Disneyland Simplified

Several years ago, my husband and I took our children to Disneyland for the first time.  Being the planner that I am, this trip was planned out in detail.

Our goals:

1.  To spend only what was necessary,

2.  To do all we wanted to do in the park in just one day,

3.  To be as hands-free as possible.

Due to my obnoxious planning abilities, we accomplished all three of our goals with ease.  What follows is the method to our whirlwind visit to Disneyland...

TRANSPORTATION:  Disneyland is a six-hour drive from our home, and an easy drive in one day.  The obvious choice for us was to drive.

LODGING:  We wanted to avoid the expense of staying at a hotel.  Fortunately, Mark's grandmother lives exactly half-way.  We left in the early afternoon on our first day and arrived in time to take grandma out for dinner before retiring early for the night in her guest room.  We hit the road at 4:00 AM in order to arrive at Disneyland in time to get our tickets as the park opened, although a three-hour drive before starting such an exciting day was... well, not exciting.  We left when the park closed at 10:00 PM and... you guessed it... had a three-hour drive before we could go to bed.  Now THAT was rough.  My husband and I traded driving about every thirty to forty minutes because we were so exhausted!  That was absolutely the hardest part of the trip!  We slept late the next morning, visited with grandma for a couple of hours, then headed home.

FOOD:  I had made some food that was easy to pack and eat on the road, so all meals spent in transit were eaten in the car, including breakfast on the way to Disneyland.  We planned in our budget to eat lunch, dinner and an evening snack at the park.  Everyone knows that eating at Disneyland is expensive, but when you are only there for one day, you don't care.  We planned ahead for that expense.

HANDS-FREE:  This was one of the smartest things we did in our planning for Disneyland.  I knew that it was going to be an exhausting day, walking around the park, standing in lines, the exhilaration of the rides, and the six hours of driving to and from.  The last thing I wanted to do was lug stuff around!  We had made it clear to our kids for days before the trip that they were going to walk all day, and that we were NOT going to carry them.

What did we bring?  Spray-on sunblock, several bandages, chapstick, a small packet of kleenex, a few Ibuprofen tablets, and a very small video camera that also took pictures.  We emptied our video camera bag (which was small) and used it to carry all of these items.  It had a long strap that could be looped around almost like a backpack, but was so small and light-weight that it was really no inconvenience.  We also brought light jackets.  The first thing we did when we walked through the entrance that morning was stow the jackets in a locker.  A small expense to remain hands-free during the day.

For water, we decided in advance that we would buy water in the park as needed.  I know that it is more expensive this way, but it was worth it to not have to lug around water bottles for everyone and figure out how to stow them while on the rides.  We would buy one water at a time, and the four of us would pass it around until it was gone.  When someone got thirsty later, we'd pick up another one.  This worked beautifully for us.

We had told the kids that they could each pick one toy/item that we would buy for them from one of the shops.  Throughout the day we would take a little time to let them window shop as we made our way through the park.  They each had picked something, but we waited to buy them so we wouldn't be dragging a bag of toys around.  As soon as the Main Street parade ended, we hurried to the shop to purchase their toys, and then situated ourselves for the fireworks display.  When the fireworks ended, the park closed.

Our jackets?  We ended up needing them shortly after dinner, so we fetched them from our locker.

A SAFETY TIP:  Our kids were 6 and 7 years old when we took them to Disneyland.  As soon as we deposited our jackets in a locker first thing that morning, I put a slip of paper in each of their pockets that had my husband's and my names and cell phone number.  We instructed them that if they got lost or separated from us, they were to find another mommy who had kids with her and tell her that they were lost.  They were to show her the paper with our phone number so that someone could contact us so we could find our kid.  Thankfully, it was never needed, but we were prepared!

NEXT TIME:  I would take a very small crossbody purse because we wouldn't bring a video camera/camera.  We now have iPhones that can take great video and photos, and those slip into our back pockets.  And I would hope that we could have a higher budget so that we could stay at a hotel.  The exhaustion took a couple of days to recover from.  Otherwise, it was fabulous!  In fact, that's exactly how we did Legoland last year.