First time to DL - Lots of questions!

[100AcreWoodFriend]

I've been reading through the threads and picking up great ideas on our upcoming trip to DL - very excited! But I have a couple of questions maybe someone could help me out with?

We are flying into Orange County 5 days before my DH has to be in San Diego for a convention. We'll be staying at GCH and would like to take one day to go to Universal. I understand they have a park/ride package available - anyone done it and is it worth it??

Also, does anyone know if and what cab/limo services are available to get from Annaheim to San Diego? I'm trying to avoid renting a car if possible, since one isn't really needed while at DL or at the convention in San Diego. If I could get the name of a car service, I'd rather have someone drive us to SD if it isn't going to cost a fortune. Anyone got names and or prices?

Lastly, anyone know what the crowds are like the first week in November? I'm assuming it'll be busy that weekend, especially since it's Halloween weekend, but how are the weekdays usually that time of year? Also what's the normal temp in Nov?

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!! I've ordered the video, can't wait to get it.

Thanks!

Denise

 

[Grog]

I understand they have a park/ride package available - anyone done it and is it worth it??

We did Universal on Monday. We had guest services at the hotel (PPH) book it for us. They used VIP Tours and with transportation and tickets it was $138 for two of us. Basically that is the park tickets and $20 each for transport. Airport Bus used to do a cheaper package but I found out a couple of days prior that they stopped that a while back. Now they just do transportation for $20 per person. The shuttle picked us up at the hotel on time and dropped us at their offices just on the other side of DLR on Harbor. We paid, then boarded the Universal shuttle which left about ten minutes later. It was about a 45-50 minute drive there, about twice that coming back due to traffic. There are two VIP shuttles back at 4:00 and 7:00. We took the 4:00 as there really wasn't as much to do at Universal as we had first thought, and the crowds were light so we did everything we wanted to do except a couple of shows at least once. Jurrasic Park was actually a walk-on so we rode it three times just to get wet and keep cool (We thought JP and the Studio Tram Tour were the best attractions there). I wouldn't do Universal again (Universal Orlando is better, IMO) but it was OK to do once. We actually ended up having "buyers remorse" and wished we had gone to Knotts instead. City Walk was nice, but we only had about 20 minutes to look it over before our shuttle came. To me, the cost and time to travel from Anaheim to Universal wasn't worth it, IMO.

 

[100AcreWoodFriend]

Thanks for the input - did you do Knotts? We were debating on doing that one since Universal was nearby, but maybe I need to reconsider that?

 

[Liz]

We did Knotts a few years ago. We did it at the end of our vacation and it would have been much better if we had gone to Knotts before DL because it paled in comparison! My adventure loving son liked Knotts a lot because of the coasters and other scary rides. There seemed to be a lot of fun things in Camp Snoopy for the little ones too. My DD didn't like scary rides at the time and was too big for Camp Snoopy so there wasn't a lot she enjoyed there.