Simple Pleasures for the Sippy-Cup Crowd

With the exception of a few benches near the park's entrance and tables and chairs inside various restaurants, there seemed to be no seating at all for families with small, cranky kids. We ended up having our lunch while sitting on a curb near some sea turtles. It was Arno's nap time and he was sniveling. (I can't blame that on SeaWorld.) Lucinda noisily insisted that she "needed" to buy a stuffed dolphin. (I can blame that on SeaWorld.) My wife and I were bickering about what to do to make the kids happy. (And why not blame that on SeaWorld? We were paying $230, after all, to lunch on a curb.)

Once our collective hunger had been quashed, we calmed down and found our way to the dolphin and orca shows. Both were memorable. In Dolphin Stadium, there was an extraordinary display of athleticism by a high-jumping bottlenose dolphin named Dolly. But the orca show in Shamu Stadium, which is the stage name that SeaWorld gives to all its orcas, was hard to stomach -- at least for my wife and me. (I should concede, though, that the kids loved it.) Back in the Pacific Northwest, we have watched orcas at play in Puget Sound. They are among the most family-oriented of mammals, traveling together for decades in pods with their mothers. (Female orcas can live into their 90s.)

At SeaWorld, an announcer spoke of the "wondrous connection" between orcas and humans. Several handlers zipped around a very large fish tank, riding orcas like water bikes. But there was no mention that these performances would not be possible without having kidnapped some orcas from their families. (SeaWorld announced in 1995 that it would no longer capture them, and has since successfully bred them.) Nor was their any mention that orcas in captivity tend to die at younger ages than in the wild.

After SeaWorld we spent another delightful day doing not much of anything, then we piled back into the minivan and went to the zoo. The San Diego Zoo is one of the world's largest, with 4,000 animals spread over 100 acres, and yet it is quite manageable with little kids -- if you don't do too much.

We went on a Wednesday and it was much less crowded than SeaWorld -- and considerably cheaper. Parking was free and so was Arno's admission. The cost for four adults and one child came to $154.

The zoo offers guided bus tours (an excellent idea, if walking a couple of miles is not feasible). But we wanted to pick and choose our animals -- and have the option to escape if tantrums blew in. So we rented a two-kid stroller.

Besides its size and variety, what distinguishes San Diego's zoo from just about every zoo in the world is its class. The gorillas have a rain forest with a roaring waterfall. The pandas have 40 varieties of bamboo. Tropical birds zip around inside one of the world's largest free-flight aviaries. For homo sapiens from Seattle, there were lots of outdoor tables where we could sit, eat and discuss the finer points of gorilla breath and elephant poop. An unexpected pleasure -- and one that stands in sharp contrast to my last visit to the National Zoo -- was the short line to see the four pandas.

We spent five contented hours that ended when an elephant used his trunk to shower himself and us with dirt. We brushed ourselves off and headed for the minivan. The kids napped all the way back to our condo. That left two more utterly unscheduled -- and tantrum-free -- days of fooling around at the beach and at the pool.

We were all heartbroken to go home. With little kids, it pays to keep it simple.