Best of 2000: Best Place To Take Your Kids When It's Raining

Pirate's Cove
3106 Mission Boulevard,
Mission Beach
(858) 539-7474

The natives are restless. Before you know it, they've stacked the ottoman on the coffee table and used couch cushions to construct a precarious slide. You shudder as you gaze across the living room at Grandma Faye's crystal vase. Your eyes fall heavy on the gray drizzle outside the window. Will there be anything left for them to inherit? There will be if you whisk the kids off to Pirate's Cove. Toss the counter clerk a few doubloons (children under three, $4.50; three and over, $6.50) and send your kids down a slide into a cavelike corridor, up a rope ladder, and into a myriad assortment of climbing apparati and ball pits. You, of course, can take the stairs. The three levels of play areas accommodate crawlers to expert climbers. Your infant can sit in a pint-size ball pit while your seven-year-old gets lost in a maze of tubes, netting, and slides. They even rent knee pads for pumpkin's little kneesie-weesies.