Santa Cruz was a blast this last weekend. The weather was beautiful and the boardwalk was so much fun for the kids. I will throw in the unfortunate event of my son’s and my luggage being stolen, for the sake of warning vacationers to make sure to lock up before leaving your vehicle. We parked in a nearby parking garage to eat some lunch before arriving to our Hotel. We ate lunch at El Palomar, a Mexican restaurant located on Pacific Ave. This place, personally, is delish!! I usually order Pozole, I will forewarn you that their pozole is a little on the spicier side. I also always order a strawberry mojito, one of my favs! (Keep in mind that this is a vacation zone, so add a few dollars to any dish that it may cost you close to home; my pozole was $16.00)

Our hotel wasn’t in walking distance of the boardwalk, it definitely would have been more of an advantage if it was. I will say that our hotel was very pretty, it looks like a mini castle upon arriving; it was also way cheaper than it would have been if we booked a room near to the shore. We stayed at the Hilton in Scotts Valley, which is just a short 16 minute, beautiful drive to the boardwalk, as well as only being 6 miles away from the Mystery Spot. I have no complaints about our stay. If you’re a saver like me, complimentary parking is a perk!

We stayed two nights, the first night, sadly we spent a bit of time trying to replace some of the stolen items that my son and I needed for the couple of days that we stayed here. We also thought that it would be a good idea to buy the kids boardwalk tickets the night of getting in, that way they had the whole next day to enjoy the Boardwalk’s rides, shops, and eatery. I decided to get the kid’s season passes. The season passes won’t expire until the end of the year, and allows them to ride all of the rides until then. I purchased their season passes online for $89.95 each. When buying them online, you get a $10.00 My Boardwalk Card with each pass purchased. The My Boardwalk Card can be used for attractions, arcades, and midway games. It was definitely worth us buying them online, I purchased 4 season passes, therefore I received a total of $40.00 that we allowed the kids to use on arcade games. After fees and taxes, it came out to be a total of $97.40 per pass. Upon checkout, it will ask you if you want to have them mailed to you or if you would like to print them out. Having them mailed to you is an extra $8.00; what I did was buy them, select print at home, and then showed the front cashiers the barcodes that were given to me, and they gave me their season passes right there and then. It was so simple! They will take their pictures for their passes and also give you the $10.00 My Boardwalk Card there, as well. What’s even more cool, is they give you a COUPON book with the passes. The coupon book has a ton of BOGO free deals, $5.00 off parking (Parking was $25.00-Ill get back to that in a bit.) and it also gives you a few dates as to when you can bring a friend and get them (one bring a friend, per pass) a FREE wrist band to ride all of the rides!!! Another awesome thing that comes with the season pass, is you get up to four discounts per valid season pass offered any normal operating day, to bring a friend and get $5.00 off of their all-day rides wristband.

Okay, so back to parking. The Parking area, located across the street from the Boardwalk is $25.00 a car. I believe that once you leave though, that you will have to pay to re-enter, I’m not 100% sure though. I’m a penny pincher and like to save anywhere possible, I also like the idea of leaving and coming back anytime I want without having to re-pay. While we were there last week, the Wharf Parking maxed out at $24.00 a car, and you paid per hour; I felt like this gave us some freedom of coming and going, and say we did decide to stay all day, the parking would top off at $24.00.

The kids had a ton of fun and the weather was beautiful. We didn’t do a whole lot of beach fun though, we decided to stay on the boardwalk instead. All of the rides were up and running and the concession foods were all on point! We definitely will be back very soon, especially to get our money worth on those passes!! For the rest of the year, all we have to worry about is the room and food; the activity aspect of this particular vacation is already paid for : )