Five L.A. County Mini Golf Courses, Ranked by Who Sells a Round at 9 p.m.

The criterion is the cutoff, not the closing time. Three of the five print the hour their counter stops selling rounds; two leave you to find out at the window.

Miniature golf is an evening game that Los Angeles County plays on an afternoon schedule. We searched for every course still operating here, read the hours and prices each operator posts on its own site, and found that the number deciding your night isn't the closing time. It's the cutoff: the hour, usually one before the doors shut, when the counter stops selling rounds.

Five courses survived the search. One will sell you eighteen holes at nine o'clock on a weeknight and prints the rule that says so. One is open two more hours after that and prints no rule at all. One closes its golf window at about nine. One is silent in both directions. The fifth — the only one here with a published course record — takes its last tee time at eight, on an island, which is its own kind of cutoff.

The criteria, stated once and applied to everybody. First: under the rules the operator publishes, can you buy a round at 9 p.m. on a weeknight? Second: how late does that window run on a Friday? Third: what does the round cost? Ties go to whoever prints the cutoff instead of letting you find it at the counter with a kid in the car.

One number frames the rest. Golf Gardens on Catalina is the only operator here that says how long a round takes — allow about an hour, its own page advises. That hour is exactly the cushion a 10 p.m. close doesn't give a 9 p.m. arrival.

1. Sherman Oaks Castle Park — 4989 Sepulveda Blvd.

Twelve dollars, and the last sale of the night is at ten. Castle Park posts $12 for adults 13 to 64, $8 for children 5 to 12 and for seniors 64 and up, $5 for a same-day replay, and one line that decides this whole ranking: "Last call for miniature golf is one hour before closing," on its own page. Closing is 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and midnight Friday and Saturday, which puts the counter live at 10 on a Tuesday and 11 on a Saturday — the latest weeknight cutoff anybody on this list puts in writing.

The second thing worth knowing is whose castle it is. The ivy-covered pile alongside the 405 is on the city's books: its hours and prices are published on the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks' own site, filed alongside the municipal pools and golf courses. Time Out counted three 18-hole courses there in a listing last updated in February 2022, which means the $5 replay can be a different course rather than the same eighteen holes twice.

First place is arithmetic, not affection. It ties MB2 for the cheapest round on the list, it's the cheapest place in the county to play two of them — $17, against $20 on the Promenade — and it's the only address where showing up at nine buys an hour of slack instead of a conversation with a teenager holding a cash drawer.

2. Holey Moley Santa Monica — 1315 Third Street Promenade

The pick we expect to argue about. This is the most expensive course here and it finishes second, because the question is the nine o'clock round and nothing else on the list is built for one. Holey Moley's own venue page posts noon to 11 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, noon to midnight Thursday, noon to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. One in the morning is the latest putting in the county by a full hour.

Prices run $14 for nine holes, $20 for eighteen and $26 for twenty-seven Monday through Wednesday, then $16, $29 and $36 Thursday through Sunday. The figure that moves it up the list is the walk-in deal posted beside them: $20 for unlimited golf, all day, Monday through Wednesday, walk-in only — the price of one eighteen. Run it out. Two rounds at Castle Park is $17 and two here on a Monday is $20; at three rounds it's $22 against $20, and it never flips back.

Now the objection at full strength, because it's a real one. After 8 p.m. this is a 21-and-over venue with ID checked at the door, so the family arriving at 8:05 is not playing tonight. Twenty-nine dollars for eighteen holes on a Friday is nearly double Norwalk. And the 27 holes are three 9-hole courses, so "eighteen holes" here means playing two of them. We're keeping the placement anyway: the list asks who is open at nine, and this is the only entry where nine o'clock is the busy hour rather than the leftovers. It also posts no last-round rule — the difference from the course below is that an 11 p.m. close leaves two hours to be wrong about instead of one.

3. MB2 Entertainment — 21516 Golden Triangle Rd., Santa Clarita

Twelve dollars, thirty-six holes, and no cutoff anywhere in print. MB2 lists mini golf at $12 or 60 credits for anyone five and older and free for four and under, on a course it describes as 36 holes with waterfalls, caves and caverns, on its attractions page. The park runs noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, noon to midnight Friday, 11 a.m. to midnight Saturday and 11 to 10 on Sunday. By the posted rules a nine o'clock Tuesday round is fine. By the posted rules so is a 9:55 one, which is how you can tell the rule hasn't been written down.

The page where it should live is worth a click. MB2's mini golf page, read on September 8, still carries the printer's placeholder Latin — five blocks of lorem ipsum where the description belongs — while the price and the hole count sit one link away on the attractions page. The company also says it took over the former Mountasia Family Fun Center site, which is a sentence every Santa Clarita parent over thirty will read twice.

Third is a documentation penalty and nothing more. On price it's tied for first, on holes it's ahead of everyone but Norwalk, and it loses to two courses that tell you when to arrive.

4. Golf N' Stuff — 10555 E. Firestone Blvd., Norwalk

The best Friday on this list and the worst Tuesday, and one policy does both. The Norwalk park closes at 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, midnight Friday and Saturday and 11 p.m. Sunday, and its own info page says golf, ride and snack shop sales close approximately an hour before the park does. On Friday that's an 11 p.m. cutoff. On a Tuesday it's nine o'clock — precisely the hour this ranking asks about, and not a minute past it.

The round is $16.50 a person for eighteen holes, or $14.50 for seniors 60 and up, for military and for first responders with ID, across four 18-hole courses, per the park's price page. That's 72 holes at one address, the most in the county by its own count and Castle Park's, and children three and under play free with a paid round.

Then there's the parking. It's free Monday through Thursday, $5 after 5 p.m. on Friday and after 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday — and the $5 comes back as a fun card good on the attractions. It's the only entry that charges for the lot, the only one that refunds it in credit, and both facts sit on the same page as the hours.

5. Golf Gardens — 10 Island Plaza, Avalon

Last on the criterion, and the criterion is the only thing it loses. The Catalina Island Company posts Golf Gardens as open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with the last tee off one hour before closing, which is an 8 p.m. cutoff and the earliest here. Its Glow Golf night session runs 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 7 to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday, so the island's late window exists on four nights and not on a Tuesday.

The operator's description does the rest of the work: eighteen holes at par 51, a course record of 41, and a garden site less than a block off the beach that it dates to nearly fifty years ago. What the page doesn't post is a price. Every other course here tells you what a round costs before you leave the house; this one sells through its booking flow and at the gate.

It also requires a boat, a cost this ranking doesn't price and every reader can. Ranked last for the hour it keeps, and nobody should read that as a verdict on the golf.

What the map is missing

Five courses, and the geography is worse than the count. Sherman Oaks, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Norwalk, Avalon: we could not find an operating course in the San Gabriel Valley, in the South Bay, or anywhere on the Eastside. Two of the five sit at the county's edges, and one of those is a ferry ride.

The South Bay's hole has a date on it. Mulligan Family Fun Center on Sepulveda in Torrance closed in February 2020, and in March 2021 the empty building burned — 119 Los Angeles Fire Department firefighters and a partial roof collapse, ABC7 reported. Mulligan's contact page now lists one address, in Murrieta, in Riverside County.

Most of the other names people offer are somebody else's county. Camelot Golfland in Anaheim, Howl at the Moon in Garden Grove and Playground Mini Golf in Huntington Beach are Orange County; GLO is inside a Riverside mall. Several of them are an easier drive from parts of this city than Avalon is. None of them is in Los Angeles County, which is what this list is.

The cutoff, not the closing time

If one line survives this page, make it the one Castle Park, Golf N' Stuff and Golf Gardens all print and the other two don't: the golf stops selling an hour before the doors close. Read every "open until 10" on a mini golf page in this county as "selling until 9" until the operator says otherwise in writing. Three of the five say it in writing. One of the three says an hour that helps you.

So, on a weeknight at nine: Sepulveda Boulevard is $12 with an hour of room, the Promenade is $20 and everyone in the car has to be 21, Santa Clarita is $12 and says nothing, Norwalk has just shut the window, and the boat has sailed. On a Friday at eleven the order changes, and Norwalk is still selling.