East-Coasters headed to DL for the first time

[HHMcG]

As a first-timer, I feel like I have so many questions I decided to start a PRE-trip report. (Is that a thing over here? I know I did them as a newbie, way back when over on the DW side.)

Some background: (Or skip to the next post for questions.)
Who:
We Are…
Me - Heather - 52 - Efficiency expert & control freak. Part time engineer / part time stay-at-home mom who’s life revolves around her kids. I need a hobby beyond vacation planning.
DH - Bill - 56 – Penn State loving, laid back, happily lets me do all the planning. Dedicated, hard-working dad, husband and also an engineer.
DD - Lucy - 19 - Thoughtful, organized, bossy (especially to her two little brothers) but also anxious. Freshman at Penn State.
DS1 - Jack - 17 - A typical teenage boy. Super athletic, rough around the edges and doesn't communicate much. Loves Disney second most in the family (after mom). High School junior
DS2 - Quinn - 13 (14 at trip time) - Sweetheart or terror, can change in the flip of a switch. Very active and very social. 8th grader, headed to HS next year.

What:
We are coming from New Jersey. Arriving in San Fran, spending one day/night. Traveling to Yosemite for 3 nights, staying in the park. Next Kings Canyon/Sequoia for 4 nights. 1 night somewhere along the coast for some beach time. Then 3 park days at Disneyland. This trip is combining two of our favorite things - NPs and Disney.

When:
In CA August 1–14
DL August 10-14

Where:
Four nights at Pixar Place and 3-day Park tickets

 

[HHMcG]

Question #1:
We will have a rental car for the first half of the trip obviously. Right now, I am planning to return it at SNA once we start the DL part of our trip. I am planning for us to Uber to LAX on departure day.
Is there any reason why it would be better to hold on to the rental car and return it on departure day at LAX?

Returning it early saves us $400 in rental and parking minus the Uber to LAX (worst case $100). Would we miss it while staying at DL? For perspective we rarely have a car on our DW vacations and have no problem with that.

 

[HHMcG]

Question #2:
Only have time for 3 park days. Was planning on getting 3-day parkhoppers with multi pass. However, after reading reviews of the parks, I wonder if we would be fine with 2DL days and 1 DCA. Dropping the parkhopper would save us $450. Thoughts?
I guess which parks have early entry could be an issue also. Are those set days?
And if I don't get parkhopper can I add that on once we are in the parks? (I know paying the full price)

 

[irlandaise]

@HHMcG , I never read the Trip Reports subforum, and I suspect that many other Disneyland forum readers don't, either. I only noticed your posting because it was listed in a sidebar. I suggest that you move your thread to the main Disneyland forum.

 

[Aspencreek]

#1 - If you are staying at Pixar and just going to the parks you will not need a car. Everything is very much walking distance so I'd return the car early if it saves that much.

#2 - Not sure about the EE, but as for Parkhoppers I would say you'd be fine without them unless there is some after hours event going on you want to hop to avoid. But otherwise for 3 days I think going to DL twice and DCA once is a solid plan. The parks are super close and easy to hop and that can be a cool option if you have LLMP, but if you haven't been to these parks before then taking your time and just staying in one park per day isn't a bad way to go.

 

[LKing]

What company are you renting from? Pixar Place has an Enterprise office in the hotel. It might be worth paying a little more for the car if you don't have to pay for transportation from SNA to Pixar Place.

If you have questions about SF and the NP, move the thread to the California & the West forum. https://www.disboards.com/forums/california-the-west.131/

For your questions about Disneyland, I would definitely start a new thread in the main forum. https://www.disboards.com/forums/disneyland-california.26/

If you are planning on doing a trip report, don't have questions, and just want to update things along he way, then leave the thread in the trip report section.

 

[Jason2015]

Question #1:
We will have a rental car for the first half of the trip obviously. Right now, I am planning to return it at SNA once we start the DL part of our trip. I am planning for us to Uber to LAX on departure day.
Is there any reason why it would be better to hold on to the rental car and return it on departure day at LAX?

Returning it early saves us $400 in rental and parking minus the Uber to LAX (worst case $100). Would we miss it while staying at DL? For perspective we rarely have a car on our DW vacations and have no problem with that.

Keep the car. The flexibility of having a car can't be undersold.

 

[Jason2015]

Question #2:
Only have time for 3 park days. Was planning on getting 3-day parkhoppers with multi pass. However, after reading reviews of the parks, I wonder if we would be fine with 2DL days and 1 DCA. Dropping the parkhopper would save us $450. Thoughts?
I guess which parks have early entry could be an issue also. Are those set days?
And if I don't get parkhopper can I add that on once we are in the parks? (I know paying the full price)

If you're at the parks for three days you don't need park hoppers. They are nice if you have the money for them but ultimately unnecessary. Tough I would get the lighting lane or whatever its called now adays. And yes you can add park hopping at the parks if you decide you need it.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Question #2:
Only have time for 3 park days. Was planning on getting 3-day parkhoppers with multi pass. However, after reading reviews of the parks, I wonder if we would be fine with 2DL days and 1 DCA. Dropping the parkhopper would save us $450. Thoughts?
I guess which parks have early entry could be an issue also. Are those set days?
And if I don't get parkhopper can I add that on once we are in the parks? (I know paying the full price)

I would go with this.

You did not dig further, so I will just caution you; California is a BIG place. Yosemite is bucket-list worthy, but Kings/Sequoia is it's near equal. I would briefly describe Sequoia as the more spread out, less crowded version of Yosemite. Both have pretty draining drives to get there. Reservations are much harder to get in Yosemite. Just some food for thought if you are in the planning stages.

"One night somewhere along the coast", coming from Sequoia - that can put you in a lot of places. Since you seem to prefer wilderness, I would suggest just about anywhere north of Ventura County. Hwy 1 south from Ventura is closed - that's where the big Pallisades fire was. You might want to look into Pinnacles NP (lots of big rocks, eagles and caves). That takes you pretty far north though - close enough to consider Santa Cruz/Monterey/Carmel, but also the wrong direction if you are headed to DL. If you don't want to do that, I would recommend taking the 46 into Cambria (close to Hearst Castle - also great) or the 41 into Morro Bay. Note that the ocean is considerably colder north of Santa Barbara (really Point Conception).

Everything I have mentioned requires hours of driving between them. If you just want to go to the beach, you can get to several nice, but more urban-ish beaches that are an easy drive from DL. Stick to Orange County in that instance and you can't go wrong.

 

[HHMcG]

Thanks for all the help so far.

What company are you renting from? Pixar Place has an Enterprise office in the hotel. It might be worth paying a little more for the car if you don't have to pay for transportation from SNA to Pixar Place.

Unfortunatly the rental counter at PP closes at noon (and seems to be the case with most non-airport locations). We won't be arriving until afternoon. And Avis was a much better price.

Keep the car. The flexibility of having a car can't be undersold.

What kind of things do you find yourself doing with a car at DL? Just trying to think it through.

I would go with this.

You did not dig further, so I will just caution you; California is a BIG place. Yosemite is bucket-list worthy, but Kings/Sequoia is it's near equal. I would briefly describe Sequoia as the more spread out, less crowded version of Yosemite. Both have pretty draining drives to get there. Reservations are much harder to get in Yosemite. Just some food for thought if you are in the planning stages.

"One night somewhere along the coast", coming from Sequoia - that can put you in a lot of places. Since you seem to prefer wilderness, I would suggest just about anywhere north of Ventura County. Hwy 1 south from Ventura is closed - that's where the big Pallisades fire was. You might want to look into Pinnacles NP (lots of big rocks, eagles and caves). That takes you pretty far north though - close enough to consider Santa Cruz/Monterey/Carmel, but also the wrong direction if you are headed to DL. If you don't want to do that, I would recommend taking the 46 into Cambria (close to Hearst Castle - also great) or the 41 into Morro Bay. Note that the ocean is considerably colder north of Santa Barbara (really Point Conception).

Everything I have mentioned requires hours of driving between them. If you just want to go to the beach, you can get to several nice, but more urban-ish beaches that are an easy drive from DL. Stick to Orange County in that instance and you can't go wrong.

We are a big NP family, so we know what we are getting into. (Last NP roadtrip was 5 parks and 2500mi so this seems easy.)
For beach I was looking at Cambria and south anything north would add unnecessary of miles.
Thanks for the warning on the water temp. Considering this is further south than the New Jersey beaches we are used to, I would not have expected that. Of course nothing will keep my teems out of the water. They found the Washington state beaches/ocean just fine.

 

[LKing]

Unfortunately the rental counter at PP closes at noon (and seems to be the case with most non-airport locations). We won't be arriving until afternoon. And Avis was a much better price.

You need to figure out if it is worth the time and money, but it sounds like the office doesn't need to be open to return a car.

https://www.disboards.com/threads/a...e-pixar-hotel-location.3962718/#post-65998283

 

[Lumpy1106]

Thanks for all the help so far.

Unfortunatly the rental counter at PP closes at noon (and seems to be the case with most non-airport locations). We won't be arriving until afternoon. And Avis was a much better price.



What kind of things do you find yourself doing with a car at DL? Just trying to think it through.



We are a big NP family, so we know what we are getting into. (Last NP roadtrip was 5 parks and 2500mi so this seems easy.)
For beach I was looking at Cambria and south anything north would add unnecessary of miles.
Thanks for the warning on the water temp. Considering this is further south than the New Jersey beaches we are used to, I would not have expected that. Of course nothing will keep my teems out of the water. They found the Washington state beaches/ocean just fine.

It makes sense when you look at the coastline. There is a sharp angle in the direction of the coastline at Point Conception. The currents cycle to the North if you are north of that point and south (really east-west) if you are south of that point. I prefer the more rugged, less travelled beaches - sounds like you do too. I consider the Big Sur coastline to be a "must see", but that's a full day. If you are headed to Cambria, be sure and check out the elephant seals just south of Piedras Blancas lighthouse. It's not even out of your way - you can literally see them from your car in the parking lot.
https://elephantseal.org/
and the web cam;
https://elephantseal.org/live-view/

 

[twodogs]

Thanks for all the help so far.

Unfortunatly the rental counter at PP closes at noon (and seems to be the case with most non-airport locations). We won't be arriving until afternoon. And Avis was a much better price.



What kind of things do you find yourself doing with a car at DL? Just trying to think it through.



We are a big NP family, so we know what we are getting into. (Last NP roadtrip was 5 parks and 2500mi so this seems easy.)
For beach I was looking at Cambria and south anything north would add unnecessary of miles.
Thanks for the warning on the water temp. Considering this is further south than the New Jersey beaches we are used to, I would not have expected that. Of course nothing will keep my teems out of the water. They found the Washington state beaches/ocean just fine.

I personally don't ever rent a car for the DL portion of our trips because we get to the GCH, and we don't leave DL/DTD/DCA until we go back to the airport. We also never rent a car at WDW either! So you may be just fine to be without a car if you have already completed the rest of your trip (and save money on the car and parking). We have only left the property once in all of our trips, and that was when DD didn't try on her shoes before we left Dallas (she wears a uniform for school, and rarely wore her tennis shoes at that time; and she was a growing middle-schooler!). They were immediately deemed too small upon walking through DL the first day! We took a cheap Uber to the outlet mall and solved that problem!

I think LL is money very well spent, even for 3 days, as well as park hoppers. You can hop to the other park by walking 3 minutes. It is so unlike WDW, where we never do PHs due to the time it takes to hop. At DLR, we really love the flexibility to hop, either for ride repeats, food/drink, evening entertainment. You also get more value out of buying LL, as the price is the same regardless of if you have a PH, so you get basically double the amount of LL rides each day by having a PH!

 

[twodogs]

Also EE days are set.
You can add PH in the parks any time, but remember that you pay the full price for all 3 days of the ticket to have a PH, even if you wait and only add it on your last park day. So decide at the beginning of your tickets to get the most value of the PH.

 

[HHMcG]

Some awesome advice here!

Especially the rental car drop-off after hours and elephant seals recommendation. Adding to itinerary!

 

[StarlitNight05]

I'm of the mindset that a park hopper is almost essential at DL, the only caveats being if you are there with very little ones or seniors that need to take it slow (but it doesn't sound like that's the case with your group). Since you have teens, I think a lot of DCA will appeal to them so it may be nice for the flexibility in case they want to hit Incredicoaster or Guardians one more time.

I can't tell you how many times we have had to hop to one park or another because one is slammed for whatever reason. Parkhoppers are super helpful for that. Also, since you are staying at Pixar Place, it's easy to hit DCA on the way back to the hotel (use the Pixar Place exit near Corn Dog Castle in DCA, and it'll take you alongside the GCH and to the gate and crosswalk for PPH).

The other consideration with adding hoppers is sometimes you can't do it retrospectively if there aren't any hopper reservations open (as you get closer to your dates).

 

[hardcorestitch]

Question #2:
Only have time for 3 park days. Was planning on getting 3-day parkhoppers with multi pass. However, after reading reviews of the parks, I wonder if we would be fine with 2DL days and 1 DCA. Dropping the parkhopper would save us $450. Thoughts?
I guess which parks have early entry could be an issue also. Are those set days?
And if I don't get parkhopper can I add that on once we are in the parks? (I know paying the full price)

You have to stay in a Disney operated resort for the early entry (although the DCA entrance at Grand Californian is refurbing but should reopen by the time you get there).

On the note of tickets, it definitely is a good idea to not park hop. I’m trying to set up a similar window for DL and DCA, possibly in early May, late June or early July. It really gives you guys a bit more time to accommodate for long queues, especially if you’re not using Lightning Lane.

 

[irlandaise]

On the note of tickets, it definitely is a good idea to not park hop. I’m trying to set up a similar window for DL and DCA, possibly in early May, late June or early July. It really gives you guys a bit more time to accommodate for long queues, especially if you’re not using Lightning Lane.

As @StarlitNight05 pointed out, if you encounter a really long line for a ride you want, having park hoppers lets you go enjoy rides/food/etc. at the other park instead of spending your Disneyland trip standing in lines. You can then come back to your original park at a later time when the line isn't as long.

A Lightning Lane Multi Pass also helps a lot in those situations.