Disneyland Hotel to the Parks

[MomForFrozenAddicts]

I'm planning to take the monorail to Disneyland. For California Adventure, I'm not sure is it best to walk to the main entrance from DTD or enter from Grand Californian. I read the entrance at GC gets very crowd in the morning.

What is the best route in your experience?

 

[Girimama33]

Use the main entrance...even for Disneyland unless you are not planning on being there for rope drop.

 

[sherilaine]

The monorail is more of an attraction at DLR than a means of transportation as it is in WDW. It has two stops, DTD and Tomorrowland. It is great if you want to leave the park from Tomorrowland and head to DTD.

 

[ktlm]

From DLH, the parks are a short nice walk through DTD. We really enjoy that walk. As far as the monorail, it is more of a ride then real transportation at DL. Also, unlike at WDW where the monorail drops you off at the front of the park at DLR, the monorail drops you off in the back of Tomorrowland. You definitely don't want to do that on your first day unless you don't care about that morning walk down Main Street seeing the castle. We usually stay at DLH, and we typically only use the monorail if 1) we just want to ride it; 2) we want to get to Tomorrowland first; or 3) we are in the Tomorrowland area and want to go back to the resort and don't intend to browse or stop anywhere in DTD. I think it is about a 10 minute walk from DLH to the park gates. DH got so irritated with me one day because I wanted to ride the monorail and there was a line and I think we waited 20 minutes for the monorail- he kept telling me how we could have been already been back at the resort as we were waiting on the monorail! As far as CA, in the mornings you definitely want to do the main park gate if you want to be toward the front of the rope drop crowd. I also don't think it is really that much faster to use the GC gate to and from DLH by the time you wind through the resort and back out to DTD unless you are specifically going to or coming from something on that side of CA. If we are in that area of CA at a time we plan to go back to the resort we use it, or if we happen to be in the GC or are planning to go somewhere near that entrance first, we use it. We typically time Grizzly River Run for a time we are going to the DLH pool for some swim time, or a time when we can go change clothes if we want and we use that exit to head back to the DLH when we are soaked!

 

[robin2588]

We only use the monorail later in the day when our feet are tired to either leave the park or to come back later in the day if we want to start in Tomorrowland. We always walk to the front gates for EMH, and it is so nice early in the morning in DTD when it's mostly a ghost town. I thought the walk was going to be so long, but its not and I really enjoy it Also, when I was researching DLH for our trip last year most people said you need to stay in the Adventure tower because it's closer to Disneyland; yes it is closer, BUT only by like 1 minute for us. We were in the Fantasy tower and loved that tower

 

[tlovesdis]

Definitely DO NOT use the GCH entrance unless you line up there way in advance! We stayed there in September and came off the elevators near Napa Rose (near the park entrance) and no joke the line went from the entrance all the way down past the pool, Storytellers, into the lobby and out the front door of the hotel!!! We just walked out through DTD to the front gate of DCA and were in within 10 minutes. I'm sure some of those people in line didn't get in for a very long time!!

 

[Lolly&Rue]

Question, if we are staying at the DLH and want to go back mid day to rest would the monorail be the way to go or would walking at that time also be better?

 

[robin2588]

We rode it back to the hotel if we were in or close to Tomorrowland. Sometimes we had to wait 10 minutes before we got on, but we were not in a hurry to get back to the hotel. We just people watched and relaxed waiting for it to come

 

[ktlm]

Question, if we are staying at the DLH and want to go back mid day to rest would the monorail be the way to go or would walking at that time also be better?

If you are in the Tomorrowland area, the line isn't long, and you don't want to browse DTD on your way back, the monorail could be the way to go. If you are on Main Street or the other side of the park somewhere, you could probably walk back to DLH in the same time it would take you to get to and wait on the monorail. I can also recall a day where DH was irritated at me because I wanted to ride the monorail back for fun and he was complaining that the walk back to the resort was practically the same distance as the walk to the monorail (which may have been an exaggeration on his part).