San Diego Hotel rec for "no-plan" short vacay?

[SixteenFeet]

We're going to be visiting another family in SoCal and then driving with them to San Diego for a couple of days in August. We would like to hit the zoo and perhaps Sea World (and maybe others? We haven't thought this through).

Each family has 2 adults, 2 kids. Kids ages are 5, 5, 6, 8. It would be a super duper blast if we could find a nice suite-type hotel where we could have adjoining rooms (they are good friends so it would be like an adult AND kid sleepover, LOL!). We would need 2 queen beds for each family (we typically sleep one adult with each kid, and sofabeds are not good enough for me). We're looking at probably 2 nights.

DH and I are hotel snobs as we stay in nice hotels for work. For this we'd be fine with "upscale family". Clean, comfortable, nice grounds (a pool too). Nothing motel-y.

The zoo is a must, and the other stuff is up in the air. DH really wants to do Sea World, but then there is also Legoland and Safari Park and a bunch of other stuff. We'll probably end up deciding kind of last minute (I will take suggestions! It will be our first time to vacay in SD, and our friends live a couple hours drive away so they have been more often). I know it'd probably be hard to get a good central location, but I think that's OK - we'll have cars, so maybe more important is a nice area where it's easy to get to places to eat, and wind down in the evening.

 

[SpacecadetNZ]

We've got a family trip coming up very soon and I did lots of hotel research a few months ago and ended up deciding on the Marriott in the Gaslamp Quarter.

https://www.marriott.com/hotels/hotel-information/travel/sangl-san-diego-marriott-gaslamp-quarter/

I know that's not as helpful as advice from a local or a more regular visitor but I thought I would let you know anyway I did so much internet research into hotels before settling on that one. Hopefully I made the right choice!

Have a fun trip.

 

[laughinplace199]

We are going to San Diego in August and we're a family of 5. We booked 2 connecting rooms at the Best Western Plus Island Palms. We'll have rooms with 2 queen beds in each and water views. They were very nice when I booked, making sure that we will have guaranteed connecting rooms, since we want to put the kids in one room and have the other for ourselves.

We've never stayed there, but the website looks nice and it got good reviews on Trip Advisor.

 

[LisaCM614]

We are staying at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay next week! My TA booked it. We have a family suite. There are water slides and you are right next door to sea world.

 

[drnp]

While its not in San Diego, the Sheraton Carlsbad may be an outside the box suggestion for you. Its about 30 mins north of SeaWorld and directly connected to Legoland and its Water park and Aquarium (its a 4 min walk to the park gate from the hotel lobby).

The grounds are very nice with a good size pool and hot tub. Palm trees and great views abound. It has a very resort feel to it with golf courses and hills all around it. Its also very close (3 min drive) to plenty of retail and fast food restaurants for kids.

If you feel the need to go to DLR, it took us just under an hour to get to the Toy Story parking lot (left at 630am, got there just before 730am) on a weekday by using the HOV lane (which saved us a ton of time).