Your East Coast Kids on West Coast strategies

[missbrooke06]

I'm planning my second Disneyland trip. The last time, I was 17, there was no DCA and certainly no kids.

My plan for our trip is to do 3 Disney days and 2 in San Diego. Depending on costs when we go, I would like to fly in one city and fly out of the other.

My boys will be 6 and 2 at the time of our trip. They aren't super early risers but getting them to sleep until 9am EST on the weekends is a huge win. They are also both pretty flexible with a schedule.

What's your best advice on what time of day to fly in and the order for our trip? I lean toward Disney first and SD second because my husband would probably enjoy relaxing after 3 days of DLR boot camp (he and he alone, takes a break on day 4 of our WDW trips).

I want to see both night shows. Pending availability, would it make sense for day 1 to be DCA and early night, day 2 DL and night show, day 3 morning at DL, evening at DCA for night show?

Also curious if any nearby hotels are better for early risers than others? I'm worried about them waking at 5am local time and not keeping quiet enough in the room.

Any and all advice welcome!

 

[justafigment27]

We went to CA for the first time when my kids were 7 & 9. We split our time between San Diego and DLR. We opted to fly into and out of San Diego because it made the most financial sense both in terms of airfare and rental car. Our flight left Michigan around 8:00am which meant we landed around 10:00am CA time. I'm not going to lie ... we were EXHAUSTED that first night and I think we were all in bed sleeping by 7:45pm. But after that first night, I don't really remember the time change being a problem at all. We did wake up a bit earlier the first two mornings, but it wasn't anything crazy early ... just meant we were raring to go when it was time for early entry at DL.

It was harder to adjust once we got home though ... and I've read that is often the case when going from West to East. My kids were still on summer break though, so they didn't have to be up early.

If I could change anything, I really think I would have opted for a later flight on the trip to CA so we didn't have to get up so early (we left our house at 5:00am to ensure that we had plenty of time at the airport, etc.) and weren't so completely exhausted that first day (we were basically up for 19 straight hours). I think a noon flight landing at 2:00pm in CA would have been good. It worked out nicely for us to do DLR first b/c we had all that energy and were able to run around the parks ... it was also nice to have something to look forward to after Disney.