Disneyland in Southern California is named the Happiest Place on Earth, however the expertise is a complete lot happier for guests who come ready. Visiting a Disney theme park will be difficult, complicated and costly. With the correct technique, nevertheless, you’ll be able to dodge a variety of traces and spend lower than the common visitor.
After spending hundreds of hours within the two theme parks in Anaheim through the years, I’ve picked up fairly just a few Disneyland ideas and methods. Listed here are the important ideas you must know to get essentially the most on your cash, spend much less time in line and have a extra magical trip expertise in 2025 because the resort celebrates its seventieth anniversary.
Remember to make theme park reservations
When shopping for a theme park ticket straight from Disney’s web site, you may be prompted to make park reservations routinely. When you purchase from a third-party reseller like Get Away At present or Undercover Vacationer (which will be good to do, as it’s possible you’ll get monetary savings by buying multiday tickets this manner), you may want to finish the reservations step by yourself. It solely takes a minute or two to hyperlink a ticket and make the picks, however you may need to be sure to do not forget about this job till it is too late.
How far forward do you must plan? Fortunately, most dates at Disneyland are now not utterly booked up prematurely for normal ticket holders. That mentioned, in the event you plan on visiting throughout a busy time, just like the week between Christmas and New 12 months’s Day, you may need to be sure to reserve a minimum of just a few weeks prematurely to be protected.
Worth out single-day tickets, even if you’re visiting for a number of days
It is counterintuitive, but it surely’s a perform of Disneyland’s set value for multiday tickets and variable pricing for single-day tickets. There are seven totally different value tiers (Tier 0 to six) for single-day tickets. Two and even three of a few of the cheaper single-day tickets (Tier 0, Tier 1, and so forth.) can value lower than their multiday ticket equal.
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There isn’t a have to do the mathematics if you’re going throughout peak durations, reminiscent of a college vacation when single-day tickets are costly. Nonetheless, if you’re purposely visiting throughout a much less standard time when shorter traces are widespread, it’s possible you’ll be pleasantly stunned to search out it can save you cash, too.
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Simply remember that one-day tickets are rather less versatile than multiday tickets, because the cheaper ticket tiers can solely be used on sure days. When you resolve to reschedule a visit or go to on a distinct day of the week, the single-day tickets might not provide all the pliability you want.
Keep inside strolling distance — however not essentially on-property
In comparison with Disney World, Disneyland is exceptionally compact. The 2 theme parks, three Disney-owned resorts and Downtown Disney buying and leisure district are all inside strolling distance of one another. The proximity means you may get much more achieved even on a brief journey since you will not be spending as a lot time in transit.
Take full benefit of Disneyland’s smaller measurement by staying at a resort inside strolling distance. Whereas all three Disney-owned resorts (Disney’s Grand Californian Resort & Spa, Disneyland Resort and Pixar Place Resort) are inside strolling distance of each parks, a number of off-property resorts are simply as shut — and value quite a bit much less. You will not get all of the perks and Disney decor of an on-property keep, however you will not have to attend for shuttles or fear about parking.
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You may even use factors and miles for a number of of those properties to decrease the price of your trip. A minimum of one resort in each main resort loyalty program — together with Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, IHG One Rewards and several other others — is inside a 15-minute stroll of the theme parks.
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E-book character meals at strategic instances
Assembly characters is a well-liked Disneyland exercise, particularly for youths, however ready in lengthy traces to see them within the scorching solar might not be your concept of trip enjoyable. A greater method to get photographs with Mickey and his buddies is to schedule a personality meal. Disneyland has 4 eating places providing character eating experiences: three in two Disney resorts and one inside Disneyland Park.
Disneyland’s character eating is pricey, so that you should not pay for it whereas spending large bucks on theme park tickets. I discover it is way more economical to schedule a personality meal exterior the parks on the night of my arrival or the morning of my departure. That manner, my household will get a few of the Disney magic with out paying for an additional day of theme park tickets or reducing into our time on Disneyland’s finest rides.
When you should schedule a meal on a theme park day, do not schedule it for very first thing within the morning. The early hours are when you have to be within the parks benefiting from shorter journey traces. A greater choice is to ebook a late morning brunch or lunch and use the meal as a break after a number of hours of using points of interest. In any case that strolling, you may have earned your Mickey waffles.
Contemplate Park Hopper tickets, even in the event you skip them at Disney World
Company can go to each theme parks in a single day for a further cost. Disneyland’s Park Hopper ticket choice prices $65 to $105 extra for the size of the ticket, so many visitors will naturally forgo this feature to economize. Whereas it may be good to skip the Park Hopper ticket choice in some circumstances, that is not universally true.
The parks at Disneyland are steps away from each other, so it is very simple to hop between them (even a number of instances each day) in case your journey get together is cellular and motivated. You may usually devise a way more environment friendly touring plan and re-ride your favourite points of interest in the event you park hop. I discover I can usually get as a lot achieved in two days at Disneyland with a Park Hopper ticket (particularly when utilizing Disney’s cut-the-line service Lightning Lane Multi Cross) as I can in three days when restricted to at least one park per day.
Even in the event you skip park hopping at Walt Disney World due to the gap between the parks, rethink that technique at Disneyland.
Cell order to skip meals traces
The overwhelming majority of informal quick-service eating places at Disneyland now provide cellular ordering. As an alternative of standing in one other lengthy line, you’ll be able to place your order on the Disneyland app and decide it up throughout a 15-minute window at your chosen time.
Cell order time slots ebook up, particularly at peak meal instances for the preferred eating places. To pick a pickup window that works together with your schedule, place your order an hour or so earlier than the lunch or dinner rush. It is simple to do that whereas standing in line for a journey. When you run late or early, you’ll be able to modify your pickup window within the Disneyland app to a different obtainable time with just some clicks.
Use MouseDining to snag hard-to-get eating reservations
Different visitors cancel reservations on a regular basis, and typically Disney opens up extra availability, so it’s doable to get a desk even in the event you miss the unique reserving window. Higher but, a third-party service referred to as MouseDining will run searches to search out that new availability for you. MouseDining has a free model that sends e-mail alerts and a paid model that sends textual content alerts. I’ve used MouseDining to snag a minimum of a dozen hard-to-get reservations within the final couple of years.
Sip and savor at California Journey’s meals festivals
Disney hosts a number of meals festivals yearly in Disney California Journey Park, together with Lunar New 12 months in January and February, the Disneyland Meals & Wine Competition in spring and the Disney Competition of Holidays each winter vacation season. Many visitors get pleasure from making a meal or two from the distinctive meals pageant choices.
At many of those festivals, Disney presents a Sip & Savor cross. For a set value, visitors buy a cross that they’ll trade for six to eight menu gadgets on the pageant cubicles. These passes is usually a good manner for a household or group of associates to economize on meals whereas nonetheless sampling varied choices.
Simply make certain to do some math so you’re redeeming the cross for gadgets which might be worth relative to the cross value. Usually talking, you may usually come out a number of {dollars} forward on most entrees, however drinks and desserts usually are not all the time price it.
Prepurchase Lightning Lane Multi Cross together with your park ticket
In order for you shorter traces for a lot of of Disneyland’s hottest rides, you may doubtless need to use Lightning Lane Multi Cross (previously referred to as Disney Genie+). With Lightning Lane Multi Cross, visitors make reservations to return to pick out high-demand points of interest by way of specific queues referred to as Lightning Lanes. This further is definitely not important, particularly in the event you plan to go to throughout quieter instances or primarily to journey points of interest that do not have Lightning Lanes.
For visitors who do plan to make use of Lightning Lane Multi Cross day by day of a visit, nevertheless, it’s higher to prepurchase park tickets that embrace it. In any other case, the one manner to purchase it’s to attend till you enter a theme park every day of your journey. Disneyland fees $32 per particular person, per day in the event you purchase Lightning Lane Multi Cross on the time of ticketing. When you wait, the worth is variable and has been as excessive as $39 in late 2024 and early 2025.
Prepurchasing Lightning Lane Multi Cross saves cash and avoids the effort of fumbling together with your cellphone every morning when you enter the park. That is when you have to be benefiting from quick journey traces as an alternative.
Modify (do not cancel) Lightning Lane bookings
When you plan to buy Lightning Lane Multi Cross, positively take the time to learn to use it to get most worth.
Company could make a Lightning Lane Multi Cross reservation a minimum of each two hours, typically sooner. One of many errors that many visitors make with the service is canceling a reservation when their plans change. While you cancel, the two-hour clock is reset, and also you lose time. Meaning you may ebook and journey fewer points of interest over the course of the day.
As an alternative of canceling, you must modify your Lightning Lane reservations. Modifying would not reset the eligibility clock. You may modify for a distinct time on the identical journey or for an additional journey completely, so long as the journey is inside the identical park.
Make Lightning Lane reservations for standard points of interest early — however not too early
All rides usually are not created equal in terms of Lightning Lanes at Disneyland. Some points of interest are way more standard than others. The return home windows for these points of interest will shortly get pushed out a lot later within the day, and people rides will run out of Lightning Lane reservation slots first. Company utilizing the service strategically ought to ebook these in-demand points of interest earlier than that occurs.
What do you have to ebook first? Disneyland Park’s hottest Lightning Lane Multi Cross points of interest are Indiana Jones Journey, House Mountain, Haunted Mansion Vacation (when supplied within the fall and winter) and the most recent attraction Tiana’s Bayou Journey. In Disney California Journey Park, Toy Story Halfway Mania and Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout! are likely to go extra shortly. You may need to make certain these points of interest are your first or second picks earlier than the early return instances are gone.
Though you need to ebook these points of interest on the early aspect, you additionally should not redeem them too early. The parks have quick standby traces very first thing within the morning, so it is a waste of a Lightning Lane reservation to redeem it 5 minutes after the park opens. Use quick standby traces whilst you can (for points of interest that do not provide Lightning Lane and for points of interest that you could be need to journey greater than as soon as in a single day). Then, use Lightning Lanes an hour or two into the day as queues get longer.
Make park reservations with the early entry schedule in thoughts
At Disneyland, visitors of the three on-property Disney resorts are entitled to early entry half-hour earlier than different visitors every day. Not like Walt Disney World, early entry is barely supplied in a single park each day. Disneyland Park opens early on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; Disney California Journey Park presents early entry on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The staggered schedule has some essential technique concerns. If you’re an on-property resort visitor, you’ll positively need to use early entry each day, if doable, to reap the benefits of shorter journey traces within the morning. Meaning you must plan to make park reservations for the park that has early entry every day.
If you do not have early entry privileges, you must usually do the alternative. Make your reservations for the park that is not providing early entry. All visitors in that park will probably be on an equal taking part in area at rope drop when the park opens; nobody could have had a head begin or be filling the queues. When you can get up early sufficient to be in entrance of these crowds, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of quick journey traces with out paying the large bucks for an on-property resort.
Do not rope drop Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance
Much more than 5 years after its opening, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance stays the preferred journey in Disneyland Park. Many visitors who have not skilled it but (and plenty of who’ve) need to get aboard the attraction with no lengthy line. Extra importantly, most need to accomplish that with out paying the additional $20 to $28 to journey it by way of Lightning Lane (Rise of the Resistance is not included in Lightning Lane Multi Cross and as an alternative requires the acquisition of a separate a la carte Lightning Lane Single Cross to skip the road). The journey is not open throughout early entry, so a well-liked technique is to make a beeline for it at rope drop.
Whereas discovering a shorter wait very first thing within the morning is feasible, rope dropping Rise of the Resistance is not essentially the neatest general touring technique. The attraction is within the very again nook of Disneyland Park, so strolling there takes time. Slower-moving visitors do not stand an opportunity.
Even the speedy pay a value. The journey itself has a number of preshows and is kind of lengthy. Even in the event you enter the queue shortly, you will not be achieved till a minimum of 30 to 60 minutes after the park has opened. By that point, a number of different points of interest could have lengthy standby queues.
What are higher Disneyland rope drop methods? For households with youthful youngsters or anybody into Disney nostalgia, head to Fantasyland. It is completely doable to journey 5 or extra basic darkish rides there within the first hour of the park opening with minimal traces. One other good technique is to start out with House Mountain and run by way of just a few Tomorrowland points of interest earlier than the traces get lengthy.
Take residence a reasonable Disneyland memento
Souvenirs within the many Disney shops that line Predominant Avenue, U.S.A. or Downtown Disney can set you again a whole bunch of {dollars}. Nonetheless, there are just a few invaluable souvenirs, a few of that are enjoyable throwbacks to Disneyland’s quirky and distinctive historical past.
One in every of my favorites is an old style silhouette. A couple of very gifted Disney artists minimize a side-view portrait of you or your baby in minutes of their small studio on Predominant Avenue, U.S.A. The portrait prices simply $11.99, and fundamental frames usually are not way more costly. My household has loved accumulating these silhouettes of our children at varied ages and phases at Disneyland through the years. We have even gotten just a few of them made in different Disney parks world wide.
One other inexpensive memento is Disneyland’s pressed pennies. For $1, you may get a coin with a favourite character or scene pressed onto it. A number of youngsters have enjoyable accumulating them in a reasonable portfolio you will discover in one of many reward retailers. Many different vacationer points of interest and journey locations even have machines, so pressed pennies will be a reasonable memento past the theme parks.
In order for you a quirkier memento with an expertise connected to it, go to one in all Disneyland’s fortune-telling machines. For only a quarter or two, an audio-animatronic character will provide you with a fortune card. Look out for Esmeralda (within the Penny Arcade on Predominant Avenue, U.S.A.), Fortune Crimson (close to the exit of Pirates of the Caribbean) or Shrunken Ned (within the Bengal Barbecue seating space throughout from the Jungle Cruise).
Preserve a watch out for roaming characters
One of many issues Disneyland does finest (and extra usually than Walt Disney World) is spontaneous character interactions. In fact, Disneyland has the standard designated meet-and-greet spots the place visitors queue for photographs and autographs, but it surely’s additionally common to search out characters roaming across the parks in sudden and unscripted locations. Often, these interactions can result in some actually magical moments and interactions.
In Disneyland Park, you may discover essentially the most spontaneous character exercise in Fantasyland, in addition to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Plus, Avengers Campus in Disney California Journey Park is especially stuffed with probabilities to have a extra improv-style interplay with a personality.
Pack for variable climate
Fortunately, the climate in Southern California is normally fairly nice, particularly in comparison with the oppressive warmth widespread at Disney World in Orlando. Due to the great local weather, many extra of Disneyland’s points of interest are partially or absolutely outside. Meaning you have to be ready for the weather when the forecast would not absolutely cooperate.
Rain is fairly unusual, a minimum of for hours at a time, however packing a poncho is rarely a nasty concept. If you wish to reduce your likelihood of a wet day at Disneyland, keep away from January and February. Equally, warmth waves usually are not that widespread, however they do occur just a few instances a yr. The most well liked months to go to are normally August and September.
You might want to be ready for varied climates and situations everytime you go. Disneyland usually has actually lengthy park hours, and in the event you plan to go from early entry on the break of day to park shut at midnight or later, you may expertise 20- to 30-degree temperature swings over the course of the day. Layering is important. Even on extremely popular days after I’m in a T-shirt and shorts, I am usually beginning the morning and ending the night sporting a hoodie.
Make use of single-rider traces and the Buddy Cross
When you aren’t rope dropping or paying for Lightning Lanes, there are nonetheless just a few different methods of the commerce to search out shorter traces at Disneyland. One in every of my favorites is the single-rider line, the place Disneyland forged members use a particular queue (normally shorter than the common standby queue) to fill empty single seats. You should utilize the road so long as your get together is snug with separating and your youngsters are sufficiently old to journey alone (age 7 and up).
Single-rider traces are typically most helpful midmorning. In afternoons and evenings (particularly on weekends), locals with annual passes go to the parks in better numbers, and plenty of of them are smart to this trick. The rides that provide single-rider traces can change, however the service is repeatedly obtainable at many in-demand thrill rides like Radiator Springs Racers, House Mountain, Matterhorn and Incredicoaster.
One shut cousin of the single-rider system is the Buddy Cross, the place small teams are used to fill an empty row on a bigger journey automobile. This has historically been obtainable at Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue. A model of it, referred to as the Roo Cross, is typically used for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The Buddy Cross is much less dependable than single-rider traces however can typically show you how to shortcut one other journey in your Disneyland day.
Backside line
The proper preparation can positively show you how to save each money and time on a Disneyland theme park trip. With these touring and reserving ideas, you are effectively in your method to being a Disneyland knowledgeable.
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