Forever Balboa Park

Balboa Park Visitors Center: Retail Operations and Guest ServicesThe Balboa Park Visitors Center informs, educates, and serves over 600,000 visitors annually. The largest visitor center in the region, the Parks Visitors Center is supported by multilingual staff and volunteers with diverse backgrounds, who are trained to promote parkwide institutions and activities and to provide free and custom tours, maps, and information. The Visitors Center operates a gift store to offset the cost of visitor services and sells essential visitor amenities along with Park multi-museum passes, and zoo tickets.

House of Hospitality: Historic Facilities, GardensThe Organization maintains and preserves the House of Hospitality, a National Historic Landmark building, providing clean public restrooms, ongoing facility care, and security for tenants and visitors. The Visitors Center is housed in the House of Hospitality, along with the Organizations offices, The Prado Restaurant, a ballroom, meeting rooms, and offices for nonprofit cultural and educational organizations operating within the Park. The House of Hospitality serves visitors numbering over 1,000,000 each year.

Dorothea Laub Balboa Park CarouselThe Balboa Park Carousel (the Carousel) was constructed in 1910 during the golden age of carousels (c.1880 1920) by the Herschell-Spillman Company of North Tonawanda, New York, and was permanently moved to the Park in 1922. Designated as a Historical Resource, the Carousel is a classic wood carousel of the menagerie type, featuring original hand-painted figures. After acquiring the Carousel in 2017, the Organization has made significant structural and historic restorations of the Carousel itself, and of the historic building in which it is housed, the most recent of which were completed in July 2023. These restorations include two new roofs, roof beam structural repairs, repairs to the clerestory windows and frames, and repainting, all adhering to rigorous historic restoration standards. The Carousel provides more than 125,000 rides annually to visitors of all ages.