Advice for going to disneyland

[pam]

My advise..don't get caught up with too much planning and scheduling. Just go and have fun. Be flexible.

[nic01002]

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

Edited April 2, 2009 by nic01002
further explanation

[tubaloth]

Just wanted to update a little about the trip I had last week.

First off! Great time! Couldn’t have asked for better weather.

To recap. My Sister and her family were going to Disneyland. Because I didn’t want to spend as much as they where I went for just part of it. This ended up leaving me one day by myself. At first I was kind of worried about that (some single guy in Disneyland) but after there for a day it wasn’t a problem.

So First day was going to be California Adventure. But because this doesn’t open until 10am (which is kind of strange). We went over to Disneyland at 9am. The main reason was to get on the Finding Nemo Ride. Even being on main street when the park opened, still left about 10-15min wait for the Nemo ride. Which is not bad at all!

Then over the CA Adv. We tried to follow the Ride max, not really for what times they had, but for what order they had the rides in. And I would have to agree with that. We went on the Grizzly River Run. The wait time was maybe 5 mins. This was around 10:40 in the morning, and I knew we would get wet. The first time it was my brother-in-law and two kids. They took about 3-4 mins just to measure the one kid which pretty much is exactly 40”.

Even an hour later the wait for this line was 35 mins easily (right when it starts to get hoter).

Next ride with Ridemax was Monsters Inc. By now we were 45 mins behind the schedual, but getting the Monsters was maybe a 15 mins wait. (5 mins longer then what ride max said, but we were behind).

The only reason I really bring this is, is Monsters Inc ride is kind of on the other side of the park. There are some shows the kids might want to see. But this is the only ride that kids would want to do (Tower of Terror is down the block). If I didn’t have ride max I don’t know when we would have went to this ride, because there really wasn’t a reason to go to this area of the park.

Let me jump to Tues, which is my day by myself. A day to kind of prove ridemax to the max! I knew going into it I had two problems.

First I had already gone on a couple of the rides that I had on my list.

Second this was my early day, so I got in the park at 8am! Which I don't think I had on my ride max ride. But I think can be set up.

I get into the park and do Buzz Light year ride. There was no line so I did it again! (twice straight right on through). (also I found a buzz light game online)

I then I wanted to go over to Indian Jones, but that section of the park is closed off. So I went on Space Mountain (the stranged ride in the world, I can see when that came out it was probably kind of cool, but to me it was kind of dated).

After winding around Space Mountain. It was 10min to 9. when they were going to open up the section with Indian Jones. So I waited it out, and realized the crowd was all headed for one ride! So once I opened. I just decided to do the fast pass. Which much to my surprise was only 45 mins later.

So then I went on Jungle Cruse (walked right on). Did Pirates of the Caribbean (maybe a 2 mins wait). Then went over to Hunted Mansion, which I didn’t even have on my list to ride (didn’t really know what it was about).

Then my Fastpast window had opened so I was either going to get a new fast pass for Splash Mountain (which I knew had a single rider) or Thunder Mountain Railroad. I decided for the Railroad, but when I walked there it was closing down.

So I did the Indian Jones ride with fast pass.

In the end, I had more then half of my day was done It was only like 11:30.

I did have some problems because I was going to go on Splash mountain single rider, but that line was “broken.” So I ended waiting half an hour so I get my fast pass window open.

Edited April 9, 2009 by tubaloth

[tubaloth]

Summary!

Ridemax is good if you don't know anything about Disneyland! Even as many websites as I went to. Not until I got there with a map in hand with ridemax did I feel like I was getting my moneys worth. But the power of ride max is limited. With kids you aren’t going to be able to follow the list to a second. But having a plan of which fast passes to get, and which lines to get into was a big help. Being the first time, I didn’t know what had fast pass or which times to ride rides. Now that I have been I don’t feel I need as much help, but I’ll probably still consider paying the $15 for 3 months. If I had a laptop with me, then maybe we could have used it more last minute.

I'm in the process of doing what I should have done in the first place (read my first post I think). Putting all the rides in some spreadsheet. The biggest problem I had with the Disneyland maps is finding which ride in which area had Fast pass/single rider and so forth.

Having them all in a spread sheet, for easy reference should be enough if and when I ever go to disneyland again.

Next, use Fast pass! Pretty much always know which ride you are going to have with fast pass. Not only is Fast Pass faster then the normal ride. They give you first dibs pretty much. Tower of Terror (great ride) you see fast pass people going through 3 times faster then the normal line. Same thing with Indian Jones, which was kind of funny because some lady who was next in line saw us go by in the fast pass line, and asked the person working there “when are we going to be able to go through”.

If you always have some runner getting Fast Passes the park is 10 times better! The rides are 10 times better because for a 3 mins ride you only waited 2 mins.

Next, know which rides get the longest the quickest. There are some rides that don't have fast pass, its better to wait your 30mins in this line, instead of a fast pass line. (i.e. Small world, Peter Pan)

Also realize you can use a Fast Pass for a kid, that probably can't ride the ride. What I mean is we got a Fast passes for one of my sisters kids who wasn't tall enough to ride the ride! What this did, is while my sister was watching the kid, we went on the ride with the older kid. Then when we got done, me and my sister used her fast pass and the kids! Meaning Just because the kid can't get on the ride, doesn't stop you from getting an extra fast pass!

Along that line, most rides that have fast pass also has some parent swap. You ask for it, and the person there gives you a little ticket to get back on. What was nice about this is this ticket allows you to take one kid on also (so its like two fast pass). Using the other adults fast pass that didn’t get on, we now had three tickets and it allowed for the kids to go on the ride twice in a row. We did this on Rapids, Splash Mountain, and Soaring over California.

Last that I can think of! Use your early morning time best you can! Except for a couple of rides most lines in the morning are not to bad! If you plan correctly and get your fast pass and then get in some of the more popular rides early you can get more done! By even 12:30 you were lucky to find much of a "short" line anymore.

Now last, I do suggest going to the Fireworks. If that means take the kids back to the hotel for a nap earlier, then do it. I watched the fireworks from the hotel the first 2 days, and its was nice, but when I watched the fireworks in the park! It made 10 times more sense what was going on! And was 10 times cooler! For me being the last night there it was cool because I got all the ride references. But if I would have saw it the first night, then seeing the fireworks from the hotel would have made more sense.

[pam]

Sounds like you had a fun time. I LOVE Disneyland.

[wonderingme]

You make me want to go again! I'm glad you had such a fun time.