Our Disneyland Experience: The Planning Stage – Tickets
Yesterday, I shared our thoughts behind our Disneyland budget, so let’s break that down.
We’ll start with Tickets: We chose 5-day park hopper passes for 2 adults ($290 each) and 2 children under 10 ($270 each) = $1120 (plus a $5 shipping and handling charge)
I think there are some discounts out there, especially if you live in Southern California, but if you live outside California, just save your inner nerd a little stress and pay what is listed on the website. I looked and looked, and the only way I would save a little bit of money was to have my California resident cousin purchase tickets using a special savings club she belongs to, then I would pay her back. The ticket place she would go through would not take a debit card in my name, since I wasn’t part of the savings club. It was a major hassle for a savings of about $80, total. YES, that is a lot of money, but it was totally not a battle I was willing to fight.
Can you do the trip well for fewer than 5 days? Yes. In the middle of Day 3, while my children were fighting in line for the bajillionth time, I wondered why we didn’t just do 3-day Park Hopper passes. However, by the end of Day 5, I was seriously considering adding on a 6th day (which you can do if you purchase the upgrade before the end of your last day - and it’s pretty cheap, too).
My advice is to stay for as long as you can afford, but shoot for 5 days. In 5 days, we were able to ride every ride that was open and every show at BOTH parks except for Peter Pan’s Flight (which has insanely long lines for the entire day if you don’t catch it in the first 10 minutes of the day). We actually checked off the last of our list on the morning of Day 5. However, we also went on our favorite rides over and over and over and over.
Next, we’ll talk about trip timing!
Question time: How long was your Disneyland trip? Were you able to see and experience everything you wanted to experience? Would you have changed your trip length? Share in the comments so that everyone can learn from your experience!
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We went for 6 days. I really like being able to go back to the hotel to take a nap or go for a swim. I also like being able to take it slow and just relax.
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[...] I talk about ticket prices in my next post! Our Disneyland Experience: The Planning Stage: Tickets [...]
We did 5 days and it was great. We didn’t need to rush at all and could go on things over. We got our tickets a little cheaper, $218 for adults and around $180 for kids but we have 3 kids, that was in 2011.
All this talk is making me want to go back!!
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We could only afford 3-day Park Hopper passes, and even though our girls were 7 and 9 at the time, we were very glad by the end of Day 3 that we hadn’t purchased tickets for more days. Up here in Oregon, even in mid-September, we aren’t used to the humidity and sun quite as much. Three days was just the perfect length of time for our family.
I’ve mentioned this before in my comments, but with the RideMax software download that helped plan out our three days at the park, we were able to go on every single ride (except a few tiny child rides that didn’t interest us) all on the first day in each of the two sides of the park (all in one day in Disneyland; all in one day in California Adventure). In fact, we were able to do many of the rides more than one time, in the first day on each side of the park! I was very skeptical about the software working, but it did. We were able to select either a quicker pace around the park, or a slower pace. We chose a slightly quicker pace, because, well, we tend to walk a bit more quickly when out shopping, etc. than a lot of other people do, (NOT racewalking, though!), so we didn’t want to just leisurely walk around the park unless we chose to - and there were plenty of times that we had extra time to walk leisurely or just sit and take a break. It was slow enough that we didn’t work up a sweat (!), but we were able to get to everything in a reasonable time.
I truly believe that without the RideMax software download, we wouldn’t have been able to see everything even in 3 full days there! We saw so many people waiting in longer lines, but we only waited in line for a couple of rides. It was so nice! So, for our family, the three days was just perfect, even with Disneyland closing earlier at night than it does during the summer. Without RideMax, though, I think it would have been more disappointing, and we would have wished for more than 3 days!
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[...] Thanks for visiting!So far in this series, we’ve talked about our Disneyland budget, the number of days we chose to spend at the parks, and the timing of our Disneyland trip. Go read those posts and catch up! The California sunset [...]
[...] far in this series, we’ve talked about our Disneyland budget, the number of days we chose to spend at the parks, and the timing of our Disneyland trip. Go read those posts and catch [...]
[...] already filled you in on our Disneyland budget, our Park-Hopper ticket choice, our trip timing and our hotel choice, and our drive to Disneyland. Let’s get there, [...]