[JonT]

Well I just wanted to follow up on my experience in Phoenix and thank everyone for the suggestions.

We had a really fun family vacation at the Arizona Grande I would recommend this hotel for families. Our kids are 9, 7 (girls) and 2 (boy). The pool area was great - 2 big high speed water slides, 1 smaller twisty slide, hot tubs, water volleyball area, wave pool, and really good servers bringing food and drinks. We spent several days at the pool area for most of the day. There are nice shaded areas so we could get out of the direct sun for most of the day.

We also went to the Children's Museum downtown which was pretty good for the kids and was chaotic due to several busloads of 5 year olds on a field trip. My son ran around as fast as he could and just couldn't take it in fast enough. My 9 year old got bored fairly quickly and was probably reaching the age where this kind of place isn't as interesting. My 7 year old loved it and was in the sweet-spot age-wise. I'd say 2 to 9 would be a fair age range for enjoying the Children's Museum.

Coincidentally we could walk to Pizza Bianco from here. As it turned out this may have been my least favorite pizza I've ever eaten. Oddly my two girls loved it and ate 3 pieces each. It's a very traditional Italian thin crust so one adult could eat an entire pizza and feel about as full as eating a half of a sandwich. I'd give it 1 star. Just not my style.

On the other end of the pizza enjoyment scale, someone locally recommended we try out Oregano's pizza. The deep dish may be my fave pizza of all-time. Crazy good!

We also spend several hours at Pangea which is a animatronic dinosaur exibit. The kids loved this but were upset they couldn't climb on the dinosaurs.

Of course we couldn't leave without going to the American Girl store. What a money-sucking place that is. Don't ever introduce your daughters to American Girl dolls. Keep them happy with $15 Barbies.

We decided against driving to Sedona since the kids are too small and 4 hrs of driving didn't seem worth it. The weather forecast was rain/snow so that would have made any jeep tours miserable. Maybe when the kids are a little older I've heard its beautiful there from several sources.

Other restaurants we tried were Aunt Chiladas which was right next to our hotel and I thought it was fair not great, and also Garcia's which is more Americanized Mexican but my wife and I enjoyed it more. Thumbs up on Garcia's.

Overall great family spring break vacation. Phoenix weather in the spring is amazing and putting shorts on after our awful Nebraska winter was worth it alone.