Hard to Review Ocean Park Inn
The Ocean Park Inn:
The first 2 nights we stayed in a 2 room suite that overlooked their very nice and warm pool. This room had a large balcony and small view of the ocean. You could hear the ocean if you kept your patio door/windows open at night. The room was clean, decorated nicely and had a full size table and kitchenette. We really liked this room and pleaded with them to let us stay in it even though we would be giving up the full oceanview. It was perfect for the 4 of us. My teens could stay up later since it had a TV in the living/kitchen area and also one in the bedroom. Since they do assign rooms at the time of reservation we had to move to our 1 room oceanview room. This room was very spacious but not nearly as nice. It needed updating and the bathroom was in desparate need of caulking. The patio screen door was broke but they did fix it immediately when I called. The balcony was very small.This was the kind of room that even when cleaned(which they did a great job on) did not look like it because it was old and needed work. Showers in both rooms had excellent water pressure.
We found the staff very pleasant and helpful. The continental breakfast was fabulous. Waffles, eggs, variety of cereals and the best cinnamon rolls and other pastries. I grade a continental breakfast on the serving of some kind of protein and they got an A+.
Parking in their garage was an issue. We had rented a small SUV and most parking spots were for compact cars only. We had a very difficult time parking our car, often having to take up 2 compact spots, which everyone was having to do, which resulted in less spots. Also, if you came in late at night-forget about it.
Pacific Beach Area:
The beach area and boardwalk were not clean. When asked, I was told they clean every Friday. Once a week is not enough with the amount of people in the area. Water temp was great@74degrees. However, we did not like the amount of seaweed that would wrap around you when playing in the waves. My teens loved the surf area which is separate from the swim area. The Pacifc Beach Surf Shop across from the hotel is the place to go for lessons and rentals. Gave us a discount since both kids got lessons and even gave us a 2 for 1 rental on skateboards.
This is not an area for kids. I was not happy that my 2 teens were exposed to an area of heavy drinking. Open street bars everywhere and many adults were walking around that obviously had too much to drink. The bars were filled to capacity(seen as walking down the boardwalk) even during the day. Average age in the twenties. Felt we could put up with during the day but not good at night.
The area by this hotel was crowded. There were police patrolling and they were kept busy. Every night at least one big fight in the area. Usually over a girl.
We read about the homeless in San Diego and were prepared. They sleep out on the benches on the boardwalk directly across from the oceanview rooms. Most are quiet but not always. The boardwalk is very busy, at least in August, with a lot of noise and partying crowds walking by until about 1-2am.
For this reason, I cannot recommend this hotel to families, unless they reserved a room in the back of the hotel and off the boardwalk. We did not have any of these problems with our first room we had that was back by the pool.
As you can see, this was a difficult review. Maybe a month other than August would be different. We liked having a Ralphs grocer, 7Eleven and numerous restaurants nearby. Just north of Ocean Park Inn was Tower 23 and Pacific Terrace Hotel, both much quieter but a lot more expensive. A few blocks south was the Best Western,which looked nice also, more in the mission beach area which is quieter. All these hotels are directly on the beach/boardwalk. The Pacific Hotel was on a bluff and had a lot of stairs to the beach.