Our trip Sept 30-Oct 5 With little ones

[Valentina1234]

We just got home from a fabulous trip! Thank you to all who gave me advice. We loved loved staying at Homewoid Suites convention center and the toy story shuttle service was just what we needed. We had our 2 and 5 year olds with us so it worked well. We were in the park by 8:30, left by 2:30 for a nap of just chill time, then back and 5:30 until around 10 or 11. We went with 5 other people so we were a group of 9. Thankfully had a lot of help with the kids.
My 5 year old amazed me by going on and LOVING Guardians. I'm still shaking from that ride! Lol she did every ride except Indiana and California screamin. Rider swap worked great for us and we always got to go on right away. They never gave us a window to come back later! So that was great.
Disneyland was soooo busy. Any time of day it was insane. So many people and not enough space. I loved the feel of California adventure. So big, lots of space. We did a 5 day park hopper, with Disney first 2 days, CA the next day as it was Halloween party night. I was disappointed CA didn't stay open later that night. Boo to the 8pm close! Day 4 was CA then the evening was Disney. Last day was just Disney again. My one regret is making dinner resos anywhere. Goofy's kitchen sucked. Food was gross but the kids had fun. TortillaJo's was just ok. Rainforest was ok.
It was go go go for us and doing sit down dinners wasted so much time when it was just as easy to grab a bite somewhere quickly.
Thanks to fast passes and rider swaps, we rode Radiator springs 4 times. Amazing ride. Guardians was unlike anything I've ever experienced. California screamin was insane.
My top fave rides were def Space mountain, big thunder mountain, Indiana, Matterhorn, soarin.
All in all a totally amazing experiebce. For the record, I've never gone a scary ride in my life and by the second day, it was rides rides rides, which one should we do next!
One other thing, I liked the fact that for every adult ride there was always a little kid ride for my 2 year old. He did miss out on a few but he also had a great time and loved every ride, well except pinnochios daring journey. I def found a few of those rides to be dark and spooky for really little ones. He cried a bit during pirates but only in the pitch black part.
I'm so sad to be home. I am so glad we did a 5 day and we still could have done one more day

 

[katyringo]

Awesome! We are going wth our 16month old and 5 year old in December. I'm so glad to hear that rider swap worked well for you all! I'm also super glad to hear about your radiator springs expirence. Cars land is the whole reason we are going lol. How was the rest of cars land?

 

[Valentina1234]

Awesome! We are going wth our 16month old and 5 year old in December. I'm so glad to hear that rider swap worked well for you all! I'm also super glad to hear about your radiator springs expirence. Cars land is the whole reason we are going lol. How was the rest of cars land?

Carsland was amazing. We took our 2 year old on the other 2 kid rides over and over and he just loved them, as he was too little for radiator springs. So you can take your little one on those. The rider swaps worked perfectly.

 

[smartlabelprint]

So glad you loved HomeWood! We do too. Coming "home" in march. Lol Did you make muchbuse of the m-th dinners?

Thanks so much for sharing your trip. It sounds amazing!!

We too find reservations are a waste. And for us so is dtd. We usually eat in the parks.

Sometimes a nice dinner res with DH if we have a sitter.

 

[smartlabelprint]

Another tip for next time. If you want to do dlr annually we get an AP. We buy it say in early nov 2017. Then the next year go end oct 2018 before it expires. Trying 7 park days in March this year. Special needs kids so we can't spend as much time in the parks. Not sure when our return trip will be.

 

[Valentina1234]

So glad you loved HomeWood! We do too. Coming "home" in march. Lol Did you make muchbuse of the m-th dinners?

Thanks so much for sharing your trip. It sounds amazing!!

We too find reservations are a waste. And for us so is dtd. We usually eat in the parks.

Sometimes a nice dinner res with DH if we have a sitter.

Thank you for tips, it really helped with the planning part!
We are at the social for 3 of the 4 nights. One night was sliders and Mac and cheese, another was hotdogs and the other night was chicken stir fry with rice. Plus always soups and salads. The food was great and def enough for meals! My kids don't eat much so going to restaurants is a big waste of money so they ate there for free and loved it.
Awesome you're going in March! H can't wait to do another trip.

 

[Valentina1234]

Another tip for next time. If you want to do dlr annually we get an AP. We buy it say in early nov 2017. Then the next year go end oct 2018 before it expires. Trying 7 park days in March this year. Special needs kids so we can't spend as much time in the parks. Not sure when our return trip will be.

If we didn't have so much help with our little ones, we wouldn't have been able to do so many hours. We had their aunt as well as 4 other adults to help out.
7 days sounds like a great amount of time! I wish we had one more day to do DCA. Good to know about the passes!

 

[Valentina1234]

Also we missed our magic morning. Staying out too late and trying to be in the park for 7am was just impossible.

 

[CateinPhoenix]

Glad you had a great time! And that Homewood worked out well for you. We just decided to take a last minute trip next week! Staying at our "home" away from home again