Change of plans and now going to Disneyland on Sunday.
 

We left Yosemite this morning after an amazing 2 nights and have arrived in Lone Pine this after for an overnight stop. Yesterday my brother decided that he wanted to go to Disneyland for the day so instead of travelling through Death Valley to Vegas with a night in Pahrump, we are now going to LA tomorrow and spending the day in Disneyland on Sunday. This now seems quite a good idea as Death Valley has some road closures due to flash floods and debris on the road.

So any advice would be greatly appreciated, I have been to Florida Disney many times but not in the last 6 years. My brother didn’t add in Genie plus, is it worth doing this?
We will probably stop at Ontario Mills on the way and then get up early to be at Disney for rope drop.

So guys, what do I need to know, I feel totally unprepared!
Thanku

Just to manage expectations.

My LA friends went to Disneyland for the day. They did not get Genie+ and stayed only in Disneyland Main Park, no park hoppers.

They did 12 hours in the park and did 6 rides. Standby times will average 60 minutes for most things.

They did not have any ADR and did all quick service.

If you are going to rope drop go straight to Fantasyland. I can usually do all Fantasyland rides between 8am and 11am. The wait times are the lowest between 8am and 11am as Fantasyland are slow loaders with no Lightning Lanes.

From 11am onwards the crowds start to build.

Use mobile ordering where possible for food.

We did 3 days at both parks last week with genie +. We really enjoyed California adventure but we're extremely disappointed with the main park, we found it far to busy and ride wait times we're ridiculous, there was also multiple breakdowns over both parks. We have done Florida twice so luckily could miss a lot of the rides. I'd highly recommend the genie + ( for the record I hate the new genie and LL system but feel the + is a must tbh). The main park didn't feel 'disney' it was more like a cash cow for them imo. Adventure wasn't so busy and as I said we really enjoyed it minus the breakdowns. I'd recommend getting there early and doing as many of the popular rides as possible as the queues become obscene later in the day, also book the LL lanes as early as you can aswell

I think Genie+ is well worth it, look at the touring plans you tube on G+ at DLR for their views. Also, based on some bloggers they seem to be saying that the weekends are less busy than weekdays, some combination of lack of AP and higher ticket prices at the weekend they think. So G+ and rope drop and (based on bloggers feedback) you should get most things done in a day, even at high crowd levels. We will be there in just under 2 weeks!

Sunday mornings are usually quiet (Ssuncday post and church) and May favourite time to visit but being an early bird I get there when they open and do what I want/need to do and leave early afternoon when its too busy for me. They do inflate wait times a lot - rides that say 60mins and I was though in under 30. I didnt buy Genie + and didnt need it to do what I wanted to do but each person is different it seems


But do go as early as you can - its a wonderful park and full of the real Disney feel to me.

Thanku so much for the tips, we will get there for rope drop and hope for the best. We will decide about genie plus when we are there.

We had the most amazing day yesterday, got to the parking lot for 7.15, waited about 15 mins for rope drop. Unfortunately Rise of the Resistance was closed so we missed getting to that early and by the time it opened it was a 90-120 min wait most of the day. We are a party of 7 and 3 of the group decided to pay the $20 to use the lightning lane, which meant they got on straight away. We also bought Genie plus which did make a big difference once we had worked out the best way to use it. We left at 6.40 after we had been on everything we wanted to ride and arrived in Vegas at 1150. One thing that did annoy me, was that half of the merchandise didn’t have prices on it and often there was no price on the shelf. I’m presuming this is so they can increase prices by changing the label? It was just frustrating in busy stores having to ask for prices, it put me off buying stuff which is probably a good thing.

Disappointed we didn’t make Death Valley, but also very relieved we weren’t there with the flooding and really enjoyed our day at Disney.

Now we have 5 nights left in Vegas before we fly home, have really enjoyed our first road trip, but also happy to be in one place now.