We had 3 days at Disneyland Jan 13-15, 225 with two kids ages 8 and 10. We rode 55 rides in three days with a single park a day and lightning lane. We say over a dozen characters and ate once a day at the park,
Tickets
🎟️ ⬇️
We had originally booked a good neighbour package and then cancelled due to the fires. We ended up rebooking and still going but staying at a closer hotel.
We had trouble rebooking and spent hours on the phone with Disney. They were helpful but just painful their system gives Canadians postal codes an issue and box numbers for payment.
Because of that we had a few issues at check in each morning as we had reservation dr codes and tickets
Security
☺️⬇️
We checked in to the park each day from the east side gate (Toy Story drop off) and stayed at the Hyatt house hotel 3 blocks south.
We never had to wait more than 3 minutes to go through security. It was definitely slow season. We went for rope drop daily and stayed until 12-1 pm then went back between 6-7 pm
The only issue we had was they took my
Selfie stick the very last day I didn’t even remember I had in there the whole time we went through. You can take coffee and water and snacks into Disney. We did as we went straight 2 hours of rides from 8-10 am without any breaks to maximize the short lines
Food
🍱 ⬇️
We loved the churros, the pretzels were not hot and fresh, we ate at horseshoe and it was ok, we did Mobile pick up snacks into toontown and they were good but 5 mini donuts was$6, we ate in cars land at flos diner and that was the best meal of the time in Disney.
Downtown Disney we ate at the bowling alley and that was really good and reasonable price (shared a pizza and burger) and then we ate offsite at Tony romas (ok) and Cheesecake Factory (great) We picked up some snacks at cvs and 7-11 and target.
lightning Lane
🔥⬇️
We maximized this. We watched a YouTube video on it (just search lighting lane Disneyland and the first guy comes up is Parks guys) and we used his tips. We booked all the rides that broke down and got magical select experience tickets that came in handy later at night when the lines were long and we wanted to ride rides again.
Disneyland
❤️⬇️
We did two days here. Monday and Wednesday. First day we did 16 rides and saw 5 characters.
We did rope drop Monday and went straight to Tomorrowland. Star tours was broken so we got a pass for that walked on astroblasters, then walked on space mountain. We did autopia, no, and bobsleds all before 10
Am. Then we headed over to galaxy and did that area before taking a break until evening. We felt by 1 pm We were hungry, tired and our feet were getting tired (18,000 steps by 1pm!) so we we r back each day until after dinner.
If you don’t do the show at 930 you can walk on rise resistance. We were too tired but used LL for Indiana snd big mountain and a few other rides again.
One tip is to watch those select multi pass tickets from broken rides. If you break down mid ride get a new pass as they are good for almost all but rise resistance. . If you pre book a LL and the ride goes down while you’re waiting you get a select pass which wasn’t good for all. Like Roger rabbit broke down a lot but the select ticket wasn’t good for space mountain or materhorn or Indiana jones.
Indiana jones and space mountain have no LL left by 6 pm I found so make sure to book those earlier.
California Adventure
⬇️😍
We did rope drop daily and had a game plan and quickly pivoted when everyone went to cars in California we decided to do Pixar pier and rode 10 rides in 2 hours.
We ended up doing single passenger to get on cars within 15 minutes at night and then didn’t again when the line was only 20
Minutes. We enjoy webslingers a lot and the girls love goofy flight school (rode it 5 times!) and soarin and symphony swings. My youngest wanted to do incredible as - I screamed the whole time but I survived. The things we do for our kids
We never did guardians of galaxy as we all agreed that wasn’t out jam. Mater was so fun we did twice and of course Ariel is classic and the Ferris wheel, inside out was down for refurbishment.