Parades and birthday questions

[mommyof2boys1girl]

Two questions:
1) How busy are the parades on regular weekdays in early May? Are we going to have to stake out a spot hours in advance, or can we just kind of show up a few minutes before parade time and find a decent spot?

2) How do birthday celebrations at DL work? Does it have to be the ACTUAL birthday, or just when/where you choose to celebrate it? (my oldest ds's birthday is the week before we go to DL - can we still get him a birthday pin at City Hall, or not?)

 

[fairycat]

I am terrible with parades and rarely sit for them so I will leave that to the experts.

For birthdays no they don't check that your birthday is that day. You can get it any day near your birthday. I did mine in WDW two weeks early and then mine at DL a couple days after. No issue.

Get the button at City Hall and your son will get a special birthday phone call. Lots of Happy Birthday wishes and at DCA go to the tortilla place for the free pack of tortillas. A little cinnamon and sugar in the room, cheese or what ever and you have cheap snacks yummy!!!

 

[Carolwoodpr]

For Parades you will find smaller crowds in the afternoons (at Disneyland). For the afternoon parade you should be able to grab a spot in Town Square about 30-45 minutes before the parade. Since it starts at Small World Mall, that area does fill up first.

If you are doing the evening parade the crowds are worse and many people keep their spots for fireworks as well, so plan on 2 hours for a front row seat.

At California Adventure, I don't know about the Pixar Play Parade since we won't see that until April.

For the Electric parade you can get a front row seat near Mulholland Madness, Dinausar Jacks and so on 10 minutes before the start of the parade.