Help for a DL first timer?

[adisneymama]

My family will find out this week if we will be moving to TX. We have been to WDW several times but never DL. We are thinking if the move goes thru to go DL for our next vacation. (Unsure of the dates at this time.) We would also like to do some other things, but I am confused as to how far away some of these things are. Could someone offer some insight? We would be traveling with my DD who will be 4 during our next vacation.
What we would like to do is stay at DLH for a week. Have a 3 or 4 day PHP and also go to at least the zoo, possibly legoland(Have not checked that one out yet) or Seaworld. Is it possible to make the drive to any of these other locations and back to Disney in a day? Or would we need to stay in a hotel closer to those attractions? The perfect scenario would be to check into DLH on a Sunday afternoon, spend Monday at DL, maybe spend T,W doing Zoo etc, spend rest of the time at DL, DTD. Would this be feasible?

Help! PLease!

 

[azgal81]

The zoo, seaworld are both located in San Diego which is about a 90 minute drive away and legoland I believe is in carlsbad which is about that maybe a little less. When I did the zoo and seaworld we did it at the end of the trip and stayed two nights in san diego because we couldn't think of a reason to drive an extra 3 hours a day. Also, california traffic is horrible so if you are going in rush hour it will obviously take alot longer. If you are planning on doing three days at disney and the zoo and seaworld you might want to consider the www.citypass.com it gives you a 3 day to park hop disneyland and california adventure, one day at zoo or wild animal park also in san diego, one day at seaworld and they just changed it so it's now one day at universal instead of knott's berry farm. The price for that is 199 for adults and 159 for kids. Alot cheaper then buying each seperately. That is what we did and it worked out great! I would not drive back and forth to anaheim and san diego for two days back to back but that is just me I would stay in a hotel instead. A 90 minute trip can turn into 3 hours with traffic if you hit it at the right time!

 

[Tiinkerbelle]

It's about a 8 hour drive to Disney from where I live, so driving to San Diego from Disney is no problem. In order to make it to San Diego in a little over an hour I recommend leaving at 3am-4am. When you hit LA traffic its very dangerous, people cutting you off making close calls to get infront of you. They are just worried about getting to work on time. So either leave at 3am-4am or around noon-1pm. You may make it to San Diego by..2hours? or so. I would think the best thing is a bus. I believe they still have those to take you to other places like that. They have driven LA traffic everyday and know what to look for.

 

[adisneymama]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I think we'll just stick with DL. The reason we wanted to stay at the DLH the whole time is to let DD experience as many Character Dinings as possible. Maybe we'll just up our PHP to extra days instead.

OH and we found out last night that we are definitely moving to Houston!