- Joined
- Jan 7, 2005
My family (DW, DD5, DS2, and I) recently returned from a week-long trip to Ramona, where we made day trips to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Julian and nearby Lake Cuyamaca, and Legoland. This trip report will focus on these attractions; those interested in information on the timeshare where we stayed, The Good Life at San Diego Country Estates, can find my review posted in the Timeshare Users Group (TUG).
Wild Animal Park
After reading Mary of Mousesavers.coms review of the Sunrise Safari tour at Disneys Animal Kingdom, which she found disappointing and instead recommended booking a VIP tour at a local zoo, and watching the episode of Samantha Browns Travel Channel show Great Hotels where she gets a VIP tour of the San Diego zoo (both parks offer a similar VIP experience at the same cost), we decided to splurge on the $350 VIP tour. At the Wild Animal Park, the VIP tours offers an animal presentation, a visit to at least two bedroom (their way of saying backstage) areas, and an optional private train tour. We chose to follow the recommendation of the booking agent in not reserving a private train car, since it would have taken away from more immediate animal encounters.
The tour began with an animal experience in which you are restricted to sitting in a row of benches while the animals are presented to you and during the long in-between times; we saw four animals and were here about an hour. Needless to say, DS was not crazy about having to be confined to a relatively small area and started roaming around to see the animals in cages and to entertain himself with a ball that was lying around. This upset the education department employees, several of whom barked at him (no pun intended) to say in the designated area. The experience was analogous to taking a toddler to an extremely elegant restaurant with all its attendant restrictions; the time while eating is likely to be smooth, the in-between times, not. On the positive side, we did get to see some wonderfully unique animals up close, including an Australian sugar glider, African squirrel, and beautiful blue Hyacinth macaw. Clearly, though, this part of the tour requires patience not usually associated with toddlers.
Things got better as the tour continued. It was fun to roam the expansive park in a golf cart, though some bedroom areas are more interesting than others. We started with the elephants, but the backstage area doesnt give you a closer view of them than you get in the regular viewing area. The lion bedroom, on the other hand, was truly thrilling. Separated by only a pane of glass, we got an immediate view of a lioness who had recently given birth and a partial view of her cubs. This is something that would not have been accessible to us if we were not on the tour. Finally, we were taken to the okapi area, where we were able to get extremely close to the animals, if not pet them. At the end of the tour, we were given the option of getting an immediate boarding for the train, bypassing any lines, but we chose to eat instead, since we were hungry and the park was not crowded.
Due to the extreme heat and being tired from the tour, we decided to leave and to return the next day rather than do it commando-style. Our second days highlight was Lorikeet Landing, where for $2, you can purchase a small cup of nectar that you feed to these wonderful birds. You enter into a small aviary, and as soon as the birds see your food, they are quite content to jump on you and enjoy the meal. It was pretty exciting for DW when she had three birds perched on her arms, though like humans, they had the tendency to eat and run! A close second for my family was the petting zoo, which primarily consisted of deer. This time you put 50 cents into a machine (quarters only, so bring change), which gives you food. Some of the deer were either too satiated or tired to nibble, but DD got a real thrill from these wonderful animals eating from her hand.
The balloon ride received a split vote. At $15 per person, it seemed to me overpriced for the experience, though we did get to enjoy the balloon by ourselves. DW and DD enjoyed the ride, though, and it was fun to get an aerial view of the lion sitting on a car in his habitat.
The biggest disappointment was the train (technically a monorail) ride, whose path runs a considerable distance from most of the animals that you want to see. The trains track forms a large oval, and most of the animals tend to stay in the center, the farthest distance from the train. The park exploits this fact by offering a Photo Caravan, less expensive than the VIP tour, which allows visitors to ride in a truck that drives into the center of the animal habitat, offering close-up photo and (I think) feeding opportunities. The exception to the animal visibility are the ones that are housed on the outside of the oval, which gives those sitting in the outer-most seats close proximity to certain animals, including some exotic goats and gorillas. They are doing considerable renovation to the track, so maybe this ride will be better in a few years, but it seems like the zoo will continue to reserve the close-up animal encounters for guests willing to pay a premium.
Food was another major disappointment. Food offerings were of a limited quality and variety and were extremely expensive. There was no way, for example, of buying hot dogs a la carte, so three hot dogs cost more than $15, whether you wanted the potato chips or not. There are some pretty areas to eat, but its best for you to investigate your options. The first time we tried to eat ended in disaster as we had to avoid what seemed like an entire bee colony. All the restaurants we saw offered only outside seating, forcing you to go from a cool, air-conditioned enclosure where you order and pay for your food to an outdoor seating area to eat.
Summary Recommendations:
1. The VIP tour is a wonderful splurge, but I would not recommend it for children under five years old.
2. If you are visiting during the summer, particularly during a period of record high temperatures, try the San Diego zoo, which is much closer to the ocean.
3. Dont miss the many opportunities to feed the animals, so a supply of quarters helps.
Legoland
Much has already been written about this park, and I will try to minimize repetitive comments. Though we visited Legoland on a weekday, it was considerably more crowded than the Wild Animal Park and felt like a typical, high-season day at an amusement park. I discovered something new about this park that was very troubling: while it has the reputation as being a park for young kids, it is extremely unaccommodating to those under 34" (and DS is just a hair under 34"). It is mind-numbing how many rides have height restrictions at this park; in fact, the rides without these restrictions can be counted on one hand. I cant imagine why Legoland is so cautious, but it wouldnt surprise me if Small World had a height restriction if it was transported to Legoland (Pirates certainly would!). Once you reach 34", your options open up considerably, so I hope to have a better experience if we return when DS is older. However, my visit to this park was considerably hindered by the fact that, unlike Disneyland, there was only one ride (their take on a storybookland ride) which we could do as a family, albeit on two different boats.
Furthermore, I want to set the facts straight about one other issue. Not too long ago, one DISboard blogger praised at some length the supposedly wonderful Legoland feature that allowed a parent and child to play with legos while the other parent waited on line. I only noticed this on one ride and this experience was hindered by both the limited amount of legos with which you could play (one table had none at all!) and the lack of shade provided. This same ride underscored this parks legendary inefficiency loading and unloading rides; a plaque on the operators board proudly declared that on one August day, this attraction set its guests-per-hour record, and while I cant remember the exact number now, it was less than 500. I do remember that it was a number so low, I cant see any pride in commemorating it in plaque form.
Other posters have also reported this years underwhelming addition to the park, Pirates Cove. While I read a description of Treasure Falls, the log ride, which was still out-of-service on the day of our visit, you have to see it to believe it. It is literally the county fair version: You go up, make a small semi-circular turn, and go right back down againthats it! The star of this area, Splash Battle, does not resemble what you see in the ads, and DW reported that the ride itself was likewise a disappointment. In the ads, the pirate skull features gushing waterfall, which either is non-existent or turned off on the day of our visit. Again, the lack of nearby shade was frustrating as I waited with napping DS while my wife and daughter were on the ride.
The food was noticeably better in quality than typical theme park offerings. The Italian restaurant offered pizzas made in wood burning ovens, and the pasta sauce was, for lack of a better word, restaurant-quality, clearly not from a can. Grannys apple fries were truly delicious, odd as the concept seemed..The only other thing I can add to previously-described material is that if you have a Volvo (we dont), dont park with the other cars but drive close to the gate, where you will see a number of the best spots reserved for Volvo owners.
Julian
As small a town as this one is, Julian is the beneficiary of a surprising number of articles in various California magazines such as Sunset. It is basically an old western town themed to apples, strange as that sounds, and its high season is apparently apple season, which is to say, the fall. There is an abundance of restaurants and bakeries featuring a variety of apple pies as well as bed and breakfasts. Most of the tourists apparently come from San Diego, which is its closest big city.
We made two half-day, give or take, visits to Julian and nearby Lake Cuyamaca. We started the first day with a stop at the Julian stables. My wife was initially keen on staying in the area because it afforded many opportunities for DD to get some time on a horse, though it turned out that most of those opportunities required that the rider be nine-years-old. We chose Julian stables because they offered the opportunity for DD to be on a 20 minute horse-led tour, while DS and I would be on a horse-drawn cart ride. As it turned out, the horse-led cart ride grew quickly monotonous, since we were confined to a fairly small area, presumably for safetys sake. DD really enjoyed her ride, though, since it allowed her to be on a horse, and the stables position on the top of a tall hill provided some wonderful views during their ride.
We then proceeded to Julian which was more crowded than it would be mid-week, when we returned for our second visit. We stopped for a quick lunch and then made our way to the gold mine tour. We were told that kindergartners visit on field trips, but ideally, they should have had one tour for families and one for adults, since we were again restricted in how far we could roam in the mine which we were tempted to do when the tour dragged on during question-and-answer periods. I certainly dont begrudge anyone for asking questions, since it was a pretty interesting experience and gave you some feeling for what it was like for someone brave enough to work as a gold miner. The highlight was when they turned out all the lights so you could experience a little bit of what it was like after the dynamite was exploded and all the candles were extinguished. Pretty terrifying.
Inadvertently, we saved the best for last that day. We stopped at one of the many fruit and vegetable stands you see on the road to Julian, Meyer Orchards, and got the absolutely best tomatoes Ive ever eaten. If Id known how good they were going to be, I would have purchased many more. Unfortunately, when we went back to Julian a second time, it was during the week, and this stand was only open during weekends, apparently. The peaches there were great as well, but nothing compared to those tomatoes.
Rather than pack too much into one day, we returned to Julian again later in this week, this time with the intention of going to Lake Cuyamaca to use the paddle boats. I was a little worried about this outing because DS has demonstrated several times in the past that he really does not like life vests, and the one he had to wear on the paddle boats was extremely large and confining. Unfortunately, he would not stop crying, even as we paddled away from the dock, so we decided to cut our ride short. We knew from past experience that the stimulus of speed tends to compensate for discomfort of life vests, so we decided to rent a motorboat, which turned out to be a great idea. The lake is pretty small, so the boat ride got old pretty quickly. When we came back to dock, the ranger gave us a great suggestion, to park at one of the beaches and take a walk. This turned out to be a highlight of the trip; I spent one of my most relaxing hours, sitting on the deserted beach, watching the children throw rocks in the water and otherwise entertaining themselves. It was finally a time to return the boat to the dock. We had lunch again in Julian on the way back and picked some groceries from the recently re-opened small grocery store there, which also featured an excellent butcher selling USDA choice beef at reasonable prices.
Wild Animal Park
After reading Mary of Mousesavers.coms review of the Sunrise Safari tour at Disneys Animal Kingdom, which she found disappointing and instead recommended booking a VIP tour at a local zoo, and watching the episode of Samantha Browns Travel Channel show Great Hotels where she gets a VIP tour of the San Diego zoo (both parks offer a similar VIP experience at the same cost), we decided to splurge on the $350 VIP tour. At the Wild Animal Park, the VIP tours offers an animal presentation, a visit to at least two bedroom (their way of saying backstage) areas, and an optional private train tour. We chose to follow the recommendation of the booking agent in not reserving a private train car, since it would have taken away from more immediate animal encounters.
The tour began with an animal experience in which you are restricted to sitting in a row of benches while the animals are presented to you and during the long in-between times; we saw four animals and were here about an hour. Needless to say, DS was not crazy about having to be confined to a relatively small area and started roaming around to see the animals in cages and to entertain himself with a ball that was lying around. This upset the education department employees, several of whom barked at him (no pun intended) to say in the designated area. The experience was analogous to taking a toddler to an extremely elegant restaurant with all its attendant restrictions; the time while eating is likely to be smooth, the in-between times, not. On the positive side, we did get to see some wonderfully unique animals up close, including an Australian sugar glider, African squirrel, and beautiful blue Hyacinth macaw. Clearly, though, this part of the tour requires patience not usually associated with toddlers.
Things got better as the tour continued. It was fun to roam the expansive park in a golf cart, though some bedroom areas are more interesting than others. We started with the elephants, but the backstage area doesnt give you a closer view of them than you get in the regular viewing area. The lion bedroom, on the other hand, was truly thrilling. Separated by only a pane of glass, we got an immediate view of a lioness who had recently given birth and a partial view of her cubs. This is something that would not have been accessible to us if we were not on the tour. Finally, we were taken to the okapi area, where we were able to get extremely close to the animals, if not pet them. At the end of the tour, we were given the option of getting an immediate boarding for the train, bypassing any lines, but we chose to eat instead, since we were hungry and the park was not crowded.
Due to the extreme heat and being tired from the tour, we decided to leave and to return the next day rather than do it commando-style. Our second days highlight was Lorikeet Landing, where for $2, you can purchase a small cup of nectar that you feed to these wonderful birds. You enter into a small aviary, and as soon as the birds see your food, they are quite content to jump on you and enjoy the meal. It was pretty exciting for DW when she had three birds perched on her arms, though like humans, they had the tendency to eat and run! A close second for my family was the petting zoo, which primarily consisted of deer. This time you put 50 cents into a machine (quarters only, so bring change), which gives you food. Some of the deer were either too satiated or tired to nibble, but DD got a real thrill from these wonderful animals eating from her hand.
The balloon ride received a split vote. At $15 per person, it seemed to me overpriced for the experience, though we did get to enjoy the balloon by ourselves. DW and DD enjoyed the ride, though, and it was fun to get an aerial view of the lion sitting on a car in his habitat.
The biggest disappointment was the train (technically a monorail) ride, whose path runs a considerable distance from most of the animals that you want to see. The trains track forms a large oval, and most of the animals tend to stay in the center, the farthest distance from the train. The park exploits this fact by offering a Photo Caravan, less expensive than the VIP tour, which allows visitors to ride in a truck that drives into the center of the animal habitat, offering close-up photo and (I think) feeding opportunities. The exception to the animal visibility are the ones that are housed on the outside of the oval, which gives those sitting in the outer-most seats close proximity to certain animals, including some exotic goats and gorillas. They are doing considerable renovation to the track, so maybe this ride will be better in a few years, but it seems like the zoo will continue to reserve the close-up animal encounters for guests willing to pay a premium.
Food was another major disappointment. Food offerings were of a limited quality and variety and were extremely expensive. There was no way, for example, of buying hot dogs a la carte, so three hot dogs cost more than $15, whether you wanted the potato chips or not. There are some pretty areas to eat, but its best for you to investigate your options. The first time we tried to eat ended in disaster as we had to avoid what seemed like an entire bee colony. All the restaurants we saw offered only outside seating, forcing you to go from a cool, air-conditioned enclosure where you order and pay for your food to an outdoor seating area to eat.
Summary Recommendations:
1. The VIP tour is a wonderful splurge, but I would not recommend it for children under five years old.
2. If you are visiting during the summer, particularly during a period of record high temperatures, try the San Diego zoo, which is much closer to the ocean.
3. Dont miss the many opportunities to feed the animals, so a supply of quarters helps.
Legoland
Much has already been written about this park, and I will try to minimize repetitive comments. Though we visited Legoland on a weekday, it was considerably more crowded than the Wild Animal Park and felt like a typical, high-season day at an amusement park. I discovered something new about this park that was very troubling: while it has the reputation as being a park for young kids, it is extremely unaccommodating to those under 34" (and DS is just a hair under 34"). It is mind-numbing how many rides have height restrictions at this park; in fact, the rides without these restrictions can be counted on one hand. I cant imagine why Legoland is so cautious, but it wouldnt surprise me if Small World had a height restriction if it was transported to Legoland (Pirates certainly would!). Once you reach 34", your options open up considerably, so I hope to have a better experience if we return when DS is older. However, my visit to this park was considerably hindered by the fact that, unlike Disneyland, there was only one ride (their take on a storybookland ride) which we could do as a family, albeit on two different boats.
Furthermore, I want to set the facts straight about one other issue. Not too long ago, one DISboard blogger praised at some length the supposedly wonderful Legoland feature that allowed a parent and child to play with legos while the other parent waited on line. I only noticed this on one ride and this experience was hindered by both the limited amount of legos with which you could play (one table had none at all!) and the lack of shade provided. This same ride underscored this parks legendary inefficiency loading and unloading rides; a plaque on the operators board proudly declared that on one August day, this attraction set its guests-per-hour record, and while I cant remember the exact number now, it was less than 500. I do remember that it was a number so low, I cant see any pride in commemorating it in plaque form.
Other posters have also reported this years underwhelming addition to the park, Pirates Cove. While I read a description of Treasure Falls, the log ride, which was still out-of-service on the day of our visit, you have to see it to believe it. It is literally the county fair version: You go up, make a small semi-circular turn, and go right back down againthats it! The star of this area, Splash Battle, does not resemble what you see in the ads, and DW reported that the ride itself was likewise a disappointment. In the ads, the pirate skull features gushing waterfall, which either is non-existent or turned off on the day of our visit. Again, the lack of nearby shade was frustrating as I waited with napping DS while my wife and daughter were on the ride.
The food was noticeably better in quality than typical theme park offerings. The Italian restaurant offered pizzas made in wood burning ovens, and the pasta sauce was, for lack of a better word, restaurant-quality, clearly not from a can. Grannys apple fries were truly delicious, odd as the concept seemed..The only other thing I can add to previously-described material is that if you have a Volvo (we dont), dont park with the other cars but drive close to the gate, where you will see a number of the best spots reserved for Volvo owners.
Julian
As small a town as this one is, Julian is the beneficiary of a surprising number of articles in various California magazines such as Sunset. It is basically an old western town themed to apples, strange as that sounds, and its high season is apparently apple season, which is to say, the fall. There is an abundance of restaurants and bakeries featuring a variety of apple pies as well as bed and breakfasts. Most of the tourists apparently come from San Diego, which is its closest big city.
We made two half-day, give or take, visits to Julian and nearby Lake Cuyamaca. We started the first day with a stop at the Julian stables. My wife was initially keen on staying in the area because it afforded many opportunities for DD to get some time on a horse, though it turned out that most of those opportunities required that the rider be nine-years-old. We chose Julian stables because they offered the opportunity for DD to be on a 20 minute horse-led tour, while DS and I would be on a horse-drawn cart ride. As it turned out, the horse-led cart ride grew quickly monotonous, since we were confined to a fairly small area, presumably for safetys sake. DD really enjoyed her ride, though, since it allowed her to be on a horse, and the stables position on the top of a tall hill provided some wonderful views during their ride.
We then proceeded to Julian which was more crowded than it would be mid-week, when we returned for our second visit. We stopped for a quick lunch and then made our way to the gold mine tour. We were told that kindergartners visit on field trips, but ideally, they should have had one tour for families and one for adults, since we were again restricted in how far we could roam in the mine which we were tempted to do when the tour dragged on during question-and-answer periods. I certainly dont begrudge anyone for asking questions, since it was a pretty interesting experience and gave you some feeling for what it was like for someone brave enough to work as a gold miner. The highlight was when they turned out all the lights so you could experience a little bit of what it was like after the dynamite was exploded and all the candles were extinguished. Pretty terrifying.
Inadvertently, we saved the best for last that day. We stopped at one of the many fruit and vegetable stands you see on the road to Julian, Meyer Orchards, and got the absolutely best tomatoes Ive ever eaten. If Id known how good they were going to be, I would have purchased many more. Unfortunately, when we went back to Julian a second time, it was during the week, and this stand was only open during weekends, apparently. The peaches there were great as well, but nothing compared to those tomatoes.
Rather than pack too much into one day, we returned to Julian again later in this week, this time with the intention of going to Lake Cuyamaca to use the paddle boats. I was a little worried about this outing because DS has demonstrated several times in the past that he really does not like life vests, and the one he had to wear on the paddle boats was extremely large and confining. Unfortunately, he would not stop crying, even as we paddled away from the dock, so we decided to cut our ride short. We knew from past experience that the stimulus of speed tends to compensate for discomfort of life vests, so we decided to rent a motorboat, which turned out to be a great idea. The lake is pretty small, so the boat ride got old pretty quickly. When we came back to dock, the ranger gave us a great suggestion, to park at one of the beaches and take a walk. This turned out to be a highlight of the trip; I spent one of my most relaxing hours, sitting on the deserted beach, watching the children throw rocks in the water and otherwise entertaining themselves. It was finally a time to return the boat to the dock. We had lunch again in Julian on the way back and picked some groceries from the recently re-opened small grocery store there, which also featured an excellent butcher selling USDA choice beef at reasonable prices.
