Planning our 1st family trip to Disneyland for next year

[VandVsmama]

Hi everyone,

Am totally new here. DH & I & our 2 little girls (Veronica, age 4.5 and Vanessa, age 2.5) live in AZ. I've decided that next year we'll make our first trip to Disneyland. Anaheim is a grueling long one-day drive from our home in southern Arizona. So we've decided to not do the trip until our little one is not napping anymore, which will be age 4.

A friend of mine is a Disneyland veteran w/her hubby & 3 kids, so she's given me some good advice. My husband thinks that I am crazy to start thinking about this trip now. I told him that I need to start planning it now so we can save up the $$ to be able to go.

To make matters more interesting, my sister and my dad will also probably be going with us. I would love to be able to stay in the Disney Grand Californian Hotel. Definitely want to:

• do 3 days at the 2 parks
• bring 1 stroller
• maybe rent a 2nd stroller in case both kids decide they're too tired to walk
• Disney Grand Californian is very enticing, but also quite costly. Would definitely be able to have our $$ go farther by staying somewhere else. But...
• ...there's the whole "end of the day death march back to the hotel across the street" issue, potentially. And when our kids are tired, they are QUITE UNPLEASANT since our kids are not of the nature to be able to sleep in any carseat, in any stroller, etc.
• have the opportunity to do a Magic Morning so we can get early entry into Disneyland.
• make reservations for the girls to go to Bippity Boppity Boutique since they are both girly girls (how this happened is beyond me because I am not a girly girl. hahaha!).
• our school district takes a week off in the 2nd or 3rd week of October, so I am thinking that we would go some time during that week vs during Spring Break.

Things that don't matter that much to us:

• seeing fireworks
• seeing World of Color
• going to any nighttime shows or parades. See info above about sleepy children. for us, well-rested kids equates to everybody being happier. So I'm going to need to get them back to a hotel room of some sort by 7pm in order to have baths, wind down for bedtime, and have everybody chipper the following morning for another full day of fun.
• eating at the Blue Bayou. Sorry, but I'm just not a Monte Cristo person. I ate there a couple of times as a kid (my parents loved the Blue Bayou), but it doesn't float my boat.
• going on Tower of Terror or California Screamin' for us adults. I like Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but not other rollercoasters that go upside down and other crazy stuff. And DH isn't a rollercoaster person at all.
• fancy pools at any hotel.
• staying in a place that is noisy is not an issue because we always bring our kids' white noise machine when we travel (they've slept w/one since they were infants, helps drown out background noise and they sleep better w/it).

What I'm not sure about:

• is paying the exhorbitant $$ for a character breakfast, lunch, or dinner really worth it?
• I am really torn between staying at a Disney hotel or a non-Disney hotel/motel that's across the street and hoofing it. If we do the latter, then I'm thinking that we'd definitely need to bring 2 strollers (which I don't want to do). Otherwise, 1 of us will end up carrying our 45-pound 6 yr old all the way back to the room.

I see us spending a lot of time in Fantasyland. My girls are TOTALLY into fairies and princesses. Definitely want to take them on Autopia because that is THE very first ride that I ever rode on at Disneyland the first time that ** I ** went there as a kid.

One thing that's a bit of a challenge for me at the moment is the fact that DH is a night owl and likes to watch TV late at night. This has been a problem for us recently when we've attempted to do an overnight stay in a hotel room w/all 4 of us sharing the room. DH would have the TV on, which kept our kids up way later than they normally would be. So I'm going to probably need a place that has a little balcony or something for DH to take his laptop outside so he can watch a movie, preferably with headphones, so he won't bother anybody.

On the other hand, maybe HE will be worn out, too, after a full day at Disneyland?

I guess that I am really looking for some advice from all of you Disneyland veterans...I've read lots of threads and have learned a lot. Am curious what worked for your families when you were planning these sorts of things.

BTW, my friend scored a good deal on her room at the Grand Californian...$250/night for a room w/queen bed + bunk beds + pull-out trundle bed, so everybody in her family of 5 had an actual bed to sleep on (instead of somebody sleeping on a pull-out sofa...I did a lot of that when I was a kid and I hated it).


*****
Mods - could you move this to the Disneyland board? I think that I posted this in the wrong place.

 

[VandVsmama]

Forgot to add:

Another draw to us going in October is that Southern California weather in October ROCKS! I went to college in Southern CA and every year, October was just an awesome month. Not too hot, not too cold. The week of my kids' fall break will hit that sweet spot in October weather.

Of course, probably the rest of Arizona families will be there, too. Hahaha!

I definitely don't want to bother w/Disneyland in the summer.