K and David's California Adventure! May 2015

[Guest]

-Introductions-
-Flights and Accommodation-
-Itinerary-

Hi Folks!

So this is my first Trip Report and I feel really nervous writing it! Probably because I don't really know what I'm doing but here it goes!

This is WHY we are going!



and this is what we will be doing!



The Cast!

Me, K (short for Kirstine) 26 (will be 27 when the trip comes round )






I have loved everything Disney forever but until recently had not been to a Disney park since 2008! But made up for this by going to Florida AND DLP in 2013. Have now been to WDW 3 times and not actually sure how many times I have been to DLP as I went quite a lot when I was growing up but around 8 times I think! Oh! How could I forget in 2008 I went to Disneyland California for a day when I had a 10 day trip to California with my best friend when we were 20.

Me and my friend Hannah in Disneyland





This is Ranny (David) 29 (30 when we go... he really isn't happy about this)



This is maybe my favourite photo of all time..


and sometimes he looks like this...



He has always been a Disney lover of sorts but since our trip to Florida has gotten slightly obsessed and it was actually him who suggested us going to Disneyland as our next trip!





We have been together for 6 years and last year bought our first house together, and since then have been doing it up!

We have a little kitten (Lilly) and bunny (Bunny) who live with us!






So a bit of background to how this trip came about...

Since we have been together going to Disney was always something I wanted to but it didn't ever seem on the cards as we never had any money! Also I felt like I would have to do a lot of convincing to even go to DLP as it would cost about £600 and we could go to so many different place in Europe for a longer time for that kind of money! So since we have been together we have been to Spain twice (my parents have a holiday home there so we stay for free! ), Rome (which was amazing!), Dublin, Estonia and lots of little breaks in London.

Then in June 2013 my friend asked us to come round as she wanted to talk to us?! She asked us if we would like to go to Florida with them (her and her boyfriend) in September! I literally couldn't believe it! Florida had barley crossed my mind as an option, (I had worked out a few times how much it would be to stay in a value resort...) it just seemed so expensive and stuck in my mind as somewhere you can only go if your parents pay for you when you are young! Only 'Adults' can afford it... and I really do not feel like an Adult!

Anyway after the shock they explained it wouldn't cost that much as we would be staying in a friend's villa in Davenport for really cheap so only needed to pay for flights, park tickets and spending money! Although in the back of my head I knew we still couldn't really afford it (I also wanted the first time I go to WDW as an adult to be with just me and David) but we felt like it was too good an opportunity to miss! It basically cost us £1700 each including spending money, flights, hire car, tickets for everything and the villa!

I was so excited! We had met up a few times before we went to discuss what we were going to do and as they had been the year before and neither me or David had been in the last 15 or so years we kinda just went along with what ever they thought was best. My only request was that we go to Magic Kingdom on the first day!

So we went and had a great time!







I won't really go into it but we got home feeling like we didn't go to the Disney parks enough and were itching to go back. So we booked a trip to DLP when we returned for December 2013!





Since then I have got hooked on reading trip reports and watching youtube videos and want to go back to Florida so bad and stay on site and do nothing but DISNEY! But... David suggested we go to California as he really likes all the history and wants to see the original park. Some friends of ours were actually there the same time we were in Florida and they had an amazing time. I realised it would be the 60th anniversary in 2015 so we have based our trip around this.

Wow this is getting long and I really didn't think I would be able to think of anything to write! I'm so sorry!

So our upcoming holidays are..

Disneyland Paris December 2014 (there will be 10 of us going!)
Disneyland California May 2015
WALT DISNEY WORLD September/October 2016!

I keep getting told off about talking about WDW and being told to be excited about California... I am really excited I just really really want to go back to WDW...

Our plans so far for California are

Fly to LA

2 nights in Santa Monica

Drive up the Pacific Coast Highway and stop over for a night at San Simeon

Drive to San Francisco for 5 nights

Drive to Yosemite for 4 nights

Drive back to LA for 5 nights

Drive to Anaheim for 4 nights and 5 days of DISNEYLAND!

OK! so that is the trip so far, now you know what our plans are I will post up soon with our accommodations for each place and a bit more detail about what we will be doing.

I hope you enjoy reading and I don't waffle on too much?!

[Guest]

So lets actually getting into the nitty gritty of the trip. Hi if anyone is actually reading this!

So the main reason for our trip was to go to Disneyland to celebrate the 60th anniversary. I really wanted to go on the actually anniversary day (17th July 2015) but it would be so busy and we didn't want to risk not having an amazing time because of that.

On the 17th of July this year (the 59th Anniversary) they announced the diamond celebration would be starting in spring, so we figured May was the time to go. We worked out when we wanted to be at Disneyland (18th - 22nd which is Monday to Friday) and worked backwards from there so that will be the grand finale of the trip.

We are going for 3 weeks, because well why not?! We figured if we are going all that way we might as-well do as much as possible.

The original plan was to do L.A go on all the backlot tours etc and then go to San Francisco, but after watching Phil, Emma and Ben's California Road Trip (thanks for the recommendation Libby and Ben!) we decided to go to Yosemite too as it looks INCREDIBLE!

Flights

We have just booked the flights which equally terrified and excited me as it made it so real for the first time! Mainly because it was the first big chunk of money we had to part with.

I had been looking at flight prices for quite some time and the cheapest kept hovering around £600-£700 the cheaper end being in-direct flights. For a while BA and Virgin have been having a 'sale' so they were both coming out at just over £700 for direct, return flights to LAX.

I didn't really want to wait any longer and thought that we probably wouldn't get a better price so deiced to go for it and book with Virgin. The last couple of times I've been to the states I've flown with BA and fancied a change, also people of the Dibb seem to love Virgin so why not eh?



So we are flying out of Heathrow on Friday 1st of May at 11:15, landing in LAX at 14:35 which is an 11h 20m flight.

Returning from LAX on the Friday 22nd May at 20:35, landing back in Heathrow at 15:25 the following day.

The total for both of us was £1413.32 so just over £700 each. :rem:

Once we had booked something kind of annoying happened. The conformation came through saying we were flying out with Virgin and back with Delta. This may of been why it was cheaper but it didn't say anywhere until we had the booking conformation. I wouldn't normally care but I booked with BA once and had a return flight with their partner airline, American Airlines and it was really pants! Oh well.

So we fly into LAX and will be hiring a car there for the whole 3 weeks, we have looked at prices and the best is about £350, so we'll be booking that soon.

From there we will drive to Santa Monica/Venice beach.



Accommodation

*Just a side note... after much deliberation and looking at multiple accommodations for the places we will be staying we decided to try and do it as cheaply as possible. Now we didn't just choose THE cheapest but we choose the best of the cheapest. So places that looked nice enough and had good reviews. All we were really looking for was a place to sleep that was clean, safe and in a relatively good area, oh and with parking! (Unfortunately in San Francisco this is still ridiculously expensive!) The main reason for this is because we really want to stay in the Disneyland hotel and can justify the extortionate rates if we stay cheaper elsewhere... maybe... more on that later.

We will be staying 2 nights in Santa Monica at the Rest Haven Motel



Basic but will do the job. We booked this through booking.com with free cancelation for £117 for two nights. We will have the evening when we arrive there and one full day to explore Venice Beach and Santa Monica before heading up Route 1 (Pacific Highway) towards San Francisco early on Sunday 3rd.



There are so many places we want to stop and explore on Route 1 but I will get to that in a proper day itinerary in another post.
We deliberated quite a lot on where to spend the night along the coast, most people spend a couple of nights on route but as we are setting off early and don't mind getting into San Francisco late so we figured one night would do.

We decided to stay in San Simeon as it is roughly half way, and not too far from Morrow Bay if we want to spend a bit of time there and maybe have dinner. I don't mind if we arrive here late at night as there isn't loads of things at San Simeon but there is Hearst castle and elephant seals so we will be saying hi to them!





We will be staying at The Sands by the Sea for £48 for one night again through booking.com



In the morning (Monday 4th) we will carry on driving up the coast stopping along the way at Big Sur, Monterey etc hopefully arriving at Santa Cruz before sunset so we can explore there. Then onto San Francisco to crash for 5 nights!



I really wanted to stay in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco as this is where I stayed before and loved it. The other popular place to stay is Union Square but as it is mainly shops and restaurants I much preferred Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco seems to be so expensive for hotels and even 'cheap' motels aren't cheap, also free parking on site is few and far between, but we found somewhere luckily for not too much money.

We are staying at The Wharf Inn



It has mixed reviews but I'm sure it will be fine and we don't plan to spend any time there apart from sleeping anyway. Again we went through booking.com and it was £545 for 5 nights. Really not that bad but I didn't want to pay over £100 a night as I'm a cheapskate! I guess that extra £9 will be ok...

I'm really looking forward to San Francisco as I feel in love with the place last time. We plan to do Alcatraz, hire bikes and cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge, go to the Walt Disney Family Museum! and do some geeky things like visit Infinite Loop in Cupertino along with other things in that area which I won't bore you with! Again I'll put up a day to day itinerary when we have worked it out. I'm glad we are staying for 5 nights as hopefully we can do lots of exploring and just enjoy the city.

After those 4 days we will be checking out on Saturday the 9th and heading to Yosemite (via Oakland, any Parenthood fans out there?!) The drive is about 3/4 hours so will arrive there with plenty of time to explore. Like I said after watching Youtube videos we decided to stay at Camp Curry, right in the heart of Yosemite, it looks incredible! Everything else in this area was booked up so we are lucky there was still space here, apparently everything inside the park gets booked up super quick as there is limited accommodation.





We are staying in a canvas tent cabin, which is basically posh camping. They are permeant structures with beds but no power sockets or bathrooms. There is also bear-proof storage lockers outside the tents which you have to put anything smelly in! haha. We are staying here for 4 nights which is costing £323 again through booking.com

I am so excited about going here it looks incredible!



After lots of hiking and exploring we will be heading back to L.A on Wednesday 13th and staying in Eagle Rock which is in North-East L.A in an airbnb place. This is the first booking I have made through airbnb and I'm so excited. I love airbnb and wish we could of booked more through it as it is normally much cheaper than staying in a hotel but it didn't work out that way for the other parts of the trip unfortunately.

Where we are staying is close to Burbank so we will be a close drive to all the studios for the tours and it is also only a short drive to Universal and Hollywood.

This is the view from where we are staying!





Its a studio apartment in private guest unit of someones home. It looks really nice and has had loads of great reviews. This is the place I am most excited about staying and it only cost £57 per night! Total being £363 for 5 nights, the extra £78 being cleaning costs I believe.

We will be trying to pack lots into the 4/5 days that we will be here, Warner Brothers studio tour, Paramount Studio tour, visiting movie/tv scenes, going to Muholland Drive, trying to get a D23 tour of the Walt Disney Archives!

Then on Monday 18th May we will be getting up super early (I'll probably be too excited to sleep anyway!) to drive to Anaheim and go to the place where it all started... DISNEYLAND!



Obviously I am so excited about this as this is what the trip is for really!

Now with accommodation ideally we want to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, I want some led fireworks to lul me to sleep and a photo of Walt on the wall...





But.. IT IS SO EXPENSIVE... it works out at $1708 for 4 nights (which is over £1000) and we can stay in a motel which is actually nearer for under £300!

So our plan is to see how much money we have nearer the time and see if we can justify it.. I'm so torn because I really want to stay there and it's not like we will be going back anytime soon. Please someone tell me its a good idea?!

For now though we have booked to stay at the Tropicana Inn and Suites through booking.com with free cancelation so if we change our minds its not a big deal. We might even stay here for 2 nights and stay at the Disneyland hotel for the last 2 or something, we'll see.

This hotel could not be any closer to the parks! Look you can see the Matterhorn from there!



It is £293 for 4 nights here. Giving us 5 days in the park before we head home on the Friday. We have dining plans that need to be made and tours to book so more of that in a dedicated Disneyland itinerary I think!

Hope that has all made sense and given you a good idea of what we will be doing! So thats as far as we have really gotten in the planning stages, accommodation and flights booked so I will give an update when we have booked more things or decided on an itinerary!


**DISCLAIMER - I do not own these photos**

[mrmoo123]

Wow! Sounds incredible! I look forward to hearing more about it

[Guest]

Originally Posted by mrmoo123

Wow! Sounds incredible! I look forward to hearing more about it

See more...

Thank you! I'm very excited! We just bought our 5 day ticket for Disneyland so I'll be posting an update soon.

[Happyhaunt1000]

Great Pre-TR.
I cant remember the hotel we're staying at when we're out there, but im wondering how much it'll cost for us to switch to the DLH!
Trying to justify the extortionate rates they charge though is difficult... especially when we know we wont be spending much time in our room anyway!

It funny when you go away to WDW with another couple... no matter how well you get on, its a tough balancing act trying to keep all parties happy.
We've been with just one couple... and obviously with 35 people, and we knew as soon as we got back that we needed to get back our there and do it just on our own.

May is still a long way off... but at least youve got a cheeky little DLP trip planned. (doing a TR for that?)

once again... great PTR... I look forward to reading all about your trip when you get back next year.

[Beaker's Fluff]

Your plans sound amazing.
We are just in the early stages of planning, we are not going for a couple of years, so it's great to see how many days people stay in each place and what their plans are.
Happy planning, I may borrow some of your ideas

[sweetemotion]

This sounds like an amazing trip! I love your cat and rabbit I had no idea it was Disneyland's 60th birthday next year, I think I might have to fit in a trip there too. Yosemite is amazing and Alcatraz too

[meandmyboy]

Oooh, just found you've started a pre-trippy too! Love your plans...I went to Yosemite back in 2001 on my California trip with a friend and it really is stunning.

I'm totally with you on not wanting to pay over £100 per night for accommodation...I have managed to get almost all of mine under this (and definitely under if you average them out across the entire trip) so really pleased with that. I wish we could stay in the Disneyland Hotel but I cannot even begin to justify the costs. Have you looked into DVC points? That's probably the only way I could even consider it.

How did you manage to buy your Disneyland tickets for next year already? I didn't think they sold the 2015 tickets until next year? Or am I just being thick?!

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Happyhaunt1000

Great Pre-TR.
I cant remember the hotel we're staying at when we're out there, but im wondering how much it'll cost for us to switch to the DLH!
Trying to justify the extortionate rates they charge though is difficult... especially when we know we wont be spending much time in our room anyway!

It funny when you go away to WDW with another couple... no matter how well you get on, its a tough balancing act trying to keep all parties happy.
We've been with just one couple... and obviously with 35 people, and we knew as soon as we got back that we needed to get back our there and do it just on our own.

May is still a long way off... but at least youve got a cheeky little DLP trip planned. (doing a TR for that?)

once again... great PTR... I look forward to reading all about your trip when you get back next year.

See more...

Yeh I think going on holiday with other people is potentially very dangerous especially when you spend so much money to do so!

I want to stay in the Disneyland hotel so much but like you said is there any point if you don't actually spend any time there?

I don't know if there will be a trip report for Paris... maybe a little one to easy me in!

Originally Posted by Beaker's Fluff

Your plans sound amazing.
We are just in the early stages of planning, we are not going for a couple of years, so it's great to see how many days people stay in each place and what their plans are.
Happy planning, I may borrow some of your ideas

See more...

Thank you, that's exciting! Where are you planning to go? Most people only seem to spend a couple of nights in each place, I think maybe we are spending too long in each place?! But I would rather make sure I have seen and done everything then relax rather than trying to cram everything into one or two days!

We are going to be planning what we are doing day to day soon so hopefully there will be an update soon with ideas for you!

Originally Posted by sweetemotion

This sounds like an amazing trip! I love your cat and rabbit I had no idea it was Disneyland's 60th birthday next year, I think I might have to fit in a trip there too. Yosemite is amazing and Alcatraz too

See more...

Thank you! Yeh you definitely should! Have you been to Yosemite? I'm so excited about going there. I went to Alcatraz before in 2008 and loved it so can't wait to go there with my boyfriend!

[Guest]

Yeh I don't see much point in spending lots of money if you aren't in the room much, as long as it's clean and safe I don't care! I might look into DVC points actually that's a really good idea, thanks!

We just went on attraction tickets attraction-tickets-direct
as they seemed to be the cheapest, 5 day park hopper which you don't have to use on connective days, there is an expire date on the back but its for 2016.

Originally Posted by meandmyboy

Oooh, just found you've started a pre-trippy too! Love your plans...I went to Yosemite back in 2001 on my California trip with a friend and it really is stunning.

I'm totally with you on not wanting to pay over £100 per night for accommodation...I have managed to get almost all of mine under this (and definitely under if you average them out across the entire trip) so really pleased with that. I wish we could stay in the Disneyland Hotel but I cannot even begin to justify the costs. Have you looked into DVC points? That's probably the only way I could even consider it.

How did you manage to buy your Disneyland tickets for next year already? I didn't think they sold the 2015 tickets until next year? Or am I just being thick?!

See more...