Yes, GO! You will not be disapointed, it is different but some great things there... the yellow submarine ride, matterhorn, tea cups are different, alice in wonderland ride, Frog and Toads wild ride is still there, Small World is WAY more impressive exterior, some other rides are specific to only there and some are similar to WDW rides..... Yes... it is different, but worth it--- just remember that the castle is not the big thing here, it is TINY in comparison, pretty and pink and small... I think that you can do DL in 2 days, one day is a bit too short imo. DCA is not as packed and you could easily do it in a day. We did 2.5 DL and .5 DCA. We could have spent more at DCA but ds is only 3 and with just the 3 of us it is hard to always have one ride one wait etc for the bigger rides, we also had built in time for swimming, naps, etc. We stayed off property and walked back and forth a few times a day. If you buy a ticket for more than 1 day at a time it is automaticlly a hopper ticket so you can do both in a day. They are just across the plaza from one another... Even on our day that we did not do DCA we still hit Soarin' and Tower of Terror using FP and the rest of the day was DL. The day we did both we spent the am in DL, gathered FP before leaving for naps. DH took DS back to the hotel and I went into DCA and grabbed us FP there to use after naps. We spent the afternoon/evening there to see the parade etc. When they closed (an hour or two before DL) we crossed back to DL and saw the fire works. They had tinkerbell AND DUMBO fly that night, so cool!
In terms of more DL questions there is a part of these boards dedicated to DL and CA in general. As I said, we stayed off property. If you wanted to stay in a Disney hotel you will spend $$$$ if you dont mind stayed in a "good-neighbor" hotel (literally across the street from the gates, some are actually closer than the Disney hotels) it can be really reasonable depending on the dates. We have an Entertainment book (happenings book) and if you have that card you can use it at some of the hotels for even deeper discounts. We stayed at the HoJo (Howard Johnson) they had rooms with the card for 49-69 the 3 nights we stayed. We had a 2 queen pillowtop (very nice) beds, mini fridge, balcony, etc for that price. There were 2 pools, one had water slides, one of those climbing structures, etc. They also have themed suits there but we didnt need that much space. The walk was about 5 to the gate that said DISNEYLAND, another 5 to the specific park gates past the busses etc. The food in DL seemed $ but CA in general is higher priced. We ate a bit there, but we had breakfast at the hotel room (picked up fruit, yogurt, cereal, milk and kept in the fridge) we had lunch at one of the Fast Food joints on our walk back to the hotel in the afternoon (McD's, Quiznos, and then a family dinner one day) We swam and took a nap/relaxed for 2-3 hours per afternoon. We ate our dinners in the park. Our tickets were reasonable, close to the WDW ticket... although that is steep it seems to be across the board for most things (ski lift tickets, major amusment parks, etc) so that was the only real budget buster. Airfare into LA is not bad, you can get a bus to some of the hotels (not free) or rent a car, etc. We did not fly in but DH flew home and said the drive to the airport to return the car and check in was not bad. If you have more questions PM me.
