Anaheim or Palm Desert?

Anaheim is about 20km from the Pacific, and Huntington's wide surf beach, Newport's harbour and Laguna's small coves are all an easy drive away. For most visitors they make a half-day break between park days rather than the main purpose of the trip.

Palm Desert has no beach at all. Swimming there means a hotel pool, which is often heated in winter, and reaching the coast takes a full day out.

Anaheim has more interesting food, but you have to leave the resort district to find it. Little Arabia on Brookhurst Street and the Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries of Little Saigon nearby give a range of dishes the desert can't offer.

Palm Desert's restaurants along El Paseo are polished but tend to serve the same things. The local character comes from the taquerias of Indio and the date shakes sold in the groves.

Neither town is a place to go for history or museums. What each offers is different. Anaheim has Disneyland, a genuine landmark of American popular culture, and a short drive takes you to the Bowers Museum and the Nixon Library.

Palm Desert has a branch of the Palm Springs Art Museum with a sculpture garden. Its real interest is the mid-century modern architecture just west in Palm Springs, and that is worth a morning on its own.

Both towns are quiet after dark. In Anaheim, evenings centre on the park fireworks and the bars along the promenade, with stadium crowds filling the nearby bars on game nights. In Palm Desert, people have early drinks on the patios around El Paseo, and most places close early.

The two towns differ in where you go for a late night. From Anaheim, that means driving to Long Beach or Los Angeles. From Palm Desert, people go to the valley's casinos, whose lounges stay open into the small hours, or to the gay bars of downtown Palm Springs.

Here the desert has the advantage. The Santa Rosa Mountains rise straight behind Palm Desert, there are palm oases in the Indian Canyons, and Joshua Tree's boulders and night skies are about an hour away. All of this is more dramatic than anything near Anaheim.

Anaheim's outdoors is gentler and mostly on the coast, with tide pools at Crystal Cove and whale-watching boats from Dana Point. It has one real advantage: the mild climate lets you go out at any time of year, while the desert heat rules out the summer.

Anaheim sits in the middle of Southern California, which makes it the better base. Hollywood and the Getty, the Queen Mary, Catalina Island and Mission San Juan Capistrano can all be done in a day, provided you can put up with the traffic.

Palm Desert's outings are fewer and stranger. There is Palm Springs, the cool mountain village of Idyllwild, the old film set at Pioneertown, and the painted hillside of Salvation Mountain. From there, Los Angeles and San Diego are too far for a comfortable day.

Anaheim is one of the world's great family destinations. Many families spend a whole week between the two Disney parks and Knott's Berry Farm and never feel the need to go further. The Discovery Cube and the aquarium in Long Beach add variety, though peak-season queues can be long.

In Palm Desert, children get a good morning at the Living Desert and a trip up the aerial tramway, then a lot of time by the pool. The valley is built around golf and adults, and the summer heat makes midday outdoors hard for small children.

Anaheim gives you at least one compact area you can manage without a car. Hotels near the Disney gates are within walking distance, shuttles serve the resort district, and trains run from the stadium to Los Angeles and San Diego.

Palm Desert offers nothing like that. Apart from a few blocks of El Paseo, you need a car for everything. The roads are at least uncongested and parking is easy.

Both towns are equally good for shopping, but the experience is different. In Anaheim it means Disney merchandise and driving between malls, above all the large luxury mall in Costa Mesa. Palm Desert has El Paseo, a palm-lined street of boutiques, jewellers and galleries where you can browse on foot. It also has a large designer outlet half an hour west and vintage furniture shops in Palm Springs.

Both towns are expensive, but Anaheim usually costs more, because multi-day park tickets, hotels near the gates and food inside the parks all add up quickly. Motels a short drive away and the restaurants of the surrounding suburbs help keep costs down.

Palm Desert's costs depend heavily on the season. Winter resort rooms are expensive, but rates drop sharply in the summer heat, and rentals offer cheaper stays all year. Golf and spa treatments are where the money goes.

The two towns are about equal, and each has a single main venue. Anaheim's is the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, home of the Pacific Symphony, together with the shows and parades inside the Disney parks. Palm Desert's is the McCallum Theatre, which has a winter programme of touring shows. In spring, the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals take place just down the road in Indio.

Palm Desert is built for doing very little. It has resort spas, long afternoons by the pool and an unhurried winter pace, and the springs at Desert Hot Springs fill their pools with natural mineral water.

Anaheim is about early starts and crowded park days. Rest there usually means an afternoon by the hotel pool or a Korean-style day spa in the suburbs, and for a proper spa you have to drive to the clifftop resorts at Laguna.