Our Return to Disneyland and Southern California PTR 7/3-11

[GBRforWDW]

Hello, and happy Summer! ​

Our family, me, wife and DD7, are getting ready for our return to California, 4 weeks from tomorrow! Our first ever California trip was last August.

This year, we're arriving at SNA on July 3rd and heading to Legoland in Carlsbad, followed by the all new Sesame Place in San Diego, then up to Anaheim for a few days at Disneyland!

Last year, I posted several 360 pictures that I took around the parks and people seemed to love them, so this year, I've stepped up my game and bought a full on 360 video camera! I'm so excited! I've taken a few videos at the local zoos, but I can't wait to get Disneyland recorded in 360, it'll be so much fun. I hope to be able to do some live 360 videos on YouTube from the various parks, so if you're interested in following along, go follow me here:

Https://www.youtube.com/c/the360ofdisney?sub_confirmation=1

I've also started a blog, dedicated to sharing 360 pictures from the parks as well. You can see some of my posts from the Disneyland trip last year as well as our Christmas trip to Disney World.

https://the360ofdisney.com/

Thank you for following along, I look forward to sharing more with you all as the time gets closer as well as during the trip!

We'll see you real soon!

 

[GBRforWDW]

As we prepare for the trip next month, we've already gotten several items planned. We started talking about a trip back in January, so decided to go ahead and book plane tickets. Using points, we can always cancel and get the points returned to us. Fortunately, we did book then as summer flights skyrocketed not long after the Russia/Ukraine conflict began.

We initially had planned to fly out in the afternoon, but Delta's early cancellation notice put us on a late flight, so I called and got us moved up to a morning flight, which means we'll be in California by 1pm. This is another trip where all of our flights were paid with points.

I booked a 2 night Legoland Hotel stay, which came with 2 day tickets to the parks. I added on early check in, a character meal, and the cut the line pass.

After Legoland, we head down to San Diego staying at an AirBNB using credit from a cancelled 2020 trip. We've also got tickets to Sesame Place, which just opened in March

After that, we'll have a 4 night stay at the Cambria hotel in Anaheim with 2 days of Disneyland park tickets. I'm planning on doing a ton of stuff each day so we'll have a day to recover in between. We stayed at the Cambria last year and really liked the hotel overall. The rooms are really nice and the pool/water park is a lot of fun. Plus I had just enough Choice hotel reward points to cover the stay.

I bought our Disneyland tickets and car rental on Undercover Tourist, and had enough points to apply to a travel credit, that I basically got the park tickets covered.

Points vs pay breakdown:
Points:
Flight - 300/person or $900
4 nights Cambria Hotel - 200/night or $800
Disneyland tickets - 3 tickets at 250ea or 750

Credit:
2 nights Airbnb - 140/night after fees or $280

Paid:
Legoland full cost - 2 nights plus tickets, etc $1800
Sesame Place tickets - 3 tickets at 50ea or $150
Car Rental - 1 week and a day for $700

Overall, not a bad breakdown of points $2450 saved vs paid cost $2650. We'll also have food costs.

4 weeks from today is America's Independence Day and we'll be celebrating from Legoland!

 

[GBRforWDW]

We are at 3 weeks remaining til the trip starts. I've been busy planning and preparing things to do, hoping to make it fun both while in parks and on our days off and travel days.

One of my favorite parts of trip planning is the dining reservations. Finding new dining experiences is always fun, but so is reliving past experiences.

This upcoming trip to Disneyland, I booked only one repeat though, which is Lamplight Lounge. We loved it so much last time, so looking forward to another wonderful experience here.

A few other highlights include a Legoland Hotel character dinner, MSEP Plaza Dining package and a go away day character dinner at either Goody's or Napa Rose. Still looking into both, but likely will do Goofy's.

Beyond that, each day should offer up something fun and unique!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Oh my, June was a busy month with work and life, but I'm so excited July is finally here. We fly out Sunday morning. I'm beyond excited to know I'll be rolling up to Legoland in less than 2 days.

We added another adventure to our trip as well. We've got some exciting beach plans on our hotel switch days. Will be great to explore new parts of California.

I'm hoping to do some Live broadcasts on YouTube while at the various parks next week. I'll post links as I get closer to knowing what time, etc, but I think Sunday afternoon will be my first. Stay tuned for more details!

 

[Tasscrapper]

Coming along for the ride. Looking forward to possibly seeing some of the live broadcasts.

 

[GBRforWDW]

Thank you @Tasscrapper for following!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Day 1

July 3rd

We've arrived! We woke up at 4am our time which is 2am Pacific time, drove to the airport, got on our plane and flew to Salt Lake City for our layover. If you've never flown into SLC, you're missing out, that is one cool airport with the scenery. It's surrounded by mountains and the Salt Lake.

We had a bit of a layover, so grabbed breakfast at a Mexican restaurant, so we had breakfast burritos and enchiladas. Very interesting.

Our flight from SLC to Orange County airport SNA landed around 1230. The rental car counter is right next to the luggage carousels, so my wife n kid stayed for the luggage and I got the car rental taken care of. I got back and they had everything but the kid booster seat. I eventually noticed an oversized luggage door, so I walked over there and sure enough, the seat was sitting right outside the door on the floor. That's the first airport I've been to that didn't send the car seat down the regular carousel.



Our first stop is Legoland. Took us a bit over an hour to drive down due to a couple traffic backups. After taking a brief break, my daughter and I went out to explore the park, stopping at a couple of kids areas.



They have a big duplo play area with several stops to play with Legos as well as a couple rides. My daughter rode the kid train with a friend she met in the play area. They meet other kids so fast! Lol.



We also went to the kids driving area which is set up like a little town and kids drive Lego shaped go carts around. She had a blast doing that.

They also have a cool new LEGO Movie area that we'll check out more tomorrow.



As well as numerous fun and creative LEGO builds.



Now it's time to relax and go eat!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Hi all, gonna go Live from Legoland in just a few minutes.

 

[GBRforWDW]

On our first night, we ate dinner at the Bricks Family Restaurant, located on the first floor of the Legoland California Hotel. They serve breakfast and dinner here and both meals are buffet style. For dinner, all guests pay. It was roughly $30 per adult and $15 per child, but you can prepay when booking your vacation package to save 20%. Breakfast is free for hotel guests, but offsite guests looking to get an early start can also eat here. I believe it was $15 per adult and $10 per child.

They also require reservations for both meals, regardless of whether you're a hotel guest or not. Reservations are booked through Open Table and can be added either from the Legoland website or app or straight through the Open Table app.

The dinner meal is also considered a character dinner, though only 1 character is out to greet the kids, Officer Legoman!



The food options were plentiful. Kids had pepperoni and cheese pop pizza, checked tenders, Mac n cheese, vegetables and a few other options. For adults, there was roasted turkey, prime rib, chicken, masked potatoes, roasted vegetables, various types of Chinese food, and more. Plus lots of desserts to choose from as well as Coke fountain drinks.

That was probably the most food we'd eaten in a long time and most of it was really good food. The kid options didn't appear to be the best quality, but the adult offerings were done up really well. Definitely worth the price. Overall, we really enjoyed the food.

We also found a hidden Mickey along the restaurant wall!

 

[deejdigsdis]

Excited to hear about your Legoland experience. I want to get DD6 down there sometime before she turns 8. She is super into Legos. Last time we went was when our boys were 9, 6, and 3. That was a perfect time for them to experience it. But that was loooooong before she was born. The buffet and price sound great!

ETA - Love that Hidden Mickey!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Excited to hear about your Legoland experience. I want to get DD6 down there sometime before she turns 8. She is super into Legos. Last time we went was when our boys were 9, 6, and 3. That was a perfect time for them to experience it. But that was loooooong before she was born. The buffet and price sound great!

ETA - Love that Hidden Mickey!

Omg yes get there soon! So much fun. It's crazy how many opportunities you have to play with Legos throughout the park, I love it! I kinda wish we had gone more during the off-season to save money, but being there for the 4th of July was pretty exciting.

 

[GBRforWDW]

After dinner, we walked through the Sea Life Aquarium, which is the 3rd ticketed gate at Legoland.



The sea Life Aquarium is exactly what it sounds like - an aquarium, but with a LEGO twist. The aquarium is full of real fish and other wildlife, but is also home to some amazing sea LEGO creatures.



And sometimes even scary wild animals:



In some cases, they must be locked up and the key thrown away forever!



Ha! The aquarium is pretty fun as there's lots to look sea and do. They also have a little scavenger hunt for kids to keep them on track and interested.

I have just a few regular pictures from most of what we did, but have been taking a bunch of 360 pics and videos that I'll share once I'm back home. Everything is flying by so quickly here that it's hard to get anything edited or downloaded from the 360 camera.

 

[GBRforWDW]

Interrupting my timeline to bring you some 360 pictures from Disneyland! Good morning everyone!



https://360disney.wordpress.com/2022/07/08/good-morning-from-disneyland/?preview=true

 

[GBRforWDW]

And going live soon

 

[GBRforWDW]

Day 2

Monday, July 4th

On July 4th, we got up and went to breakfast at 730am at the Lego Bricks Family Restaurant. As I mentioned earlier, breakfast is free while staying in the hotel, but you do need a reservation especially if wanting a prime breakfast time, which is between 8-930.

Typically the park opens at 930 for onsite guests, but I had a feeling they might open earlier for the holiday, which ended up being correct. They started security screening around 830. After security, we lined up at the gates. The team members started scanning tickets and stamping hands, which is their way of quickly allowing people back into the parks.



At 9am, Lego hot dog man came out to welcome everyone into the park. He led everyone to the main meet n greet location and took pictures with the kids. I wanted to hit up a busy rollercoaster before the crowds hit, so my wife kept my daughter in line to meet the hot dog, then we also met a racecar driver!



According to the Legoland California website, they typically have 4 rides available for early entry, but for July 4th, they had 1 extra ride available, so I rode Coastersaurus by myself. I was forced to hand over my 360 camera here, they don't allow electronics on the fast rides, so I came up with a different plan for some of the rides.

After Coastersaurus, we also rode Safari Trek, where you ride a 2 person safari vehicle to see African Lego animals, this was the extra ride available on July 4th. Next was Fairy Tale Brook, which is a ride on a 4 or 5 person boat through Lego fairytale scenes, and the Coast Cruise, which is a 6 rowed boat that can sit up to 4 people per row, and is a guided tour around the Lego Miniland area. The other ride available during early entry is Lego Ninjago the ride. This is similar to the Spiderman ride at Disney California Adventure in Disneyland.


Can't tell very well, but those rides are all near the front of the park. 3 of them are to the left of the main entrance area, the rides were protected by someone checking for proof of hotel stay. If you have your Hotel key, that's good enough. The 2 rides to the right, from what I can remember, were not protected, so anyone coming through the gates could have gone on those rides.

Overall, having early entry was great for the park day. Unfortunately for us, our child was having some behavior issues, so we decided to go straight to a break after early entry. Fortunately the hotel and park are so close together, it makes it easy to head back and forth.

 

[GBRforWDW]

Going Live from DCA soon for World of Color!

 

[erinch]

Loving the report!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Thank you! Returning home tonight, so hopefully will be able to add more consistently in the coming days!

 

[GBRforWDW]

Ok, back to the chronological timeline...

After a short break in the morning, I returned alone to take advantage of the Reserve n Ride pass. My first use was at Emmett's Flying Adventure. The Wait time when I booked Reserve N Ride was 75 minutes. The app told me to return in 12 minutes. For those familiar with Disney, this is essentially Soarin' but through LEGO world



One thing about RnR is that you can book any ride as many times during the day as you want and the ride is available to book, except Emmett's Flying Adventure, you only get 1 ride per person per day. I forgot to switch the request to 1, so ended up using all our attempts on my 1 ride. Oops. The rest of the family wasn't interested, but I could have gone again.

Also, with RnR, you can only reserve 1 ride at a time, so you have to use the ride selection or cancel it to book again. Not a big deal with the 90% time saved though as most ride return times were 5 minutes or less.

After Emmett's, I did Unikitty's Disco Drop. You. Go up about 30 feet, spin a bit and drop a random distance and repeat for a few minutes.



Next, I realized I hit most everything I wanted to do on that side of the park, at least without the family, so I crossed back and went to Lego Ninjago The Ride next. This is similar to Disney California Adventures Spiderman Web Slingers ride. This was probably the second longest return time for me of about 10 minutes, but with the walk from the LEGO Movie area, it worked out well.

I also ran into some frightening LEGO scenes trying to get out of the LEGO Movie area:





As well as Stick man Walking around. I don't know if that was his name, just looked like a stick walking around to me.



After Ninjago, the family was back in the park. My daughter was excited to show my wife her driving skills learned the night before, so I caught up with them at the Driving school. I could have gotten her the reserve n ride to do it this time, but the line had very few people in it, so not needed.



After she was done, we spotted a restaurant nearby called the Urban Kitchen.



They have a few fresh choices available for adults. Kids meals maybe not so much, just chicken tenders, with a bag of chips and a fruit or some type. I had a Philly cheese steak sandwich, which is made fresh while you wait. They also have a lot of baked goods available as well as ice cream.

That is about it for the morning of fun.



Thanks again for reading along! I'll be back with more from the afternoon.

 

[deejdigsdis]

So far, I am seeing nothing that I recognize from my one and only trip in 2009 other than the little Lego cars. So many changes since then!