Terranea Resort

Hotel Stay Details 
Hotel: Terranea Resort
Dates: May 15-18, 2013
Rate Paid: $285/night (by Company) 
Points Earned: 0

We were lucky enough to spend the past few nights at Terranea Resort about 40 minutes south of LA. After spending the past 11 days at Hyatt Place (which caters to more business travelers who just need a place to sleep), it was really nice to relax at a full-service hotel in a more populated Southern California. As you can tell from the photos, the property is a stunning hotel spread across 102 acres of land overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Location
Rancho Palos Verdes (which according to Google Translator is Spanish for "Rancho Palos Verdes") is about 17 miles south of LAX Airport, but takes about 35-40 minutes to drive down with all the traffic lights and windy roads as you get closer to Rancho Palos Verdes.


While the resort's location is a prime feature, it's also a little remote as well. If you have a rental car, it just takes 5 minutes to get to the Trader Joe's on the other side of the mountain, but my mother and I don't drive yet, so we were stuck in resort until my father came back from his meeetings.

It may appear you can walk from the hotel, but trust me, you don't want to walk along the highway like some illegal immigrant. So if you're in our situation, make sure to stock up on whatever you'll need (diapers, baby food, etc) before you get to the hotel.

Room
While the resort has several villas/casitas closer by the water, my parents and I stayed in a standard hotel room in the main building. We had a partial ocean view so it's hard to complain!

 

I decided that, since we didn't have too much space in our room, I would take the king sized bed instead of using a crib. My father initially wanted to call for a crib, but after snuggling with him and falling asleep on his shoulder, he conceded...quickly. Just 18 months old and I already know I have him wrapped around my little baby finger.

Amenities

The hotel had 2 outdoor swimming pools, one for everyone and one "adult pool." I hate being discriminated against, but I suppose it's better than getting dirty looks from the "sunbathers" who are there more to show off their bikini bodies than have fun in the water.

Terranea also had a spa and 9 hold golf course. Unfortunately, the spa treatments were about 3x more expensive than in New York (and 50x more expensive than Thailand). My mother decided she was better off saving her money for online shopping instead.

As for restaurants, there were 3 restaurants (American, Asian and Italian) and 1 sports bar. My mother decided that room service was a better option for us for most of the time, but the last night we were there, my father took us both to his work dinner at the "fancy" restaurant Mar'sel.

I was the only baby in the restaurant, but I was well behaved for most of the 2.5 hour dinner. However, I just lost it when everyone ordered dessert after I had already been waiting patiently in my stroller for over 2 hours. Take a note, Dad: skip dessert.

If I were older, I'm sure I could do more of the other fun family activities they had like kayaking, biking, horseback riding, paddle boarding, but my father said not til I was at least 20 months. Sucks.

Loyalty Points
Unfortunately, my father didn't earn many hotel loyalty points aside from putting the room on his Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card (2x on any travel spending).

However, since we weren't flying out until Sunday afternoon, he decided to check us out 1 day early on Saturday and switch us to the Sheraton Gateway LAX Airport Hotel so he could rack up another Starwood stay towards Platinum Status (34 nights down, 16 more to go) and earn some more SPG points during their Double Take promotion (where he gets double points for his stay plus 500 bonus points for booking using their iPhone mobile app).