Its been a loooong time since Ive been to Disneyland and my first at CA Adventure. Here are my thoughts:
WHY WOULD YOU NOT PAY FOR GENIE +??!!! Its $20 extra a person per day. It is what replaced the fast pass. NOW you use “lightening lanes” and while we waited TOPS 15 minutes for rides with lightening lanes, others spent at least an hour. WHY would you spend your entire day in lines?! The kid rides don’t offer lightening lanes so we hit those first and first thing in the morning. Those lines were a little longer but definitely shorter in the morning. I figured at this point we’ve already spent a bajillion dollars what’s an extra $60 at this point? WELLLLLL worth it in my opinion.
Some people do park hopper, if you are going for just one day then yes. BUT if you are going two days, Id split it in Disneyland first and CA Adventure the following day. CA A is a lot smaller and way chiller. We were done by 6pm but it was ok cause Nilly was SUPER tired from Disney the day before. The rides are more fun for adults at CA Adventure too. PLUS, we fully expected to walk 30,000 steps each day but we walked half that and Im guessing its because we didnt walk back and forth through the parks, we just stuck with one. I also think it was a lot easier to do that when we would randomly find characters around the park and end up waiting in lines forrrrrever to see them. If we would have been on some sort of schedule that would have sucked.
USE a Disney planner! They are free and SO AWESOME! We went through “Christal Murphy with M and M Magical Adventures” I did not think the Disney app was user friendly at all so to have her book everything, set it up, explain all the reservations needed plus tickets/how to use lightening lanes/check in etc, it was totally worth it! I had no idea this service existed so it’s a must use if you are new to Disney or just have questions or haven’t been in awhile. She literally did EVERYTHING for me. It was great!
One of the main advice I got was bring a water bottle but sometimes the line for the water refill was longer than the rides and a super huge pain to carry around. We DID buy a lot of water but also it wasn’t super hot which brings me to my next point. Go end of April beginning of May if you want to avoid huge crowds. Don’t get me wrong it was crowded but NOT like I was expecting. Turns out this is a down time when Spring break has ended for most and its RIGHT before Summer vacations begin.
Hugs are back! I was sooo happy the day before we got there, kids were able to spend time and hug their fav characters. I mean look at how happy she is! Is there anything better than a hug from Minnie?!
