Disneyland Trip

[Ellibop]

Hi,

I'm on the brink of booking a 6 night impulse-purchase trip to Disneyland Anaheim for October. It's during half term and coming in at approx. £680 per person for BA flights and staying at Hilton Anaheim. I'd need to get park tickets on top, but this seems like a good price to me. We usually go to Florida, and are there in August, but the chance of seeing Galaxy's Edge, as well as our first visit to the California park, is VERY tempting.

Any advice or words of caution before I press 'Book'..?

[sky13]

The crowds at Galaxy's Edge might be nuts! I think otherwise October generally isn't a bad time of the year (I might be wrong, do have a look at crowd calendars with the caveat that no one quite knows how Star Wars is going to impact crowds once it opens).

There is also Mickey's Halloween Party which was fun the one time I went at DL in 2012, though this seems to sell out so would book tickets as early as possible if this is something you might like to go for. (But I seem to have read that this year this might be at DCA instead of DL - in which case I have no idea how popular it will be or how good it will be? - remains to be seen...)

Otherwise I did like DL a lot when I went last year! It is really very different from WDW though, in both good and bad ways...

Oh and I was contemplating the Hilton Anaheim for my trip last year but it's a bit of a further walk from the parks than a few of the other hotels, but still walkable. And apparently it's fairly close to the Toy Story parking lot so you can also take the shuttle from there to DL?

(Personally I'd totally do an impulse trip to DL/WDW any time of the year!)

[penguin19]

For flight and hotel that seems like a good price, hotel is walkable, seems only a tiny bit further than we stayed last week (hotel indigo) and we walked to the parks in 10-15 minutes, it was a pleasant walk too.

Crowd wise, I don't think anyone can advice as nobody really knows the impact of star wars land. Disneyland Park is a lot smaller than the magic kingdom, so I think it could be very busy, but I love the Park (and also California Adventure next door) we went for 5 days and had a wonderful time.

If you are to go, Maxpass is a must - we thought it was great and actually preferred it to FP+

[red cuillen]

As has been said, it looks ok for a hotel plus flight combo. Flights can be had for £300-400 but hotels would be £100-150 per night! If you're happy, go for it! You can only get up to a 5 day ticket for the parks, but that will be more than enough!

[Ellibop]

What's the Maxpass please?

We've done the Halloween party at Florida in October, and will probably be booking it for our August trip too, so not sure we'd do it in California. But I'm VERY excited at the prospect of a cheeky week in California, and pics of Disneyland look very cute. We've been to DLP twice, is it comparable to those parks? Is there much else in the vicinity to do too apart from Disney?

Would be interested to include a daytrip sight-seeing tour to LA too, so 4-5 days in the parks would suit us.

I think I'm going to book!

[400ixl]

It is very similar in size and layout to DLP. There isn't much else to do in Anaheim itself, maybe Knotts Berry park which is 15 minutes away depending on the age of those going.

Anything else is from 30 minutes (Long Beach) to 60+ minutes away (Hollywood etc).

[sky13]

I think there are some differences between MNSSHP and Mickey's Halloween Party so might be worth having a look and seeing if there is anything about MHP that you might really want to go for! That being said if it ends up at DCA then who knows...

Maxpass is a paid service (now $15/person/day) at DL. It lets you book fastpasses through the DL app at maximum of 1.5 hour intervals (you can book a new FP every 1.5 hours) without having to go physically to the FP machine to pull a physical FP, and also gives you your photopass photos. Highly recommend this too, it saved me lots of stress on my trip because I could get FPs so easily on my phone, and let me ride everything I wanted to ride with the minimum of wait times.

My personal opinion is that DL >>> DLP. There is so much packed into a small space at DL and there are a surprising number of rides at DL for its size. There are rides that are packed with history (love the classic Fantasyland dark rides). There are rides that have been very well updated (Incredicoaster and GoTG were great fun). I feel the general upkeep and atmosphere in DL was much better than at DLP. Oh and felt there were also way more food options in DL than at DLP, and definitely better snack options. But size wise DL/DLP feel fairly similar, with two parks and DTD/Disney Village in a small footprint.

We did a day tour from Anaheim to LA which covered the major LA sights - think that was more than enough of LA for me!

[red cuillen]

Apparently there are the same, or slightly more rides/attractions in the 2 California parks than in all 4 WDW parks!
We all want to know - did you book?

[Ellibop]

Thanks for all the info, and...

YES we're booked! So excited! Just hoping the Star Wars opening doesn't make it completely crazy, but I'm sure we'll work round it.

Any tips on buying park tickets. Planning on using attraction tickets, but is it worth hanging on to see if they do a sale, or might prices even go up once Star Wars is confirmed?

[red cuillen]

Congrats. Hope you enjoy it. Can't really advise on tickets, try the disneyland site, where it's priced in dollars,then see what you can get from attraction tickets. Seem to remember the last time we flew BA, they had offers for the local area under experiences.
Just checked and a 5 day pass is £257 plus some avios, if you are into collecting them.