After years of trying to get the family up to the Carlsbad Flower Fields, I finally found the perfect opportunity during the kids’ Spring break. I took the day off from the good old 9 to 5 and planned our trip, family coordinating outfits and all!
What are the Carlsbad Flower Fields?
The Carlsbad Flower Fields are the quintessential Spring in San Diego activity where the showstopper is the 80 million ranunculi flowers in rainbow formation. I had the pleasure of visiting back in 2015 (pre-Instagram popularity) and got a tour by one of the owners who shared so many insights while on a tractor wagon ride (read that blog post here). Tidbits like how they have the field bloom in phases to get the most out of the season and that some of the pieces of their playground are from Santa’s Village. This, however, would be my husband and kids’ first time and I was excited to experience it through their eyes. Also, a lot has changed in 9 years especially with their growth in popularity. Everything seemed well organized from the photo opps with designated lines, to the plethora of activities for kids and food vendors.
When to go + tickets
The flower field season starts around March and this year it concludes May 10th. If you read this after May 10th, sadly you’ll have to wait until next season, but at least now you know what to expect! Tickets are required to enter (they can be purchased here).
Best time of day to visit for us who like lighter crowds is morning time and on a weekday vs. weekend. Parking is free, but again the earlier you get there the better for closer parking. We purchased our tickets for the 10:30 am time slot and left a few hours later once the kids got tired.
What to expect
Once we arrived we went straight to the flower fields to get all of our pictures out of the way. When my husband and kids saw the sprawling field of rainbow flowers I heard them say “wow”.
After we were done with flower fields we walked back down to explore. There are so many other activities lined up. Free activities include the artists’ garden, the Sweet Pea Maze, the playground, photo installations, the Glass in Flight sculpture exhibit. Other activities at additional charge were the tractor wagon ride, butterfly encounter, sluice mining for gemstones, as well as food vendors lined up.
What to wear for the Carlsbad Flower Fields with Kids
Like I said, I did coordinate our outfits and had found the cutest matching mommy and me dresses from Old Navy! I liked that they were floral but not too overly floral that would get washed out in pictures. It was the perfect amount of floral and the color was light enough to still stand out! There were photo opps at different flower color sections of the fields so we worked our way up one section at a time. I did bring my foldable tripod to get some good family photos!
SHOP OUR LOOK
The kids enjoyed the activities, I enjoyed seeing their eyes light up and also I was happy I got some really great pictures of our family to look back on and at the end my husband said that it was a morning well spent!
