Our first trip as a family was three years ago. Our son was four and our (now middle) daughter had just turned two (our youngest wasn’t yet part of the picture). Both of us had been to Disneyland as kids, but this was our first trip with our family, and we weren’t quite sure what to expect. Also, California Adventure didn’t exist when we’d gone as children. We engaged a travel agent for advice (more on that later) and planned our first five day trip to Disneyland and Disneyland’s California Adventure (throughout this blog we’ll refer to them as DL and DCA, respectively). We stayed one night at a neighboring hotel, then three nights at the Grand Californian, bought Park Hopper passes for each day, and took our travel agent’s advice on the must-do dining experiences. We then spent the next few days guessing, making mistakes, and learning hard lessons in an environment where the learning curve is sharp and the penalty for not being in the know is 90 minute wait times or missing rides altogether.
If we had an opportunity to go back and do it all over again, these are the things we wish we knew going in to that first Disneyland Trip.
Do your research. The good news is you’re here, so you’ve already started on this step. Keep digging. The first day, we had an Extra Morning Magic Hour (EMMH) in Disneyland, were within the first 25 people in the park, and didn’t have any idea what lands were open or what rides were popular. So you know what our very first ride in Disneyland was? The Finding Nemo Submarine Adventure (and it took a lot of willpower just now not to type a curse word in the middle of that ride’s name). If you asked us today what the top five rides to skip at Disneyland would be you’d hear from both of us that somewhere within that top five would be…the Finding Nemo Submarine Adventure. We didn’t go there because we heard it was amazing. We didn’t ride the submarine because we talked about the options with our family and thought it would be a fun family experience. We went to that ride because we didn’t do our research and didn’t have a better plan, and we made a choice based on a guess from looking at the DL map for the first time while walking through the turnstiles that morning. The result was that we wasted 20-30 minutes of the most valuable time you’ll ever have in DL, which is that one hour that is the EMMH. If we would have done our research, we would have known that within 10 minutes of the first passenger’s entry onto Peter Pan’s Flight, the wait time for that ride hits 60 minutes and we probably wouldn’t have chosen to bypass that ride on our first day. We were lucky enough to be able to do it again two days later and make smarter choices, but if that would have been our only EMMH in Disneyland, that mistake would have cost us a lot of time. Some of the iconic rides are very short and waiting for 60-75 minutes for a really short ride can be disheartening. Now when people ask us about what to do in DL, we give them a roadmap of what we would do in exact order for the first hour of your day (more on that later), because not following that plan will cost you precious minutes and hours standing in lines unnecessarily.
Consider your costs, both in dollars and in minutes. Speaking of the cost of time, the price of a trip is a big factor and even concern when it comes to thinking about Disneyland. Most people are traveling from out of town to get there, so, like us, you’re factoring in airfare, hotel accommodations, cost of dining, and souvenirs. That’s all added to the ever-increasing park ticket prices, which, as of the date of this post, were near $200 for a one-day park hopper ticket in high season. The bottom line is that you’re spending a significant amount of money on this relatively short trip, so we encourage you to remember that when making your decisions during your trip. If you think about how much money you’re spending per hour, or per minute, you might come up with a different value of your time. Let’s say a reasonable estimate for a three day trip for a family of four is that the price for your trip is somewhere between $1,500 and $2,000 dollars PER DAY (airfare, hotel, tickets, food and souvenirs included). For an average park day of 10-12 hours, the cost of your time in DL or DCA is anywhere from $125-$200 per hour. That’s an incredible figure to start off with, so we understand why people are looking to cut costs and avoid additional expenses. But if you shift your thinking about each “cost-cutting” decision as a potential “time-wasting” decision, and realizing how much your time costs (again $125-$200 per hour), it may be time to start thinking of time-saving choices as also being cost-savings decisions. The difference between a 15 minute fast-pass queue and a 120 minute stand-by queue for Radiator Springs Racers all of the sudden becomes a $350 difference – so what decisions can you make to get that Fast Pass? Walking on to Peter Pan’s flight during an EMMH vs. waiting 90 minutes an hour later is a $300 difference. We’re not telling you to spend more money for convenience, but you might consider making some of your spending choices based on saving time in a place where you paid a significant premium for that time. When you’re choosing to pay the extra $15/day for Max-Pass (see this post for general benefits of Max Pass), consider the time-savings. When you’re wondering if you should stay in a neighboring hotel or an on-property hotel**, consider the free time you gain and the time you save during the EMMH. This doesn’t mean you need to stay Club-level at the Grand Californian and break the bank – you can stay in a much more reasonably priced room at the Paradise Pier and get the exact same EMMH benefit. When you’re looking at the high price of after-hours, limited capacity parties, consider the ability to walk on to rides during those events and the price of the time you would otherwise pay standing in line for the same rides. When you’re choosing your princess makeover tier, consider that some of those tiers come with front of the line meet and greets to 3-4 main Disney princesses (otherwise up to an hour wait), so maybe the extra $75 for the upper tier gets you not only a fancier dress but saves you more than you spent in time/dollars saved.
Talk to your travel party and come up with collective priorities. No matter how long your trip, no matter how efficient you are, the one thing we can promise you is that you will not get to do/see/experience everything in your trip to DL and DCA Maybe you’ll try – but you won’t succeed. And if you’re too hung up on doing everything, you may miss things for the sake of seeing things that you never wanted to see in the first place, or you won’t go back to that ride that you absolutely loved because you have to get to the next ride instead. Between the rides, shows, experiences, restaurants, and characters, your time runs out before you know it. We advise you to really think about what your priorities are when you’re going to Disneyland. If your top priority is to experience the latest rides and experiences, but you don’t care about the classic Disneyland experience, don’t waste your time in Fantasyland or waiting in lines for characters. If you want to experience the shows, rides AND characters in a short time, think about the character dining experiences and/or entertainment dining packages. Compare a character dining experience where 4-6 characters come to your table while you’re eating to waiting in a line for an hour just to meet a single character (see this post for more on the benefits of character dining). Or choose a dining experience that comes with preferred seating to a show like Fantasmic or to a parade so you can continue to hop between rides instead of arriving at the show an hour or more beforehand to stake out a spot for viewing. The bottom line is that there are so many choices of ways to spend your time, so if you have an idea about how your family really wants to spend that time you can lose some of the stress of trying to do everything.
Be an Early Bird (or a Night Owl if you can’t be an early bird). When we first put this post to paper the title of this section was “Don’t Sleep In”, but we understand that there are two schools of thought on this one. The idea here is to avoid having your entire day at DL or DCA be experienced during the middle of the day rush/crowds/lines/heat. You certainly can do the late at night routine. After the fireworks end on an October Tuesday night you can absolutely hit the second rope drop (more on that later) fly through Fantasyland or cycle through Jungle Cruise/Pirates/Haunted Mansion/Splash Mountain/Thunder Mountain without waiting in any significant line. One day the two of us are going to do exactly that, but for today the reality is we have three kids with bedtimes that are normally no later than 7 pm Pacific Time, so even making it to the fireworks can be a challenge. We’re on the other end of the spectrum and will rope-drop every day we’re at the parks to get through the popular rides before the crowds and lines become overbearing, at which point we are going from one fast pass ride to the next and we don’t see a line longer than 20 minutes for our entire day. The Fast Passes are the other significant advantage the early bird has over the night owl. When we enter the park as the first set of guests we are already starting our fast-pass routine, and by noon we have not only walked on to many of the high demand rides as rope-droppers, we’ve also ridden a handful of fast past rides and secured fast passes for others throughout the afternoon. When the night-owl arrives at noon or 2 pm, many of the high demand fast passes are gone for the day. It’s not uncommon for the Radiator Springs Racers fast passes for the entire day to be gone by 11 am (and that line really doesn’t subside late at night either). When we say be an early bird, we mean it too. We always stay at on property so we’re already getting in the park an hour before the majority of the crowd, beyond that, we are in line 45 minutes to an hour before the gates open for the EMMH open, so we are always within the first 20 families in the park. Once we’re in we move fast to our high priority rides while at the same time getting our first fast passes for the day (so when the general public is entering the park for their first ride of the day in a stand-by line we are going back to that same ride through the fast pass line). We go hard in the park for 1-3 hours and have really experienced everything we want to do before noon, but if we would have slept in an hour, that same experience would have taken us twice as long. Even if you’re not staying on property, still be the early bird, but consider going to the opposite park of the EMMH. If the EMMH is at DL on a Tuesday morning you are there, get in the DCA line an hour early and be the first person in that park to get to Radiator Springs Racers before anyone else, and enjoy the less crowded park that morning while all of the on-property guests are at the EMMH park.
Have a plan, but plan to change it. Above we’ve told you to do your research to know what roadmap to follow to get to the places you want to see, and we tell you to make a priority list with your family so you can try to get to the highest priorities and not be too bothered when you miss the low priorities. But probably just as important as having a plan, is having the ability to adjust that plan at any moment. We ALWAYS recommend remaining flexible for your plans, because there is no faster way to ruin a trip than to have an inflexible plan that doesn’t go just right. So instead of a “rigid plan”, start with a priority list and for any plan or roadmap, consider contingency plans that allow the list to change if a ride is closed, if the weather causes adjustments in preferences (Splash Mountain isn’t nearly as much fun at 65 degrees as it is at 85), or if you fall in love with a ride and would rather ride it three more times during your trip than try out a different ride that is near the bottom of your list. We have friends who want to come up with the exact, step-by-step agenda for their day in Disneyland and ask our advice. We give the advice and help them come up with a plan – attempting to perfectly plan out the timing and logistics of a day in Disneyland is always a fun mental exercise – but at the same time we always tell them that we never rigidly follow the advice that we are giving. While we start with the plan we almost always alter it within the first hour. A ride will be closed, we’ll get an unexpected universal fast pass (more on that later), or a child will need to go potty and the lines will catch up to us sooner than expected. So instead of the rigid plan, we have the start of the plan, a general outline of our priorities, and then let the day unfold based on the circumstances presented. And we usually live by one rule that guides us in our adjustments – we try to avoid any line greater than 20 minutes, and never stand in line for more than 30 minutes.
Learn (and USE) the technology available to you. The Disneyland App and the technology around the parks is so much more sophisticated than when we first went to the parks just three years ago that every trip gets a little easier than the last. Before you get anywhere near the parks we recommend you spend a decent amount of time mastering the ins and outs of the Disneyland App. Put your app in a convenient/easily accessible location on your phone during your trip. Know how to load your park tickets and pull them up at a moment’s notice for park entry, fast passes and rider exchange passes (more on that later). Understand how to send a fast pass from one phone to another in case your party splits up for a ride or two. Check the wait times (and ride closure status) around the park whenever you’re in line or getting off a ride. Use Max Pass to get new fast passes EVERY 90 minutes. Order quick-service food from the app so you’re not waiting in lines at Bengal BBQ, Corndog Castle, Stage Door Café, or the more than 30 other participating restaurants. It all goes back to the time vs. money question. Anytime you can save time you’re getting a better value out of your trip, and the technology that Disneyland continues to install and implement allow you to spend less time waiting, and more time experiencing the Magic and moving down your priority list.
We hope you enjoy your first trip to Disneyland!
**If you buy a ticket package of three days or more, you get one EMMH pass, so this is an option of you stay off property.
Disney Mom and Dad 
One thought on “Your family’s first trip to Disneyland ”