You will most likely need a rental car for your LA sight seeing day and your beach day. There are rental car places in DTD and nearby around the DL resort at various hotels and you can often find a decent deal to rent just for a day.
Don't waste your time renting a car for the entire time you're there unless it's easier to do that compared to airport transfers to/from the airport for the 5 of you. Remember - there's no Magical Express bus for free from local airports to
Disneyland.
Re: Costco Disneyland packages:
Just do a little comparison shopping and compare what the total would be if you booked all of those things separately on your own. For example, you can often get a better hotel deal if you book directly with the hotel instead of through a travel company. If you're a AAA member, most of the hotels offer AAA member discounts. Most of the local hotels charge for parking a car and they will require you to move your car out of their lot by a certain time on check out day, so just be aware of that in case you're going to the parks on hotel check out day.
Recommended hotels:
Depends on what your hotel needs are. Do your older children each need their own bed? Does the baby need to be in a separate bedroom from everyone else? Do you want/need a place with a free breakfast? Do you want to stay within walking distance or will you be using the ART shuttle or rental car or Uber to get to/from the parks each day? Do you want/need to stay somewhere w/in walking distance so the baby can more easily take a nap?
Fast Pass:
FP @ DL operates like it used to at WDW before Magic Bands. Here's the Reader's Digest version of it. The following applies to non-Max Pass FP users:
- Look at FP return time on Disneyland app on your smart phone. Or walk up to the ride and look at the time frame on the sign at the ride.
- Insert your ticket into the machine.
- FP machine spits back out a FP return reminder card/ticket. This is NOT your actual FP. Your park ticket contains the FP. The paper that the machine spits out is just a reminder of when to come back.
- Do something else until your FP return window begins. Let's say at 8:30 am, you get a FP for Star Tours. It tells you that your return window is 9:30-10:30 am.
- At 9:30 am, you can now go to ANOTHER FP attraction to get ANOTHER FP. You can do this BEFORE you go on Star Tours OR you can go on Star Tours and THEN get FP #2. It's your choice.
- FP #2 is for Space Mountain. It tells you to come back between 11am-12pm. So you go ride on Star Tours and some other rides until 11 am.
- At 11 am, now go to FP ride #3 and get FP #3. Let's say it's Splash Mtn. Return window for that is 12:30-1:30 pm.
- Now walk to Space Mountain and ride that using FP #2.
- Do other stuff until 12:30 pm.
- 12:30 pm - go to FP ride #4. Let's say it's Indiana Jones. Get FP #4 for IJ. Return window says 3:30-4:30 pm.
- Now go to Splash Mtn and use FP #3 to ride it.
- Do something else until 3:30 pm, when you can use your IJ FP.
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
Max Pass:
You do not have to pay for Max Pass for everyone. But whoever has Max Pass on their ticket has to use the Disneyland app on a smart phone in order to get their FPs. The only other main difference is that you do not have to physically walk up to the FP attraction and insert your park ticket in order to get a FP. You do it online on the smart phone app.
In both of the above scenarios, you
CANNOT RESERVE ANY FP AT DL OR DCA UNTIL YOU HAVE USED YOUR TICKET TO ENTER THE PARK THAT DAY. In other words, you cannot reserve/book FP rides at all ahead of time. Not 60 days prior. Not 30 days prior. not 1 day before.
