Eight of you take over a rental four blocks off Garnet Avenue. Over two days the group will move somewhere together roughly a dozen times: breakfast, the beach, back to change, Belmont Park, dinner, back to the sand for sunset.
The weekend isn't the hard part. The hops are.
Eight people don't fit in one car, so every move becomes the same negotiation — two rideshares, two pins, two drivers taking different routes, one car arriving well after the other, and a group text that exists purely to reassemble everyone. Do that twelve times and a real slice of the weekend was spent standing on a kerb.
Four things that go wrong, and they compound
You always need two vehicles. An UberXL seats up to six, so any group over six books two cars for every leg, all weekend.
Saturday night is the worst possible time to need them. Rideshare pricing moves with demand, and PB between 9pm and closing on a summer Saturday is about as concentrated as demand gets in San Diego. Then double it for the second car.
Somebody has to not drink. If the answer is "we'll just drive," one person spends a celebration weekend as the designated driver — and it lands on the same person every time.
A second car is worse than no car. Beach parking is scarce all summer, paid where it exists, and you'll circle for a space you then refuse to give up.
What a cart fixes, and what it doesn't
A 6-seat street-legal cart takes the daytime hops off the board. Six people, one vehicle, no pins, no waiting — and the short runs that dominate a PB weekend become a five-minute drive you control.
The limits, plainly, because they change how you plan:
- Six seats is six people. If there are eight of you, six ride and two go separately, or you make two trips. It isn't a shuttle and we don't provide drivers.
- It's the wrong vehicle for the bar leg. That's the next section, and it isn't a footnote.
- The boardwalk is off-limits. Ocean Front Walk is for people on foot and bikes; park at the edge and walk on (the details).
- 35 mph or under. A street-legal cart is a Low-Speed Vehicle, and California limits LSVs to roads posted 35 mph or less. That covers essentially all of PB, Mission Beach and the Mission Bay loop. It does not automatically cover the roads onward to Ocean Beach or Sunset Cliffs — read the posted number, because the posted number is the rule.
The part of this post that isn't optional
These weekends involve drinking. So internalise this before anyone books anything.
California DUI law applies to a street-legal golf cart exactly as it applies to a car. There's no cart exception, and the reason is structural. Vehicle Code §385.5 defines a low-speed vehicle as "a motor vehicle" — one topping out between 20 and 25 mph. §670 defines a vehicle as a device by which a person or property may be moved upon a highway. And §23152 makes it unlawful "for a person who is under the influence of any alcoholic beverage to drive a vehicle," and unlawful to drive a vehicle at 0.08 percent blood alcohol or above.
Cart, car, same statute. Same 0.08. Same arrest — and the license at stake is your regular driver's license, the one you need on Monday.
Open containers are a plain no too. §23221 says a driver shall not drink an alcoholic beverage, or smoke or ingest marijuana, while driving on a highway — and, in its own subdivision, that a passenger shall not either. §23223 does the same for merely possessing an opened container: driver and passenger, both prohibited. A ticket in the back row is a real ticket.
There's an exemption, and it's worth knowing for what it excludes. §23229 lifts the passenger open-container rules for passengers "in any bus, taxicab, or limousine for hire licensed to transport passengers." That's why a chartered party bus is legal and your rental cart is not. You're not a licensed passenger carrier — you're friends in a small registered vehicle.
And on a cart there is nowhere legal to put it. §23225 makes it unlawful to keep an opened container in a vehicle on a highway "unless the container is kept in the trunk." A vehicle without a trunk has to stow it "in some other area of the vehicle that is not normally occupied by the driver or passengers." A six-seat golf cart has no trunk and no enclosed space that isn't a seat. So this isn't only "don't drink while you ride" — an opened bottle or can has no lawful place aboard the cart in the first place. Leave it where you're staying, or leave it at the bar.
So, the rule for the weekend:
The cart is for the daytime and the sober legs. The bar crawl is a rideshare, every time. Book the Uber, split it, leave the cart where you're staying. That isn't us covering ourselves — it's the only version of the weekend where nobody's night ends badly.
Six seats, six belts
Low-speed vehicles are built to a federal standard requiring a seat belt assembly at every designated seating position. Six seats, six belts, six people.
Riding on a lap or on the back rail isn't a grey area. Vehicle Code §21712 says a driver "shall not knowingly permit a person to ride on a vehicle or upon a portion of a vehicle that is not designed or intended for the use of passengers." It's also a breach of the rental agreement — and a breach is where coverage stops, optional insurance included. The photo that looks best on the group chat is the one that voids the thing protecting you.
Add every driver in advance
Whoever might take the wheel goes on the rental before the trip, not in the driveway. Each driver is 21 or over, uses their own valid driver's license, completes ID verification and signs the agreement — all on a phone, ahead of time. How It Works walks through it.
Do it the week before. Nothing kills a Saturday like discovering the one person who's had nothing to drink isn't a registered driver.
A weekend that works
Saturday, 8am. Breakfast before the crowd. Kono's Cafe, 704 Garnet by Crystal Pier, runs 7 to 3. Or south to The Mission, 3795 Mission Boulevard, open from 7 (to 2pm at weekends).
10am. Crystal Pier — reopened July 2025 after an 18-month closure and $2.06 million of storm repairs, still the best free thing in PB. Boardwalk on foot from there.
1pm. Belmont Park. No gate fee: you walk in free and pay for rides individually or with the unlimited Ride & Play wristband. The Giant Dipper, the wooden coaster that opened on 4 July 1925 and is now a National Historic Landmark, is the reason to go.
4pm. The move most groups miss — the bay side. Fiesta Island is open 4am to 10pm and the loop road is empty compared with the ocean side.
7pm. Sunset runs about 7:20 in late August, 7:14 on 1 September, and 6:36 by the end of that month. Plan backwards from the real number, not a guess. Cannonball's rooftop above Belmont Park has the ocean view and runs to 10pm Fridays and Saturdays.
9pm. Cart parked at the house. Rideshare from here.
Two carts. Book early.
We have two carts. Not a fleet, not a reserve — two. Summer Saturdays and holiday weekends go first, and a group booking four days takes one of them out of circulation for the whole window. If your dates are fixed, book as soon as you know them; you can see what's free right now before committing.
Rates are from $160 the first day and $130 each additional day, plus tax, with a refundable $200 deposit that returns automatically once the cart comes back undamaged. Split six ways over a long weekend it's the cheapest line on the trip, and the only one that's also the fun part. Parking, meters and street sweeping work exactly as they do for a car — the parking guide will save you a ticket.
Legal points cite California Vehicle Code §385.5, §670, §21260, §21712, §23152, §23221, §23223, §23225 and §23229, plus the federal low-speed vehicle standard 49 CFR §571.500. Venue details from Belmont Park, Kono's Cafe, The Mission, Cannonball and the City of San Diego; Crystal Pier reopening via ABC 10News; sunset times from timeanddate.com. Hours and prices change — check before you go. General information about California law, not legal advice.
