This may be a little late sicne you might have already gone, but you can bring food into the park and eat there too. They will usually only get upset if you sit down in the eating areas and take up a table. We usually just bring water, fruit snacks, granola bars, singe serve applesauce, and other snack items. Even when you go through the security area and the search your bags they do not say anything. Also I would not buy ride-max but just sit down and decided what rides everyone wants to go on and then make a plan. Your right that a lot of time can be wasted sitting around wondering where to go next. I always feel sorry for the people who are standing just inside the park when the park opens looking at the map trying to decide what to go on first while everyone is rushing past them to get on the rides. If you have kids the rides in fantasy land tend to get long lines the fastest because they were not built to handle large amounts of people. We always go on Dumbo and Peter Pan first because they get really long really fast. After that start hitting the more adult rides. Check out my disneyland blog for any other tips or advice and feel free to ask me any questions, I love talking Disneyland. Click on the link to see my blog. Disneyland Advice
