Richard Bannister

The original plan for this day had us visiting a total of four parks, but we elected to drop one out in order to reduce pressure on the schedule. Unfortunately, we both wanted to drop out a different one. As such, my morning started out with a drive to San Diego where I dropped off George, before making a U-turn and heading back towards Legoland California. The reason for this routing was opening hours, as his target of SeaWorld San Diego opened an hour sooner.

My plan for the park was to do three rides in total; the one coaster I'd not been on, the robot arm attraction, and the new for this year dark ride. Unfortunately I'd assumed incorrectly that the crowds might be light early in the morning, when in reality the place was completely jumping. There was a ninety minute wait for Coastersaurus (#1139), which stretched my determination to the limit. As family coasters go it wasn't bad by any means, but it certainly wasn't worth the resulting sunburn.

The queue times on the latter two attractions were so bad that I had to give them a miss outright; Knight's Tournament had a two hour wait, and Lost Kingdom Adventure a whopping three hours. In the end the only other ride there was time for was the Dragon, which had no wait whatsoever thanks to efficient two train operation.

Martin had told us in advance about the easiest way to get to Mundo Divertido in Tijuana. While one can drive across the border this is not a good idea for foreigners; the standard of driving in Mexico takes a considerable amount of getting used to, even as a passenger. Walking across is very quick on the outward journey, but can be very slow indeed on the way back. By far the simplest solution is to use the Mexicoach service, which picks up from a car park at the last exit on I-5. Round trip tickets between the car park and the Tijuana terminal cost just eight dollars. From there one can use taxis to get to the park, and these are not expensive.

The single most important fact for foreign tourists is that everywhere in Tijuana is happy to accept (and indeed seems to prefer) American dollars to the local currency. The friendly gentleman in the car park actually laughed at me when I asked him about where I might acquire some Pesos.

The park is home to three coasters, all of which can best be described as rides for true credit whores only. None of them is particularly enjoyable to ride, and the two adult coasters hurt thanks to unforgiving restraints and sharp turns. One needs a total of eleven ride coupons for one circuit on each coaster, and it shouldn't take anyone more than twenty minutes to add Gusano Loco (#1140), Raton Loco (#1141), and Montaña Rusa (#1142) to their counts.

We elected to end our evening at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier. We arrived shortly before eleven in the evening but the place was still jammed with people. Martin and Yvonne were waiting for us with tickets to ride the Santa Monica West Coaster (#1143). It was quite telling that there was a twenty minute wait for the ride even at that late hour, and I wasn't at all surprised to discover a pleasant coaster that I could happily have spent all evening on.

We made a small detour on the car journey back to our hotel to pick up a coupon from Martin's hotel, the Intercontinental located near Universal. Much to my disgust the snobbish staff informed me that it wasn't possible for me to sit in my car outside the foyer for two minutes, even after midnight, and that I should remain out on the road in a no stopping at any time zone. Needless to say I'm not going to be in any hurry to stay at that hotel myself.