Don't stay here.
This place is terrible! We (my wife and I) read the reviews and noticed that several others had left unfavorable reviews, but we thought that we'd "risk" it because the location was great. It's true, the location is good (close to SeaWorld, and on the beach), but other than that, the place is a real dive - and the workers there (those managing the front desk) were super rude and unaccommodating, and seeing unaware of their own hotel (i.e., the fans (2) in our room were both broken. The room was not cleaned well. The furniture was broken and run down). Normally hotel staff are welcoming and friendly, those we interacted with at the Surfer hotel were subtly rude and not helpful (not to mention a few were difficult to understand). The hotel itself does not have airconditioning, which is a problem - and not just because their fans don't work. The rooms don't have sufficient windows to open to allow air ventilation. Yes, there is a sliding glass door, but do you really want to sleep with the door open to everyone? The rooms are dark, and musty smelling. The bathrooms are tiny, the beds are entry level (and don't feel clean), and the pull out bed that we had anticipated our two little kids sleeping on was broken (so they had to sleep on the floor - which again was not clean (we found trash from the previous tenets behind the curtain). The pool was ok, but the pool beach access door was always jammed, and so we can to either have our 6 year old climb under the door to open it from the other side, or walk around the entire hotel to get in. When we decided that enough was enough and went to check out, the staff/front desk people said that they needed 72 hour notice or we'd be fully charged. Although I recognize they need notice, 3 days notice is a little much, not to mention they didn't give us notice of how terrible their hotel was. We ended up checking out, finding a different place, and still having to pay for Surfer hotel dump. I wish I could say something nice, but there isn't anything good to report (i.e., several of the outlets were dead - and the microwave was plugged in over top of the burner of the dirty stove... talk about safety issue.) With so many places to stay in San Diego I highly recommend finding another place if you are considering the Surfer hotel.