Unconventional Vacation : Tourism: Employees are turning company trips into family holiday opportunities, and Orange County sites are a prime place for them.

The group from New Jersey had heard about Californians and their zany lifestyles, so they were prepared for anything . . . except a floating greeting card that came out of an airplane with a sky diver attached.

When someone yelled, “Hey, lookit the airplane!” hundreds of heads tilted back, their eyes scanning the skies above.

As someone counted down, the parachutist jumped out of the plane and descended toward one of the terraces at the Dana Point Resort. The jumper circled a landing zone and smoke swirled from a canister while the corporate crowd from Pulsar, a New Jersey-based watch company, watched and sipped white wine in between a few oohs and aahs.

In a matter of seconds, the jumper had landed to light applause. Hoots and shouts erupted when parachutist Mike Sheerin unfurled Pulsar’s colorful banner.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Tim Connors, a Pulsar salesman from Minneapolis-St. Paul, who brought his wife, Fumi, to the event. She joined dozens of other spouses who made the trip West for Pulsar’s first sales meeting in Orange County.

Although this year’s economy has softened, many of the nation’s larger companies still have budgeted sales meetings and conventions in the land of Mouse ears and earthquakes. Employees are turning these company trips into family vacation opportunities, and a boom is being experienced by “destination managers” who schedule the baby-sitting and book a spectrum of activities for conventioneers and their families.

Spouses can take a trip to the historical San Juan Capistrano Mission, learn how to make the perfect guacamole at El Torito restaurants, take a shopping tour at Newport Center Fashion Island or reminisce about John Wayne over lunch with his widow, Pilar, in her Newport Beach home. Most of the group tours range from $20 to $50 a person.

Sue Rotolo from New Orleans, who accompanied her husband here to attend the Pulsar meeting, said her Orange County schedule was filled with offbeat activities.

“I’m going para-sailing. Then we’re going to see Laguna Beach as part of a tour and also take a shopping trip to what do you call it? Your mall here? Southern Coast? Coastal something. Yes! That’s it, South Coast Plaza,” she said.

Because her husband, Shelby, travels often, he wanted their stay here to be unique.

“You see enough of hotel rooms by yourself. I wanted to have my wife with me so we can enjoy doing some different things,” he said.

With such major attractions as Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, and with Los Angeles and San Diego a short bus drive away, visitors stay in the county an average of five nights, one more night than the national average, said Elaine Cali, spokeswoman for the Anaheim Visitors and Convention Bureau.

In each of the last three years, there have been more than a million conventioneers staying in the Anaheim area alone. The Anaheim Convention Center, one of the nation’s busiest, is booked until the year 2010, Cali said.

Not everyone on the ground at the Dana Point Resort watched the parachutist with enthusiasm. Lois Daniels nervously kept her eyes riveted to jumper Sheerin, saying, “Here’s where we find out whether we pay him or not.”

As owner of Whirl-A-Round Tours in Newport Beach, Daniels and partner Barbara Sloate had booked the parachute jump, with its $1,800 price tag, as a kickoff to Pulsar’s meeting.

“We wanted something the salesmen wanted and what the spouses might enjoy,” Daniels said, “After all, this is California.”

Jean Paul Suchel, a watch salesman from France, said, “It fits with the image of the United States, especially Southern California. You know, out of the ordinary . . . crazy and sporty at the same time.”

Visitors to Pilar Wayne’s house enjoy tea or lunch on an outside patio, then listen to Wayne’s widow talk about her life with the Duke, his movies and Hollywood. The artist and author sometimes has signed copies of her autobiography, “John Wayne: My Life With the Duke,” and her cookbook to sell to the group.

“These groups are interested in my family, the number of children I have and what they’re doing and whether they are all actors,” said Wayne.

For visitors more interested in history than celebrity, Louis Reichman of Fullerton offers an “Orange County Experience” tour.

“We go down to the coast, and I point out interesting stuff like when Martha Mitchell was staying at the Newport Hyatt . . . that’s where, during the Watergate days when her husband John (Mitchell, former U.S. attorney general) was wrapped up in the Nixon scandal and she placed calls to the media saying her husband’s deep into Watergate and not to trust those people because they’re liars,” said the Fullerton Community College history professor.

Reichman blends local history with spicy footnotes. “Did you know the history of the Irvine Ranch is filled with violence, illness, deaths and betrayals? It’s like something out of a TV script, about family power struggles ‘like Falcon Crest,’ ” Reichman said.

The tour costs $20 with a brown-bag lunch included or $45 for dinner.

On another tour, group members can compare notes on how to make the perfect guacamole and other Mexican dishes in the kitchens of El Torito Grill in Costa Mesa. For $30, Daniels said, visitors can observe the restaurant chef demonstrate his culinary style as he prepares a special brunch for tour members.

Not only are more husbands and wives traveling with their spouses to conventions and business meetings, but the kids are coming along, too.

For grown-ups with children, there are professional tot handlers, such as Sitters Unlimited, who arrive at the hotel room or on the convention floor with “nanny packs”--filled with crafts, crayons, activity books and small toys and balloons--in hand. B.J. Mosteller, franchise owner for Sitters Unlimited for Los Angeles and Orange counties, has been providing on-site baby-sitting services at conventions for five years.

“It’s a way for people to travel with their children,” said Mosteller, who entertains children as Bo Jingles the Clown.

“Our sitters can go to hotel rooms for individual families, and conventioneers can bring their children to a large assembly room where we’ll have arts and crafts, balloons, book reading and other activities,” she said.

Typically, she said, travelers will call before their arrival to arrange for one of the company’s nannies to sit for children aged 2 months to 12 years. The cost is usually $6 to $7 per hour in the family’s hotel room. Group care is $5 to $8, with the rates set by the convention. Some associations provide baby-sitting as a free service to their conventioneers.

Once an association booked Mosteller’s firm to handle 140 children whose parents were attending a convention at a Anaheim hotel.

“I knew I needed more than 20 sitters to keep the ratio of sitters to kids down. The hotel put us into a small room and 180 children showed up,” she said.

“Let me tell you, Bo Jingles the Clown was exhausted. By the time I got out, I told myself I never wanted to see another kid ever again,” Mosteller said.