Tam O'Shanter & California Science Center

VandVsmama

DIS Veteran
Joined
Mar 28, 2011
Hi DIS'ers!

I'm planning a family vacation to So Cal for late May - early June of this year. I've got a PTR going here. So on Memorial Day of this year, my plan, generally speaking, goes like this:

  • pack up car
  • leave La Mesa (near San Diego) & drive to CA Science Center.
  • tour around CA Science Center
  • drive to Riverside, where we'll be spending the night with friends.
However, I then had a couple of other thoughts about this. And I need the input/advice of y'all! For example:
  1. I'm not too thrilled w/the idea of leaving all of our belongings in the car while we're in the CA Science Center.
  2. So we COULD drive to friends' house in Riverside FIRST and deposit our stuff and THEN drive to CA Science Center. This would probably be safer & more logical, but also a bit more time consuming because it involves settling in, socializing, etc. Friends in Riverside who we are staying with are much older than us and will not be going w/us to the museum. Drive time from La Mesa to Riverside is ~ 1 hr, 40 min.
  3. I'd really love to add in a meal at the Tam O'Shanter, even if it's not in the formal dining room and we only eat in the Ale & Sandwich Bar part of the restaurant. DH LOVES prime rib and he would love this place and we'd all get a kick out of eating at 1 of Walt Disney's favorite places. Should we make reservations if we want to eat there for lunch?
  4. None of us are going to want to leave La Mesa at 8:00 am. Not when we'll be doing Disneyland the very next day.
  5. It's a 2 hr drive from La Mesa to the CA Science Center. However, it's only ~ 1 hr, 10 min from Riverside to CA Science Center.
  6. If we DO go to the CA Science Center, do we hit up that museum FIRST and go to Tam O'Shanter for a late lunch or....take our time in La Mesa, then go to the Tam O'Shanter for lunch and CA Science Center AFTER that (would probably stay until 5pm closing in this case).
OR....
DH has always wanted to take me to the LA Arboretum. So we could do that instead, but I'd still want to hit up the Tam O'Shanter. However, I don't think that our kids would have very much fun at the Arboretum.

OR....
We could skip the CA Science Center entirely and go to the Travel Town train museum at Griffith Park, have lunch at Tam O'Shanter, and then head back to Riverside.

ACK! There are so many options. We also have friends in Fontana who might meet us at the CA Science Museum, in which case, I'd make reservations for 6 for lunch instead of for 4. And 1 of those friends has celiac disease, so I'll have to check w/the Tam O'Shanter on gluten-free options.
 
Given all of the above, our intent is to get back to Riverside at about dinner time so we can have dinner and spend the evening with our Riverside friends.
 
Hi DIS'ers!

I'm planning a family vacation to So Cal for late May - early June of this year. I've got a PTR going here. So on Memorial Day of this year, my plan, generally speaking, goes like this:

  • pack up car
  • leave La Mesa (near San Diego) & drive to CA Science Center.
  • tour around CA Science Center
  • drive to Riverside, where we'll be spending the night with friends.
However, I then had a couple of other thoughts about this. And I need the input/advice of y'all! For example:
  1. I'm not too thrilled w/the idea of leaving all of our belongings in the car while we're in the CA Science Center.
  2. So we COULD drive to friends' house in Riverside FIRST and deposit our stuff and THEN drive to CA Science Center. This would probably be safer & more logical, but also a bit more time consuming because it involves settling in, socializing, etc. Friends in Riverside who we are staying with are much older than us and will not be going w/us to the museum. Drive time from La Mesa to Riverside is ~ 1 hr, 40 min.
  3. I'd really love to add in a meal at the Tam O'Shanter, even if it's not in the formal dining room and we only eat in the Ale & Sandwich Bar part of the restaurant. DH LOVES prime rib and he would love this place and we'd all get a kick out of eating at 1 of Walt Disney's favorite places. Should we make reservations if we want to eat there for lunch?
  4. None of us are going to want to leave La Mesa at 8:00 am. Not when we'll be doing Disneyland the very next day.
  5. It's a 2 hr drive from La Mesa to the CA Science Center. However, it's only ~ 1 hr, 10 min from Riverside to CA Science Center.
  6. If we DO go to the CA Science Center, do we hit up that museum FIRST and go to Tam O'Shanter for a late lunch or....take our time in La Mesa, then go to the Tam O'Shanter for lunch and CA Science Center AFTER that (would probably stay until 5pm closing in this case).
OR....
DH has always wanted to take me to the LA Arboretum. So we could do that instead, but I'd still want to hit up the Tam O'Shanter. However, I don't think that our kids would have very much fun at the Arboretum.

OR....
We could skip the CA Science Center entirely and go to the Travel Town train museum at Griffith Park, have lunch at Tam O'Shanter, and then head back to Riverside.

ACK! There are so many options. We also have friends in Fontana who might meet us at the CA Science Museum, in which case, I'd make reservations for 6 for lunch instead of for 4. And 1 of those friends has celiac disease, so I'll have to check w/the Tam O'Shanter on gluten-free options.
As someone who lived in Riverside, I would discuss the options with the family and take a vote. As you may realize that driving back to riverside on the freeways during the afternoon commute is no picnic. You pull all the places up on the internet you would like to visit and see the pros and cons of what the family would like to do. And then go from there. Or maybe the other couple would like to go to Tam O Shanters with you to enjoy the time and then you don't have to worry about getting back in time for dinner and have a light dinner on the way back to riverside.
 
Good point! We would be doing this on Memorial Day, so no commute traffic, but probably some "heading home from the beach" traffic at the end of the day.
 


Science Center is great - seeing the Space Shuttle is amazing. The Arboretum is also fun, my son, 7, loves it. I would actually leave closer to 6AM than 8AM to be honest. I'd have no reservations leaving belongings in the car provided everything is out of site and in the trunk of the car. It's in a rough around the edges neighborhood but the parking lot is fine.
 
Good point! We would be doing this on Memorial Day, so no commute traffic, but probably some "heading home from the beach" traffic at the end of the day.

Traffic during holidays can be bad. Not sure about Memorial Day specifically, but we live in Northern California and probably drive down to Southern California every 1-2 months. The traffic on Sunday evening after Thanksgiving is horrific on the I-5 between Northern California and SoCal, where there usually is not much traffic. I would imagine traffic between LA/SD could be similar.

I think the California Science Center is fun, although not that different than most big city Science Museums with the major exception of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. I would try to make it there if you can, again in particular to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Given that it's a holiday, you may want to make a reservation to see the Endeavour if you end up going. The last time we went, we just walked in because it was a random weekday in December, but I imagine it's busy during holidays. If you need to save time, you could focus on seeing the space shuttle first, then just sort of skim through the rest of the museum. I personally would be OK with leaving my stuff in my car in the parking lot (especially if it's not visible in a closed trunk), but everyone has different comfort levels on this since anything can happen of course. I would probably go from La Mesa to the Museum, since it sounds like your day is packed already and saving 1-2 hours could help a lot.
 
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To follow up my previous post, if you're really ambitious, you could do:

9 AM - leave La Mesa
11:15 AM - CA Science Center
12:30 PM - Leave CA Science Center
1:00 PM - Lunch at Tam O' Shanter
2:30 PM - Leave Tam O'Shanter
3:00 PM - Arrive LA Arboretum
4:00 PM - Leave LA Arboretum
5:00 PM - Arrive Riverside

Then pray to the gods of LA traffic that everything goes smoothly.

Leaving earlier would really help a lot if you can.
 


Nah....if we went to the Arboretum, it would be just that and Tam O'Shanter, not that plus the CA Science Center. We'd go to 1 museum-y sort of thing plus lunch. 2 museum-y things is too much for 1 day with a target of getting to Riverside around 6pm.
 
Nah....if we went to the Arboretum, it would be just that and Tam O'Shanter, not that plus the CA Science Center. We'd go to 1 museum-y sort of thing plus lunch. 2 museum-y things is too much for 1 day with a target of getting to Riverside around 6pm.

Gotcha. Well, I've never been to the Arboretum before, but as I said before I think the space shuttle is definitely worth seeing, so my vote would be for lunch at Tam O'Shanter and CA Science Museum in some order, then Riverside afterwards.

It makes more sense from a traveling perspective to go to the CA Science Museum first, then Tam O'Shanter because the museum is on the way. Going to Tam O'Shanter first means you're backtracking a bit (about 15 miles), which could potentially be a problem. But given your schedule, it probably makes more sense to have lunch first, then the museum.
 
I would take whatever drive time estimates you have and double them. Especially traveling into LA. There is no way you can get from LA Mesa to the Science Center in 2 hours...It takes us 90 min with NO TRAFFIC to travel from Orange county to San Diego. There will be traffic on the holiday. Count on 2.5-3 hours from SD to LA on a holiday. Maybe more since the bulk of people travel south to SD from up north for holiday weekends and by Monday, they are all heading back north.

I'd skip the science center, personally. It's nothing special really unless you have no science museums near you.

But then again, I can't imagine driving to LA from SD and then to Riverside on the same day. You will spend most of the day in the car. If you have absolutely no other time in your schedule to visit LA, then go for it, but I would try to find something of interest along the way from SD to Riverside. Maybe the SD Wild Animal Park, and do that on the way up to your friend's house.

LA, IMO, is way overrated. I hate driving up there.
 
I'd skip the science center, personally. It's nothing special really unless you have no science museums near you.

I definitely agree with you that for the most part it's a science museum like any other science museum, and you are entitled to your opinion of course, but I do think the Endeavour is special. Even my wife thought so, and she thought it was going to be lame. If it wasn't for the space shuttle, I wouldn't go out of my way to go there.

LA, IMO, is way overrated. I hate driving up there.

Agree 100%. The one thing I love about Southern California is the Asian cuisine (Chinese/Korean/Ramen/Vietnamese), which is fantastic down there. It's what I miss the most.
 
You guys are great! Definitely a lot of food for thought! We will likely be hitting up the SD Zoo on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We've talked about going to the CA Science Center on our last couple of trips to DL, but due to logistics, it's never worked out yet.

We live in the Tucson area. We have some good science-y museums here, but nowhere around here does anybody have a real life space shuttle that you can go see in person. And we keep talking about taking a family vacation to Washington, DC, so we can show the kids the National Air & Space Museum (DH hasn't been there; I went as a kid), but life sort of gets in the way so we haven't gone to DC yet.

And trust me...I AGREE that Los Angeles is totally overrated! I don't see what the big deal is. DH loves it because of all the freeways.:drive: He LOVES driving in the maze of So Cal freeways. I think he's nuts. :joker:

Given holiday traffic, if we go to the CA Science Center at all, then we should drive straight through and not stop in Riverside first to deposit our belongings. Otherwise, it really will be a hugely long day in the car. Translation: happy DH, grumpy wife, grumpy kids...eventually turns into grumpy everybody because grumpy wife will complain a lot to DH. :rotfl:

I am also prepared to scrap the whole museum idea and let the kids hang out and play all day with their cousins.

I've also toyed with the idea of going to the La Brea Tar Pits that day because DNiece (age 8) is a HUGE SUPER MEGA dinosaur nut and La Brea Tar Pits is her favorite place on earth and my kids have never been there. BUT....it's an even LONGER drive than to the CA Science Center.

If I let DH & BIL decide, then we won't go anywhere and at least half the kids will complain that they're bored. However, BIL & SIL just put in a pool in their backyard last year, so that will occupy the kids all day and they'll be as happy as clams. And we could try out an Asian restaurant in the San Diego area.
 
I definitely agree with you that for the most part it's a science museum like any other science museum, and you are entitled to your opinion of course, but I do think the Endeavour is special. Even my wife thought so, and she thought it was going to be lame. If it wasn't for the space shuttle, I wouldn't go out of my way to go there..

Eh, we saw a space shuttle at the Udvar Hazy Smithsonian Air & Space museum in DC. I was underwhelmed. It's basically a big airplane. It was exactly what I expected. I was good after about a 2 minute look. It's not like you can go inside them and walk around...

I could not, in good conscience, encourage anyone to spend potentially an extra 4 hours in a car to see a space shuttle. It's just not THAT amazing.

But that's just my opinion, and I am admittedly not hugely interested in aircraft.
 
We are huge space nuts in our family. We've been to the Titan missile museum here in Tucson (which is where 1 of the Star Trek movies' scenes was filmed). We've been to our local planetarium. We even went to a big exhibit that the UofA Lunar & Planetary Lab had recently to celebrate the launch of the space craft they designed that's going to land on a comet and collect samples to bring back to earth....THAT WAS SO SUPER COOL! A few months ago, a local astronomy club hosted an event for National Astronomy Day, so we went to that and got to look at the moon and at 1 or maybe 2 planets through amateur astronomers' telescopes. It was really amazing.

We've already done the Fleet Science Center in San Diego and our kids had a great time there. We saw this really awesome space-themed IMAX documentary there that we all enjoyed.

This past weekend, we also took our kids to see "Hidden Figures," which features 3 African-American women working at NASA in Virginia during the beginnings of the US space program. Both ODD and YDD were totally jazzed and excited about it afterwards, so DH & I kind of want to take advantage of their natural interest & enthusiasm in it and explore something that, realistically, is REALLY close to where we'll be. It's a heck of a lot closer than the air & space museum in Washington, DC! And closer than going to the space center in Florida!
 
We are huge space nuts in our family. We've been to the Titan missile museum here in Tucson (which is where 1 of the Star Trek movies' scenes was filmed). We've been to our local planetarium. We even went to a big exhibit that the UofA Lunar & Planetary Lab had recently to celebrate the launch of the space craft they designed that's going to land on a comet and collect samples to bring back to earth....THAT WAS SO SUPER COOL! A few months ago, a local astronomy club hosted an event for National Astronomy Day, so we went to that and got to look at the moon and at 1 or maybe 2 planets through amateur astronomers' telescopes. It was really amazing.

We've already done the Fleet Science Center in San Diego and our kids had a great time there. We saw this really awesome space-themed IMAX documentary there that we all enjoyed.

This past weekend, we also took our kids to see "Hidden Figures," which features 3 African-American women working at NASA in Virginia during the beginnings of the US space program. Both ODD and YDD were totally jazzed and excited about it afterwards, so DH & I kind of want to take advantage of their natural interest & enthusiasm in it and explore something that, realistically, is REALLY close to where we'll be. It's a heck of a lot closer than the air & space museum in Washington, DC! And closer than going to the space center in Florida!

Seems like a no-brainer for you guys then.

I don't remember the Fleet Science Center all that well, but the Cal Science Center definitely had an area with space related exhibits right near where the space shuttle is. It's not the National Air and Space museum or anything, but they have some exhibits there. They are also currently showing a couple different space related IMAX films.

Since this is the DIS, maybe of special interest is the "Science behind Pixar" exhibition, though not sure if that will still be there in May. I didn't get to see it when I was there last, so I don't know how good it is (I believe there is an extra charge).

But yeah, definitely look into getting reserved tickets to see the Endeavour if you Ultimately decide to go.
 
Seems like a no-brainer for you guys then.

I don't remember the Fleet Science Center all that well, but the Cal Science Center definitely had an area with space related exhibits right near where the space shuttle is. It's not the National Air and Space museum or anything, but they have some exhibits there. They are also currently showing a couple different space related IMAX films.

Since this is the DIS, maybe of special interest is the "Science behind Pixar" exhibition, though not sure if that will still be there in May. I didn't get to see it when I was there last, so I don't know how good it is (I believe there is an extra charge).

But yeah, definitely look into getting reserved tickets to see the Endeavour if you Ultimately decide to go.
It would be SO awesome to see that Pixar exhibit! But it only goes through April. :-( Bummer! Hopefully they'll have something cool to take its place in May. :-)
 
To follow up my previous post, if you're really ambitious, you could do:

9 AM - leave La Mesa
11:15 AM - CA Science Center
12:30 PM - Leave CA Science Center
1:00 PM - Lunch at Tam O' Shanter
2:30 PM - Leave Tam O'Shanter
3:00 PM - Arrive LA Arboretum
4:00 PM - Leave LA Arboretum
5:00 PM - Arrive Riverside

Then pray to the gods of LA traffic that everything goes smoothly.

Leaving earlier would really help a lot if you can.

If leaving at 9 I would expect to arrive at the Science Center by 12:30. Please note the shuttle has a timed entry and it is best to buy advance tickets, so please consider that. I'd also make the drive from LA to Riverside 90 minutes to 2 hours. If Riverside wasn't on the agenda I would suggest taking the train, which is easy to to do from San Diego to Exposition Park. Personally, I the shuttle was amazing - I was a shuttle fanatic growing up and so it was incredible to see one up close.
 
Griffith Park is near Tam O'Shanter. If you wanted to eat there, you could go to Griffith Observatory or Travel Town (check the hours, it might open later) before lunch. I would not recommend trying the Observatory after lunch because of parking.

The Ale and Sandwich bar doesn't take reservations. Also, the restaurant is only open for dinner on weekdays and only takes lunch reservations on weekends for brunch. You might want to call about holiday hours.

Have you ever been to the Mission Inn in Riverside? There's no Disney connection, but I'd rather spend the money you'd spend at Tam O'Shanter there and skip the extra driving.
 
If not wedded to Tam O'Shanter Clifton's Cafeteria is pretty fun and a bit closer to Exposition Park.
 

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