I didn't get a video of) was timing when this koopa comes back across. the grass.
We got a photo with Mario, which would have been a MUCH longer wait later in the day without early entry.
After you get the 3 keys you go into Bowser Jr's lair. It's a giant VR experience, and they let Oscar come too even though he didn't have a band.
We don't have video of it since we were all busy doing it, but we do have video of this smaller version they had available up the side of the castle. This one is just hands, while Bowser Jr's lair had us jumping, ducking, and using our heads, arms, and feet to hit away obstacles.
While we were up on the Castle balcony, I saw Princess Peach was available for photos and hustled the kids down to meet her. Allison got to meet Princess Peach while wearing her Princess Peach shirt and Princess Peach jacket!
After we'd had our fill of meeting characters and playing Nintendo Land games, we used our fast pass for Bower's Challenge. The queue was so neat! There's so much attention to the tiniest details everywhere you look. The ride was good, though I was tempted just to watch it all rather than play the game. Playing the game distracted me from enjoying all the graphics and special effects.
After the ride we finally left Nintendo world to get lunch and do the other rides in the Universal Lower lot. The kids played in the Jurassic Play area after lunch, then we all went on Jurassic World.
I was happily surprised to see the Mummy coaster was open since I'd read an article saying it was going to be closed during our visit. I'd never noticed these cute instructions in the bottom right are written in hieroglyphics!
From there the boys took the escalators to the upper lot so Tyler could do wand tricks in Hogsmeade. Allison and I returned to Nintendoland to play more games and do Bowser Jr's challenge again. We wanted to do the Mario and Luigi meet and greet, but the line was already full at 1:28pm even though it didn't start until 1:30pm. We can thank our extra morning hour for being able to do the meet and greets without enormous waits.
Allison and I then went up to join Oscar and Tyler in Hogsmeade. Allison and Tyler continued doing wand tricks while I walked around exploring. We then went into the Three Broomsticks where I got a tasty Hot Butterbeer and Butterbeer potted cream. Afterwards we went on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.
From there we walked over to ride the Secret Life of Pets ride. We got great family pictures with Gru and Poppy and the kids and Oscar got one with King Julien (I had to use the bathroom and missed out on that one). I was thrilled to see Poppy with no line since I'd tried to get in line for Poppy at Universal Orlando in October only to be told by the employee in front of me that they'd cut off the line already.
We got to see the Water World show then finished off our day on the Minions ride. It ended up being a much longer wait than we'd expected since the seats they put us in were broken, and with the doors shut they couldn't just send us back through to the main line. They gave us 8 fast passes, so we got to do the ride, but we still had to wait about 15 minutes in the fast pass line. Universal lines often have a lot of instructional stuff you watch in the queue, even if the fast pass line is short. We had 4 more passes available, but they were only valid at Minions and a few small surrounding rides, and we had a long drive back to the resort, so we gave the extra passes away. If we could have used them at Bowser's Challenge or even the Flight of the Hippogriff coaster, that would have been different.
The next day was our worst weather day, so we mostly hung around the hotel. Allison made a little birdhouse at the activity center, and since the water was nice, we went swimming and sat in the hot tub until it started to rain. Once the rain cleared, she and I walked over to tour the Legoland hotels and see the fun Lego sculptures just outside the theme park gates.
We picked up a few games from the activity center and spent a lot of that day just relaxing and playing Scrabble.
The next day was much nicer. In the morning I took a walk to see all the flower fields. The ones near our hotel weren't in bloom, but there were some in bloom just a bit further down.
Oscar's parents had gone to a wedding in Arizona, and they decided to join us on our trip for a few days. We met up at Newport Beach since we wanted to take Tyler to do baptisms at the temple there. Our family decided to get to Newport Beach a bit early to do some hiking and exploring. Tyler had found us a hike on chat GPT at a state park there, but it was closed. The ranger directed us to the coastal area of the park instead. She took some family pictures of us there before we left.
The beach was gorgeous! I had no regrets that we ended up on the beach instead of hiking in the hills.
The kids and I waded in the water and watched some cute sandpipers run away from the waves then fly off when the surf came in too far.
It was only a few hours, but I'm glad we got one beach day in.
Here we are at the destination the ranger had recommended - Treasure Cove.
We got some nice family pictures with the beautiful coastline.
Oscar used chatGPT to turn us all into Legos in this photo.
We took one last look at the beach then we drove up to the temple.
We found a park and playground near the temple and figured it would be a good place for Allison and Martha to hang out while the rest of us were in the temple. Tyler did baptisms and confirmations, Oscar baptized him, and Marcus and I were witnesses.
Oscar let a praying mantis crawl up his arm at the park before setting it on a nearby tree. The next morning, Oscar ran a race and was happy with his time. He's all about destination racing these days. It was a 1/2 marathon, which he completed in 1:35:48. He finished 4th in his age group.
I took a walk down to Carlsbad Beach after church on Sunday. It was much more rocky than Newport Beach, so I was extra glad we had some barefoot on the sand time there.
I even had the same jacket from those photos we took 6 years ago.
The next day Marcus treated us all to a whale watching cruise. They took a wrong turn and ended up missing the ship, but we were able to reschedule for later. It meant we had several hours to kill, and we'd already paid for all day parking, so we walked around.
Allison went on the carousel and we picked up yummy Cajun barbeque lunch.
Turned out there was a playground not too far from the pier. We'd dressed warm since it was cold and cloudy in the morning when we were expecting to be out on the water, but it warmed up considerably around noon.
It takes some time to get out of San Diego Bay to the open ocean where you might see whales. Several of us slept at some point being rocked to sleep by the motion of the boat. We were told it was a bit late in the season for whale watching, so we might not see as much as we were hoping to. After a long time we finally saw the spouts of a gray whale. They were just about to turn around when they announced a humpback whale and a huge pod of 100+ dolphins had been spotted, so we all agreed to stay a little longer to see those. We got some good views of the humpback diving in the water. I was too busy enjoying it to take video. It's really neat to watch them in their natural habitat.
We also saw several Sea Lions hanging out on the red buoys, but they told us that's a pretty common site. They're pretty much always there, all year long.
I did get a little video of the dolphin pod. It was fun to watch them jumping around and diving under the ship as we passed. There were several groups of moms with their babies.
After that we cruised back into San Diego Bay, and we headed back to the resort for dinner. Martha and Marcus left to start their drive home the next morning just before we headed over to Legoland.
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