Anaheim or Palm Springs?

Anaheim is inland, but Huntington's long surf beach, the Balboa Peninsula at Newport and the small coves of Laguna Beach are all about half an hour away by car. That makes it easy to fit a beach afternoon between park days, as long as you accept that the Pacific stays cool for most of the year.

Palm Springs is a desert town, and the ocean is two hours away over the mountains, so swimming there means the hotel pool. In the long hot season the pool is a pleasure in its own right, but anyone who wants sand and waves should choose Anaheim.

Neither city is a destination for serious eating, but Anaheim has more to find once you get away from the resort's chains and park food counters. The Lebanese and Yemeni grills of Little Arabia on Brookhurst Street and the pho and banh mi of nearby Little Saigon give it a depth of immigrant cooking that Palm Springs cannot match.

Palm Springs does better on setting than on food. It offers long patio brunches and poolside cocktails along Palm Canyon Drive, date shakes from the Indio groves and taquerias further down the valley. The choice is narrow, and some kitchens cut back their service in summer.

Anaheim's cultural interest rests almost entirely on Disneyland, which matters as a piece of American history as well as a theme park. Beyond that there is only the Mother Colony House and the old citrus packing houses, and the Bowers Museum and Nixon Library both mean a drive.

Palm Springs has a clearer theme and more of it: mid-century modern architecture. You can tour Albert Frey's angular buildings, Neutra's Kaufmann House and the folded roofs of Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas by bike or car, then add the art museum and the Cahuilla story at the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum. It is still a modest list, but it is enough to fill a day or two.

In Anaheim the evening usually ends with the park fireworks, followed perhaps by a drink on the shopping promenade or at a brewpub in the centre. The bars near the stadiums on game nights are about as lively as it gets, and anything bigger means driving to Long Beach or Los Angeles.

Palm Springs is small after dark too, but it has a character of its own. Arenas Road has long-established LGBTQ bars with patios and drag nights, Palm Canyon Drive has retro cocktail lounges, and hotel pool parties carry the spring weekends. There are hardly any clubs, and the town goes quiet in summer.

Anaheim's outdoors are gentle and easy in any season. Within about 45 minutes' drive there are chaparral trails in the Santa Ana Mountains, tide pools and bluff-top walks at Crystal Cove, and whale-watching boats from Newport and Dana Point. It is pleasant countryside rather than striking scenery.

In Palm Springs the landscape is the main reason to visit. The aerial tramway climbs from the desert floor into pine forest on Mount San Jacinto, the Indian and Tahquitz canyons hide palm oases and a waterfall, and Joshua Tree's boulders and dark night skies are an hour away. The catch is summer, when hiking is limited to the hour after dawn.

Anaheim's central position in Southern California opens up a long list of day trips. Los Angeles is about an hour away, Long Beach has the Queen Mary and ferries to Catalina Island, Mission San Juan Capistrano lies to the south, and San Diego is possible in a long day. Trains to Los Angeles and San Diego mean you can do those two without driving.

From Palm Springs the outings are smaller and quirkier: the pine village of Idyllwild, the old Western film set at Pioneertown, and the abandoned shoreline of the Salton Sea with Salvation Mountain. They have real charm, but the big cities are out of comfortable range.

With children there is hardly any contest. Anaheim has two Disney parks side by side, Knott's Berry Farm ten minutes away and hundreds of family hotels within reach of the gates, plus the Discovery Cube and calm beaches for days off. The downsides are long queues at busy times and needing a car for anything outside the resort.

Palm Springs can work as a pool vacation with a few outings, to the Living Desert, the tramway with its winter snow, and the Air Museum. But many of the boutique hotels are adults-only, social life revolves around cocktails, and the midday heat from late spring keeps everyone indoors.

Both cities have a small core you can walk around, with car country all around it. Anaheim's edge is its resort district: shuttles link the hotels to the parks, so a parks-only trip needs no car, and trains from the station by the stadium reach Los Angeles and San Diego.

Downtown Palm Springs is flat and easy on foot, bikes suit the mid-century neighbourhoods in the cooler months, and the airport sits right on the edge of town. But valley buses are sparse, the tramway, canyons and Joshua Tree all need a car, and nobody walks anywhere at midday in summer.

There is little between them, but they offer different kinds of shopping. Anaheim is about brands and size: Disney merchandise in the resort, then one of the country's largest luxury malls twenty minutes away in Costa Mesa, with outlets and open-air malls covering the mid-range.

Palm Springs is better for finds than for brands. The Uptown Design District is full of vintage clothing and mid-century furniture and lighting, and the Village Fest street fair adds crafts. El Paseo and the Cabazon outlets handle mainstream shopping.

Both cities are expensive, for different reasons. In Anaheim the cost is the parks: multi-day tickets, hotels near the gates that charge for their location, and food inside the parks priced for people with no alternative. Motels a short drive away and the suburbs' Vietnamese and Middle Eastern eateries help to soften this.

Palm Springs is costly in its winter and spring high season, and more so on festival weekends, but room rates fall sharply in summer for anyone who can bear the heat. In both cities a hire car adds to the bill.

Anaheim's evening entertainment is mostly polished park shows and parades, with a proper concert hall twenty minutes away. At the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa you can hear the Pacific Symphony or see ballet and touring Broadway, and the city's arena hosts major pop and rock tours.

The Palm Springs valley is known instead for its festivals, with Coachella and Stagecoach filling the polo grounds in Indio every April. For the rest of the season there are the McCallum Theatre and casino concerts, and in town a typical night out means drag cabaret or a piano bar. In summer the programme largely stops.

In Anaheim, wellness means the pools and spas of the bigger resort hotels and a few Korean-style day spas in the suburbs. Park days with early starts and crowds are tiring rather than restful, and real calm means a drive to the clifftop resorts at Laguna Beach or Dana Point.

Wellness is what Palm Springs does best. The town grew up around the Agua Caliente hot spring, where visitors still soak in the bathhouse built over it, and the small spa motels of Desert Hot Springs fill their pools with hot water straight from the ground. Just as much of the appeal is the slow pace: a late breakfast, a day by the pool and evenings watching San Jacinto turn pink.