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Jennifer R. shares this report.
Full of Disneyland Tips | Best Western Plus Raffles
Our trip is finally finished and I can’t thank Disneyland with Kids enough for all of the help! This was our 4th trip to Disney as a family and I feel like it may have been our best yet! We’re a family of 3, 2 adults and a 6 year old.
We stayed at the Best Western Plus Raffles and really liked it. It was clean, mostly quiet and within walking distance of the park! They offer a free breakfast, so we grabbed coffee and made yogurt parfaits to eat on our walk to the park each day. It’s about a 12-15 minute walk to the park from the hotel, not terrible at all.
The hotel is also just up the street from the Toy Story lot, but we opted to skip this option for two main reasons, we had a stroller so having to fold it up to board the bus was a pain we didn’t want to deal with and the lines at the end of the night were so very long, walking was so much quicker than waiting in line for the bus.
Full of Disneyland Tips | Disney MaxPass
We did 3 day 1 Park per day tickets plus Disney MaxPass all 3 days and it was great for us. This was the 1st trip our daughter could do the big rides, so the MaxPass helped us do every ride a tleast once, some more than once. We took full advantage of the PhotoPass photographers and got some really awesome family photos from this trip!
We were in the park T/W/Th. We used our Magic Morning on our very 1st day, it was perfect. We were in the park by 7:02 and booked our 1st MaxPass, FANTASMIC, as soon as we walked in the gate. This show is definitely a must see! So magical! But FASTPASSES were gone out by 8am rope drop. So definitely try to do it on a Magic Morning.
We then booked our Haunted Mansion FASTPASS and walked on to Hyperspace Mountain. We did a lot of rides day 1, took a break for nap around 2 and came back to the park around 5.
It was very busy in the evening due to the Oogie Boogie Bash at DCA but we still got on a few more rides and enjoyed Fantasmic. Stick around after the show to see the Halloween Screams projection show on the water… so very cool too!
The ride times usually drop after the night shows end as lots of people start leaving! So it’s a great time to try to fit in a few extra rides. We hopped in line for Alice in wonderland at 10:58 and were off the ride by 11:05. It was a fun way to end the night!
Full of Disneyland Tips | Help for Crowded Days
Day 2, Wednesday, we did DCA and were in the park at 9am. We didn’t leave for nap that day and my 6yr old just napped in the stroller. We usually use this time as a day date for me and hubby, we grab a couple adult drinks and find a place to sit and people watch while she sleeps. It’s a nice little break in the day.
The app went down for about 3 hrs making the lines for everything crazy long and lots of cranky people. It was also a holiday for LA unified SD, so lots of people at the park. But we still had fun. Utilize the water fill sink at the child care station near Ghirardellis chocolate! So nice to easily fill your water bottles! Also we found that the ride lines on the pier and other kid rides calmed down quite a bit after sundown.
Many rides that had long 60+ minute waits during the day dropped to 10-15 minutes around 8pm. That’s when we did most the non-FASTPASS rides.
Full of Disneyland Tips | Our Best Advice
Day 3, Thursday, we were back in DL. This was our slowest moving morning we didn’t make it to the park til 10am. We did some character meet and greets and then hit up Fantasyland, doing all the rides there then stopping to watch the new Mickey and friends Band-tastic Cavalcade! Such a cute little parade!
No break again since we got such a late start and most of our fast passes were for the evening. Crowds were great, busy but not unbearable! We ended up going to Villains Dance party and I highly recommend it, my daughter absolutely loved it! And so did I! Our biggest tips from this trip:
- set your lock screen as your photo pass bar code, this made getting our photos done so quick and easy!
- ask for Magic Shots! They really are a cool perk to the PhotoPass!
- use the waterbottle fill stations in the park! We never once paid for water this trip!
- set an alarm on your phone for your next Disney MaxPass availability. This helped us book as soon as we could.
- mobile order your food. It’s so nice and quick. We didn’t wait more than 5 minutes after ordering for our food.
- we utilized the hot tub at our hotel after the park to help relax our tired muscles and feet. It definitely made getting moving the next day easier.
I’m sure there is tons I’m forgetting, But most of all, have fun. We’re very go with the flow and didn’t have a lot of plans before entering the park. We just got in there and kind of winged it all 3 days. This works well for us. But I know for others they prefer having a laid out plan.
