Our 1 day Family Vacation in LA with D3 Publisher

My family had the wonderful opportunity to visit with D3 Publisher last weekend.  They flew our family down to the Los Angeles area for the weekend to show us their new video games. We got in to LAX around 9:30 and didn’t get to our hotel room until about 10pm. We stayed at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel which was really nice and they gave my kids Little People Toys. Anyways, the kids had fun playing in the hotel room before we settled down for bed. We’re pretty strict on our 7pm bed time at home, but this night we were all up until 11pm and we had some good family fun being silly in the hotel room.

On Saturday they kept us very busy. We had a fun day down in Southern California. They loaded us and some other families onto a big coach bus and took us out to Irvine to see their games based on the "Secret Saturdays" and "Ben10" cartoons. They work with Papaya Studios and Cartoon Network to create some very fun games. The newest version of “Ben10” is going to be the first time that you can become all ten of Ben’s creatures. I’ve never seen the cartoon but the game quality is quite impressive on the Xbox 360. We had nannies available for us to use while we were there. The nannies spent the whole day with us and my kids fell in love with one of the nannies.

Owner of Papaya Studio: Lynn, Senior Artist Manager: Jerry, Senior Artist Chris

Next we went to House of Champions Academy of Martial Arts for their game based on the kids TV show "Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight". We had to recover from being on a bus for an hour when we arrived. The charter bus broke down on the LA highway during rush hour traffic. This is where D3 impressed me the most. They took as much care of us as they could while we were waiting for another bus. It was hot but they had plenty of water and they even provided entertainment.

Aside from the good humor they also handed out a Nintendo DS to each mom. Inside each DS was a copy of Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun.. Finally we went back to Santa Monica (where our hotel was) for a screening of the new movie "Astro Boy" and a preview of the Astro Boy video game. The movie was good (and a rare treat – it was very clean). It  We were sitting in Dick Clark Studios previewing a movie.

Not only did I feel like someone that is very important but I felt like I was on a date. We haven’t had a date since my daughter was born. My kids were with the nannies and I was able to enjoy myself for an hour and watch a movie before anyone else gets to see it. I wasn’t able to finish the movie because my kids needed me but I liked what I saw. Interesting fact I didn’t know until we got back is that the original Astro Boy was the first anime ever, from back in 1952.

We didn’t have much time before we had to catch our ride to LAX on Sunday morning, but since our hotel was right across the street from the beach, we made sure to walk over there and have a bit of fun. I think this is the first time the Zoe and Miles have been to a real ocean beach.

Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be posting more about individual things we were able to see and do.. But this is my fully disclosed post. Thank you D3 for making a vacation possible and my husband wants to come back next year.