Esquire’s annual list of the best bars in America is once again featuring a San Diego County establishment with the naming of Legoland Hotel’s Skyline Lounge among its selections for 2025.
The lounge, which is open to guests whether they’re visiting the theme park or not, features a full bar and a kids play area and is open every day of the week. It can be found inside the Legoland Hotel, which opened in 2013 on the south side of Legoland in Carlsbad.
Ryan D’Agostino, Hearst editorial director for projects, said the bar is “perfectly essential” for such a place as Legoland.
“So, like, why is the Skyline Lounge one of the best bars in America? Because it’s a bar! In the Legoland Hotel! Not since the invention of the airport bar has a drinking establishment been so perfectly essential to its environment,” D’Agostino wrote.
He added that a good drink is a much-needed salve for some of the challenges that come with traveling with kids.
“You had to lift your sleep-drooled children out of bed at dawn for an early flight, and there was traffic because no one knows how to drive in the rain, and the first flight was not only bumpy but so late that you had to sprint — pretty much dragging the younger one through the terminal by his foot—to make your connection, and the second flight was even bumpier, and they couldn’t find your reservation at the rental-car place so you had to wait 40 minutes while the kids fought over your phone, and your pits are sweating from carrying five bags at once, and jeeee-zus you could use a drink right about now,” D’Agostino wrote.
The lounge’s menu currently features six signature cocktails, as well as a wide range of local craft beer offerings, a wine list with plenty of California-grown options and a full list of spirits.
For lunch and dinner, there’s the Skyline Cafe, where visitors will find appetizers, salads, burgers, sandwiches, flatbreads and, of course, a kids menu. The little ones can order pasta with butter, among other staples for children.
Previous local selections by Esquire include North Park’s Part Time Lover in 2024 and Mothership in 2023.
