First visit to LA with a kiddo

May 17, 2023 1:12 PM

I’m taking my 10-year-old daughter to LA for three and a half days in early July. We’re flying into LAX and renting the perfect car. Next step: figuring out where to stay and what to do. Help!

Neither of us have ever been there. So, bring on the locals-only tips! Some total noob questions:

Building on this previous post, where would be the most convenient neighborhood to get a modest hotel, ideally with a pool? (AirBnbs seem to have gotten so expensive.)

Given LA’s reputation for driving/traffic/parking challenges, how much should we should take that into account? Should we consider Uber or public transportation in certain places?

And the biggie: what to do? The plan right now is to spend one day at the beach (Santa Monica? Venice?) and one day doing the Hollywood/Beverly Hills thing, whatever that actually entails. The third day…downtown? I’d love to see the tar pits and/or Little Tokyo. Driving up Route 1 to Malibu and hiking in the hills? Griffith Park? Sooo many choices.

Is Universal Studios really worth a $100 ticket? That seems like a fun but potentially exhausting all-day thing. (Disneyland is too much for this trip, in a few ways.)

Any specific recommendations for sights/shopping/restaurants/etc are more than welcome. Even just cool neighborhoods to explore for first-timers. Probably more shopping/active stuff than museums and history. And especially offbeat hyperlocal stuff that isn’t on the countless “family blogger perfect 3-day itineraries" online.

posted by gottabefunky to Travel & Transportation around Los Angeles, CA (23 answers total)

Where are you coming from? Do you live in NYc or a small town? That would change my advice for a 10 year old.
posted by atomicstone at 1:19 PM on May 17, 2023

I know I mention this one every time, but the abandoned zoo in Griffith Park is still near the top for me. The tar pits are pretty cool too, but getting to walk around inside old zoo enclosures is not something I've ever seen anywhere else. It also involves a tiny bit of hiking to get to, so it basically kills two birds with one stone.

My kids liked the Hollywood Walk of Fame thing too, even though they didn't know who most of the footprints are, and are afraid of the people walking around in costumes. (either forcefully avoid them or take some bucks to pay for tips/pictures if there is one your kids like). Parking there is easy because that area is like 50% parking garages. I think they re $10-20 for the day.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:36 PM on May 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I can offer advice from another recent noob! I was specifically there last month for a film festival so I focused on "the Hollywood/Beverly Hills" kind of thing; no advice about the Universal Studios tour, since I went with another option.

I can advise about ubers and transit - I didn't rent a car at all and got around just fine on a combination of Ubers, walking, and public transit. That suited me absolutely fine; however, I am from New York so I'm used to a lot of public transit. But the public transit system was really smooth for me.

A handful of people urged me to stop by a place called The Last Bookstore - that would be an awesome option. It's a large used bookstore, but they've used un-sellable books into decor - making tunnels, "flying books" in the kids' section, things like that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:36 PM on May 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

The tar pits are in mid city on the same campus as LACMA and the academy museum, near the farmers market.
posted by brujita at 2:02 PM on May 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Universal is 100% worth it for a 10-year-old Harry Potter fan. If she doesn't care about Harry Potter, skip it.
posted by mr_roboto at 2:18 PM on May 17, 2023

Response by poster: atomicstone, we're coming from Portland OR
posted by gottabefunky at 2:59 PM on May 17, 2023

Best answer: I'm a local with a 12 year old so I have a lot of thoughts here... I might be making sporaradic suggestions in between work tasks this afternoon.

My absolute favorite thing to do with my son in LA is to explore the cultural diversity of the city (especially the food). If you're going to the tar pits, consider a stop in Little Ethiopia for lunch or dinner. Little Tokyo is probably our favorite neighborhood to wander around in. There are plenty of good restaurants and a couple of great ones. You can stop at the grocery store to shop for Japanese candy and there are shops she will love if she's into manga/anime. Koreatown is more than a neighborhood: it really is a town onto itself. The Madong Mall on Western has some great food and shopping. There's a lot more...
posted by mr_roboto at 3:04 PM on May 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Cabrillo Beach Museum is a little Gem, and on the beach near tidepools.
posted by nickggully at 3:14 PM on May 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think for LA newbies you have to hit the Museum of Jurassic Technology. And we midwesterners have a kiddo who loves sushi—so a an easy and quality but not challenging place might be to swing by Sugarfish in Santa Monica. For more adventurous sushi lovers, do an Omakase lunch at any place in Japan Town before or after a visit to Giant Robot. I always just Uber around LA, but a car is nice to have if you want to drive along the coast or head inland to see some desert! Finally, I think Kusama’s mirror/infinity room at LACMA is always worth a visit. Have fun!
posted by pinkacademic at 5:03 PM on May 17, 2023

Finally, I think Kusama’s mirror/infinity room at LACMA is always worth a visit.

Agreed, but it’s at the Broad! LACMA is undergoing a massive renovation and is mostly out of commission.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:13 PM on May 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm going to betray a few of my regional preferences/prejudices here, but personally in your position, and even just based on the things you've mentioned already, I would not stay on the westside or a beach community like Santa Monica. Like you can drive to the beach one day, and just sort of eat the shitty commute back. But if you find a hotel in Koreatown or Hollywood, you'll be right off the Red Line and able to basically get to your downtownish destinations and Universal Studios if you want to do it via transit. (You can even go to 7th/Metro and get a train to Santa Monica, or just take take a bus to the ocean.)

There are so many good museums things like the Expo Park trifecta of CA Science Center, Natural History Museum, and African American museum, the nearby Velaslavaya Panorama, Watts Towers further south, and the perennial MeFite favorite Museum of Jurassic Technology. But now I see you aren't as interested in museums, more shopping and restaurants!!! I'm not sure that there's really any shopping worth doing in LA anymore? There's like . . . a few big malls that have mall stores. There's Larchmont Village if you just want to walk down the street and pop into shops. Venice has basically been destroyed by gentrification and I don't think a walk down Abbott Kinney has much for kids anymore. I'm at a loss for shopping stuff.

Except! Little Tokyo is something you've mentioned, and they have great food, it's a great place to walk around, there's definitely some shopping there, and you can walk from there to the Last Bookstore in . . . maybe 20-30 minutes?
posted by kensington314 at 6:11 PM on May 17, 2023

I suggest taking a drive up Pacific Coast Highway from the South Bay area, past LAX, past Santa Monica, up to Malibu, especially in the late afternoon or evening (to catch the sunset). You could also go biking on the bike path in Santa Monica / Venice / Marina del Rey.

If you want to see the amazing port of LA/LB, you can drive down to San Pedro and through the port to Long Beach (2nd Street in the Belmont Shore neighborhood is a nice walking street).

If you want to go down to Orange County, Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach and Spectrum Mall in Irvine are nice outdoor malls.

I wouldn't bother with DTLA (downtown LA). It's not really a great place to spend a day. Hollywood is also not very pleasant either. But you could go hike around Hollywood Reservoir.

It's interesting to drive through the fancy hillside residential neighborhoods in Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, and Brentwood.

Griffith Observatory might be worth a visit for the view of the city.
posted by Dansaman at 7:32 PM on May 17, 2023

Cayton's Children's Museum Santa Monica
Getty Family Programs
Santa Monica Pier summer calendar
Los Angeles Museum of Natural History Summer Events

Here are a few summer calendar links you can look at to see what events you and your daughter might be interested during your stay. July in Los Angeles will be pretty hot, so I would choose to stay by the ocean and take advantage of the Long Beach walkway that runs along the ocean around the pier and watch the sunset. The Getty Villa is a restored oasis with a smashing view of the ocean and a great garden. Annenberg Community Beach House is right there by the sand.

There's a relatively affordable family owned motel I recommended to someone else a few months ago and I will see if I can find the link. Anyway, I hope you find an activity you and your daughter will really enjoy.
posted by effluvia at 7:32 PM on May 17, 2023

Sea Shore Motel Check out this small family owned motel which is pretty close to everything in the Santa Monica area.
posted by effluvia at 8:11 PM on May 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Hollywood Bowl is one of the best things in LA. It looks like they’re playing some pretty charismatic crowd-pleasing programs in early July. I don’t like crowds at all, and the Bowl is crowded, but I keep going back. It’s magical.

Back to the point of cultural diversity and food, the Grand Central Market downtown has a dizzying variety of cuisines. You could eat there, take the mini-funicular called “Angel’s Flight” up the hill, and see the Kusama mirror box at the Broad.

I love the Museum of Jurassic Technology, but I think it might bore a 10-year-old. You need at least a college sophomore’s understanding of absurdity to appreciate it.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:44 PM on May 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

I’m not much of a beach person, but my go-to beach is Will Rogers State Beach, which I think is a great place for kids. You could hit the Getty Villa (agreed with above, a tremendous destination) in the same day. Maybe lunch at Gladstones, but it will be very busy.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:56 PM on May 17, 2023

If you want a high-end outdoor mall experience, hit the Grove on the same day you visit the tar pits and LACMA, or head to Glendale for lunch at Din Tai Fung and a visit to the Americana, which has the best remaining Barnes and Noble that I know of. A three-story bookstore that legitimately caters to readers.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:03 PM on May 17, 2023

If you just want to see the ocean without sunbathing or lounging on the beach, go to Venice. The boardwalk is interesting for a bit, but quickly tedious. The adjacent Abbot Kinney neighborhood has great restaurants and shopping. Other interesting shopping neighborhoods are Silverlake and West Hollywood.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:16 PM on May 17, 2023

Can't believe nobody has highlighted the Dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum yet! Someone above mentioned the Natural History Museum, but the dinosaur part is special. They also have a beautiful butterfly greenhouse. There are also a bunch of other great exhibits there - including the freaking amazing Space Shuttle. And there's an IMAX theater to break up the day. That whole complex would be a good destination for one day, and it's pretty accessible from whatever part of town you choose to stay in. Don't aim to stay near there though - bad neighborhood.

Also, emphatic YES to the La Brea Tar Pits. Super fun for kids and great food (Koreatown!) nearby. 10 year old might (?) love a Korean BBQ place where you cook your food on the grill built into the table. Good neighborhood. It's right next door to LACMA, but I barely enjoy LACMA and I'm an adult, so not sure how much your daughter would love it.

That could be two days, and you could stay mid-city-ish, or Culver City, or even West LA or Santa Monica, and get to both of those quite easily. Since you got a super cool car, I would plan to just drive everywhere, but budget for parking - everything is pay parking garages around here.

You could make the drive to the beach at maybe Santa Monica near the pier for the beach day. Lots of local color and people watching around there, and tons of good food of every variety. Also you can rent bikes there and bike down to Venice and back, as someone else mentioned.

I don't think it's worth it to drive up to Malibu just for the beach or hills - they're nice, but you already have beaches with nice rocky outcrops and good hills at home.

Or, it's a 45 minute drive at the right time of day on the weekend down to Huntington Beach or Newport Beach, which are great beach towns with a more "surf vacation" vibe.

Word on the LA subreddit is that Hollywood is kind of gross these days. Also it's just massivly touristy anyway. The Beverly Hills/Rodeo Drive experience is just looking at fancy stores with other tourists. I wouldn't plan the trip around either of those.

If you're interested in the "Hollywood! Movies! TV!" idea, maybe do one of the Studio Tours like at Sony (Culver City) or Paramount (Hollywood) - google for which ones are currently the most fun. Those are going to be more "behind the scenes look at movie making" than Universal Studios is - it's mainly a theme park. Also, there are the various Star Tours where you get on a bus and be taken around to various famous locations and movie stars' homes. Some are hop-on-hop-off type, and double decker.

Final thought on where to stay: If your plane flights are on weekdays, you might consider staying right down near LAX. El Segundo, Westchester, Playa del Rey, Marina del Rey, etc. That will make your last day getting back to the airport a LOT easier. And the hotels are probably cheaper too, so you could get a better hotel pool experience within your budget.
posted by bluesky78987 at 7:57 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in the "Hollywood! Movies! TV!" idea, maybe do one of the Studio Tours like at Sony (Culver City) or Paramount (Hollywood) - google for which ones are currently the most fun.

For added convenience - Paramount's tour in particular is closest to all the other "Hollywood!" stuff. Paramount is across the street from the "Hollywood Forever" cemetery, where a number of notable stars and film people are buried; and it's only a 20-30 minute bus ride from there to the TCM Chinese Theater (a.k.a., that place where all the people do that thing with their footprints in cement). That, however, may not be the best studio tour; I'll get to that in a second, though, and address the other "Hollywood Yay!" stuff.

Some of the "Hollywood Yay!" is cool, but can be over-and-done-with quickly. The footprints-in-cement outside of the Chinese Theater is noteable, but that's only going to be like a ten-minute photo op, tops. You'll spot a couple of stars you liked, your kid will get excited over the joint Avengers-cast footprints, and then you'll be done. The Hollywood Walk of Fame is also a quick thing - the entire thing is about a mile and a half in total, and mixed in with people you'll recognize there are a whole hell of a lot of names and stars with people you won't - and there are some parts of the walk where the surrounding scenery may look a little dicey to you. (I was staying at one of the far ends of the walk, across the street from a flophouse.) Fortunately the Walk has a searchable map so you can find specific people's stars; pick a few you want to see if you want the photo op, go get the photos, and you'll be done in like 20 minutes tops.

There's one "Hollywood Yay!" thing that might be fun - the Hollywood Museum, which is like a block from the Chinese Theater and is an eclectic collection of memorabilia. It's mostly just a showcase of "stuff" - the original ECTO-1 sedan from the Ghostbusters movie, costumes from The Waltons, props from various monster movies, etc. But it's in the original building for the Max Factor studio, and that also let them give a bit of a peek at just what the makeup world meant to films (Max Factor was a real guy - a movie makeup artist who really revolutionized makeup for film, and by extension for the average public as well). The part that fascinated me most was that Max Factor set up three separate rooms for stars to try out makeup with him - but each was painted a different color to best suit a particular hair color, so Marilyn Monroe could see makeup under the best conditions for her blond while Lucille Ball was doing the same down the hall in the room best suited for redheads. The doors still bear the "Redheads Only" or "Blondes only" signage.

However if you really want to get into the "stuff" of moviemaking, you're going to want the Warner Brothers tour. The tour itself takes you through the backlots first - and fair warning, they have different kinds of tours, some which include Warner Brothers' TV history and some which don't - and they point out the building facade where Phoebe does thus-and-such on FRIENDS or where Spiderman and Mary Jane had the upside-down kiss, etc. The actual facades don't look the same as in the films, but they do a good job of explaining things and how the backlots are used. If you're REALLY lucky you may get a peek inside an empty soundstage, and even though it'll just be a big enormous empty warehouse, it's still impressive. And then when you're done with the backlots, there's a whole museum they bring you to - with a lot of hands-on demonstrations of some movie craft; interactive screens that let you "design a costume" or "look at actors' auditions", demonstrations that show you how some Foley sound effects are made, etc. That can be WAY fun. The only drawback is that that's a bit of a hike from the main "Hollywood" drag; it's possible to do everything in one day, but it might be tight.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:38 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

One last thing I'll suggest is not to underrate the Flyaway bus for your trips to an from the airport. Costs less than $10, leaves from Union Station every half hour all day and gets you to the airport within 30-45 minutes. Makes the trip Downtown to LAX and vice versa much easier.
posted by kensington314 at 10:00 AM on May 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

I liked the Angel's Flight railway a lot. I'm not a kid, however.
posted by JimN2TAW at 8:49 AM on May 19, 2023

Secret Los Angeles Here's another guide to various things to do in Los Angeles seasonally where you may find some uniquely appealing events.
posted by effluvia at 9:30 AM on May 21, 2023