Hello, all.
My husband was in San Diego on business so the kids and I (boys, 17 and 15) flew into San Diego to meet up with him for a weekend at DL. I made reservations at GC using the military discount for Saturday and Sunday but booked another hotel for Friday. I didn't want to pay for GC if we weren't there to take advantage of it. I found Hotel Indigo on TripAdvisor and booked a AAA rate for $125. I would definitely stay there again. It's maybe three additional minutes of walking compared to Candy Cane Inn. The décor was modern and fun with "hardwood" floors and Aveda products. We usually book a Hilton and pay with points but it made more sense to pay for a hotel because the rates are relatively low compared to our usual destinations.
We watched the fireworks while sitting on the bed Friday night!
We dropped of the rental car on Friday at the Hilton as I didn't want to waste time Monday returning the car at LAX. They don't have a convenient central location for car rentals.
We got up early Saturday, walked to GC (15-20 minutes at most) and checked in. I did ask for a renovated room for the outlets. We dropped our bags and walked through the GC entrance to the park. It was maybe 5 minutes after opening and there was no line.
We got our tickets the night before so I immediately purchased MaxPasses and the fun began. We had already all downloaded the app and logged in under my account. Many thanks to the person who noted that names should be entered when scanning tickets. I won't go into details as others already have but I can't imagine NOT purchasing MaxPass. So many times over the weekend we would scan our tickets at an attraction, stand in line and book the next attraction with a start time of 5 minutes later. Then we would run over to the next attraction and repeat the process. I'm a planner but we don't organize a ride schedule, we prefer to follow our whims. MaxPass allowed us to dash back and forth between parks hitting rides that appealed to us at that moment. We always purchase photopasses so that was a huge MaxPass bonus. Get it. I went on so many rides I was hoping for longer return times so I could rest.
The MaxPass bonus. We arrived at 7:05 for EMH, we purchased, we booked our first pass (Radiator Springs 8:05 am). We went on TSM multiple times then at 7:45 I announced to the family that I was having an MP tutorial. I explained how it worked, opened the app and found I was looking at a multiple experience FP that was good for the whole day. We have no idea why. We walked over to RS, there was only a 5-10 minute wait at 8 am so we kept our multiple experience FP for a night ride.
The downside is draining the battery. My iPhone went from 28% to 1% while in DL. I was told by multiple people there is no place to plug in a phone. I did locate the charging lockers but they were all full. I went to guest services and told I wasn't the only person to have this problem but there really wasn't a solution and the charging lockers don't work well ($2 per hour). After that we took turns using our phones to access the app. Perhaps I burned through battery power because the phone was frequently tried to connect to wifi or Verizon. We all know Disney needs to come up with a guest-friendly option for charging if they're going to push us to the app option. We did have our tickets in lanyards and that was a much faster option than pulling out our phones and helped with battery life.
There's nothing I can say about GC that hasn't been said 10 times but I really didn't read much about the 6 am power walk through California Adventure. It's for resort guest and you do have to sign up. We meet a fitness instructor at the GC entrance to the park and took a brisk 2-mile power walk through the park followed by stretching. We saved this for our checkout day because 6 hours on planes awaited us. That said, we got to bed at 1:30 am and getting up again at 5:30 wasn't fun. We all agreed at the end it was worth the effort. You can't take pictures because workers are scattered throughout the park while maintenance takes place.
We booked an Uber for around $50 and made it to LAX in about 40 minutes.
This was the first time we utilized the Visa character photo op. We ended up with Vader and Minnie Mouse. It was great to not have a line and we don't know why we haven't done this on past trips.
My husband was in San Diego on business so the kids and I (boys, 17 and 15) flew into San Diego to meet up with him for a weekend at DL. I made reservations at GC using the military discount for Saturday and Sunday but booked another hotel for Friday. I didn't want to pay for GC if we weren't there to take advantage of it. I found Hotel Indigo on TripAdvisor and booked a AAA rate for $125. I would definitely stay there again. It's maybe three additional minutes of walking compared to Candy Cane Inn. The décor was modern and fun with "hardwood" floors and Aveda products. We usually book a Hilton and pay with points but it made more sense to pay for a hotel because the rates are relatively low compared to our usual destinations.
We watched the fireworks while sitting on the bed Friday night!
We dropped of the rental car on Friday at the Hilton as I didn't want to waste time Monday returning the car at LAX. They don't have a convenient central location for car rentals.
We got up early Saturday, walked to GC (15-20 minutes at most) and checked in. I did ask for a renovated room for the outlets. We dropped our bags and walked through the GC entrance to the park. It was maybe 5 minutes after opening and there was no line.
We got our tickets the night before so I immediately purchased MaxPasses and the fun began. We had already all downloaded the app and logged in under my account. Many thanks to the person who noted that names should be entered when scanning tickets. I won't go into details as others already have but I can't imagine NOT purchasing MaxPass. So many times over the weekend we would scan our tickets at an attraction, stand in line and book the next attraction with a start time of 5 minutes later. Then we would run over to the next attraction and repeat the process. I'm a planner but we don't organize a ride schedule, we prefer to follow our whims. MaxPass allowed us to dash back and forth between parks hitting rides that appealed to us at that moment. We always purchase photopasses so that was a huge MaxPass bonus. Get it. I went on so many rides I was hoping for longer return times so I could rest.
The MaxPass bonus. We arrived at 7:05 for EMH, we purchased, we booked our first pass (Radiator Springs 8:05 am). We went on TSM multiple times then at 7:45 I announced to the family that I was having an MP tutorial. I explained how it worked, opened the app and found I was looking at a multiple experience FP that was good for the whole day. We have no idea why. We walked over to RS, there was only a 5-10 minute wait at 8 am so we kept our multiple experience FP for a night ride.
The downside is draining the battery. My iPhone went from 28% to 1% while in DL. I was told by multiple people there is no place to plug in a phone. I did locate the charging lockers but they were all full. I went to guest services and told I wasn't the only person to have this problem but there really wasn't a solution and the charging lockers don't work well ($2 per hour). After that we took turns using our phones to access the app. Perhaps I burned through battery power because the phone was frequently tried to connect to wifi or Verizon. We all know Disney needs to come up with a guest-friendly option for charging if they're going to push us to the app option. We did have our tickets in lanyards and that was a much faster option than pulling out our phones and helped with battery life.
There's nothing I can say about GC that hasn't been said 10 times but I really didn't read much about the 6 am power walk through California Adventure. It's for resort guest and you do have to sign up. We meet a fitness instructor at the GC entrance to the park and took a brisk 2-mile power walk through the park followed by stretching. We saved this for our checkout day because 6 hours on planes awaited us. That said, we got to bed at 1:30 am and getting up again at 5:30 wasn't fun. We all agreed at the end it was worth the effort. You can't take pictures because workers are scattered throughout the park while maintenance takes place.
We booked an Uber for around $50 and made it to LAX in about 40 minutes.
This was the first time we utilized the Visa character photo op. We ended up with Vader and Minnie Mouse. It was great to not have a line and we don't know why we haven't done this on past trips.
