Help for a California trip late October
 

We are a family with 3 teens. we will be traveling for 3.5 weeks in California starting October 19th. We will land and depart from LAX. Our kids would like very much to experience halloween. I thought to have 5 days in the LA area for Universal, Hollywood, and Friday have the Universal Halloween horror nights. Than to travel north to SF, Napa area, maybe Yosemitee park, and back to LA to Halloween itself(that would make 8 days out of LA). than, if there is snow beginning of November - fly for a week for ski (Denver?) and than back to LA.

What do you think about the Itinerary ?
Is doing the round trip from LA upto Napa and back in 8 days makes sense?
Is there somewhere my children can experience the halloween night tradition? (they never did that ...)
Is there a chance for a good-enough snow 2-9/Nov ?

Thanks for your help

I think it's pretty risky to book flights for 5 people into Denver on the very slight chance that they may have snow that early. Instead, while planning your drive, plan to stay a few days at the California/Nevada ski resort areas of Mammoth Lakes or Lake Tahoe. If there is snow, great. If not, there is still plenty to do in those areas.
www.visitmammoth.com/
http://www.bluelaketahoe.com/

Also, teens really enjoy "Knott's Scary Farm", which is the haunted version of the Knott's Berry Farm theme park. It runs from about Sept. 25-Halloween. http://haunt.knotts.com/

I'm not sure why you need to be back in L.A. for Halloween night. I'm assuming that you want your kids to go "trick or treating"? They can do that in any town, USA. I'd probably want to stay away from the big cities on that night.

Sounds like an action packed trip!! 8 days may be a little to aggresive to do LA, Napa, SF and Yosemite. In 8 days you could probably get to see LA, SF and Napa (that's a maybe) lots of driving involved. It's about 8 hour drive up to SF from LA..Napa is close enough to SF that you could do both.

Snow is Nov...maybe Mammoth or South Lake Tahoe!! I prefer Mammoth

Hillary
www.edufire.com

You don't want your kids experiencing the "real" Halloween in a city. Parents here keep their kids in their own neighborhoods or nicer areas. Too many weirdos in this world now a days.

Where are you from? Last year we had an exchange student from Russia staying with us. She was 17. A little old for trick or treating, but we took her anyway. She LOVED it and thought it was so great: dress up, go to people's homes and they give you candy!!

Needless to say, she loved her stay here in America.

Good luck,

MY

We attend the Halloween Haunt at Knott's Berry Farm and we love it. They go all out to produce scary shows and mazes with lots of frightening surprises. Teens love it( I'm 53) but it can be too intense for the faint of heart.
By far the best of the Halloween theme parks with lots of rides to boot. Visit a local Burger King and get a discount coupon.

Unlikely to be sufficient snow for skiing 1st week of November. Sometimes an ambitious resort will make enough to cover a run or two. You could try leaving some flexibility in your schedule in case the weather does some magic for you (I can remember one year in the past 20 with truly great conditions 1st week of Nov at Kirkwood, near Lake Tahoe).

Eight days for a loop north from LA is reasonable. You will likely want to pick and choose among the possible stops. Remember the days will be somewhat short then. I would give a minimum of two days for Yosemite. Napa area might be a day trip out of SF, so allow 2-3 days there. The coast south from SF through Santa Cruz, Monterey, Big Sur, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara is pretty nice; you can easily fill a couple of days returning that way.

Thank you all for your good advice. I am not reserving any local flights in advance. If the weather will allow skiing in the first week of November - we would very much like to do that since we do not have a chance to do that regularly . (We live in Israel, and we have only one very small resort, and years without snow at all...). I will look for plan B if there is not enough snow. Regarding Hallowing - I accept your advice, and maybe we will do one way LA to SF and then stay in a small town in the SF area for the night of Halloween. We don't celebrate it in Israel, but the kids saw the trick or treat on many TV series, so they wanted to try it in reality :). will try to build a detailed itinerary and ask you opinion on it. Thanks again!