travel: San Diego Bay parking?

How and where to park for the BAy area in San Diego? They have converted the sixty acre parking lot to a sixty acre PARK and there is nowhere to park to go to the park, let alone anywhere to park to go to the businesses you USED to go to when you could park where it used to be a parking lot but now it's a park. There IS one underground parking deck which is ten dollars for three hours. But, even if you were willing to pay twenty dollars for six hours, you HAVE to come back and get your car in THREE hours, as there's a three-hour limit. Now, if you want to park, walk to a place to watch a movie, and then walk to a place to eat dinner, you are already over three hours... so that u/g parking is useless to you, unless you are willing to pay for your movie and dinner and then pay to get your towed car out of hock to round off your evening. So my QUESTION: Where to park down there, and also WHY San diego doing thios to its tourists?