Southern California One night/day before Disney - wanting to shop

[Kilale]

Hi all, first off thanks for having me on this board, I have already gathered a wealth of knowledge and it is very much appreciated.

My fiance and I arrive on a Sunday night (Oct 12th) at SNA around 8:10 PM to start our honeymoon. Before we start our Disney adventure we wanted to get in a day of shopping. I am expecting both big crowds and big sales at the outlet malls that day as it is Columbus Day. (I am from Canada, this is also our Thanksgiving, so everybody has that day off, do most people have/take Columbus day off in California/neighbouring states?)

I have our Disney hotel booked for a Monday afternoon check in, so we have Sunday night/most of Monday to position ourselves in the ideal shopping location. Originally I was looking at Camarillo but it appears as though fighting that LA traffic both ways would be a massive headache.. so then I looked at Citadel. They seem to offer similar stores but one is 70-80 miles closer to Disneyland.

My plan was to drive Sunday night to whatever location we planned to shop, get a hotel there for the night, check out in the morning, shop all day, then drive to our Disney hotel and check in for the adventure hopefully sometime around supper (I also realize this will be the busy traffic time).

What I am asking of you is any information or experiences you have with these outlet malls, specifically on that day would be great if possible, hotels surrounding these malls and also some form of restaurant/gastropub we could put our feet up at Sunday night to enjoy a few cocktails.

If you can help me out that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!

 

[theluckyrabbit]

The Camarillo outlet malls are much bigger than the Citadel. If you are seriously planning on shopping all day and getting a hotel the night before to boot, then it might be worth it to you to go to Camarillo and spend the whole day there before returning to Anaheim.
The Citadel is not far from DLR (about 30 minutes or so without heavy traffic?), so you might not even need a hotel if you shopped there. Also, there is a small outlet mall near DLR right next to The Block at Orange. You could get there in 15 minutes or less. For cocktails afterward, try Trader Sam's in the DLH or the Napa Rose lounge in the GCH (assuming that it has reopened by then).

 

[Kilale]

Thank you for the response.

It seems that everyone agrees about Camarillo >> Citadel.. another option we have is to fill Monday with something else and shop at Camarillo later in the week when we move to Santa Monica.

I am thinking of re tooling and making Monday our Hollywood day, then that clears up a day later in the week for shopping.


Side question, how brutal would the drive be from Camarillo to Disneyland on Columbus day at around 6 PM? 2-3 hours?

 

[theluckyrabbit]

I don't know about Columbus Day, but, on average at that time of day, you'd be looking at a drive time of about 2 hours. On a weekend, it might be about 90 minutes. Columbus Day should be more like a regular weekend day. If you give yourself between 2-3 hours anyway, you would have time to stop for dinner (and maybe do a little more shopping) somewhere along the way. For example, you could stop at the Americana (a very nice outdoor mall in Glendale) to eat and shop, then hop on the 5 South freeway straight down to DLR.