Oooooo – somewhere in the back of my mind I hoped to take my kids to Disneyland (in California) “someday.” 

But it is more than twice as far from home as Disney WORLD (in Florida).

But I had looked into that drive more than once in the last dozen years or so, and when we decided to shelve our MSC cruise scheduled for June, the dream was kindled, “Could we drive to California THIS year?”

And that is how we ended up here.

I’ve been a message board participant since I first started using the internet and one of the sites that I have been consistently active with on and off is one dedicated to all things Disney.  I tend to use these boards only when planning a trip, but sometimes will pop in to see what is new or try to answer another poster’s question.  I started visiting the “Disneyland” section of DISboards in early February and was offered so much kind assistance in wrapping my head around all the things that make DisneyLAND different from DisneyWORLD. 

One of the first things I learned was that Disneyland Resort (DLR) has a smaller tourist base than Walt Disney World (WDW) and a much, much larger local audience.  There are thousands of people with annual passes who visit the parks with great regularity.  So this means there isn’t so much good and bad times of the year to visit as much as there are better days and busier days. 

Another thing that was important for us to grasp was the two parks that make up DLR, Disneyland (DL) and Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) are together about the same size as EPCOT in California, and they are literally right across a walkway from one another.  With a Park-Hopper ticket you can enter and exit the two parks far more easily than you can hop from one WDW park to another.  It takes just a few minutes. 

Lastly, one thing that is different is that DLR only has three of its own hotels, and the park is set in a “neighborhood” surrounded by hotels and motels that are in walking distance to the gates.  

Before our trip we purchased four day, park-hopper passes that included one Magic Morning.  Magic Morning meant we could enter DL one morning one hour before it’s main gain opening.  It is strongly advised to do that as early in your trip as possible and we did that on our first day.

Right here and now I am going to share that if I was given the choice tomorrow to take an all expenses trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World for our family I would pick Disneyland without hesitation.   There are a number of reasons for my preference that will likely come out as the blog days unfold, and I will summarize that at the end of the report.

I will start with one of the things I did NOT like about DLR.

In Florida, WDW is situation upon a bazillion acres of swampland.  In California, DLR is wedged between blocks of city.  Parking there takes place in a giant garage, and they are currently building a second giant garage.  The garage only opens about 45 minutes before the park opens.  That means no matter how early you wake up your family and get them out the door, you still have to wait for the garage to open, park, get through security and ride a tram before you can get to the turnstiles to queue up for the park’s opening.  At WDW we are very often the FIRST people in line for the park.

This bothered me SO MUCH at first.  SO much.  I was flustered and stressed out by it. 

It took me til our third day there to suddenly realize it hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference in what we were able to accomplish each day.

I’ve decided it doesn’t really bother me anymore.

This is a photo of the entrance to DCA.  We were in line to enter DL.

SO – Day One of DLR.

Based on the message board advice, we planned on visit DL on Tuesday, June 12 and we arrived in time for the 7AM opening. 

We didn’t get through the turnstiles until 7:12 A.M., and we headed directly back to Fantasyland.

Isn’t Sleeping Beauty’s castle adorable?  It’s tiny, but seems more authentic than Cinderella’s castle in Magic Kingdom. 

Kid wanted to go to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride first. 

Fantasyland has a lot more rides in DL than in MK.  The whole section has a far older feel than MK.  Not in a dated and run down way.  It just seems less glossy and bright.  More rich and less vibrant.  Like a cheesecake over a parfait.  Not better, just different.

Next up was Pinocchio’s Daring Journey.  As big Figaro fans, we enjoyed seeing him on the ride cars. 

DLR has FastPasses that work like FP used to work at WDW.  You take your tickets to the distribution center for the ride you would like a FP for.  You get a slip of paper reminding you what your return time is for the ride.  You can get a new FP after 2 hours have passed, OR when the ride time come up, which ever is shorter.

Earlier this year DLR launched MaxPass.  MaxPass is essentially FastPass on the phone.  It costs $10 per person per day and includes PhotoPass.  MaxPass users are allowed to get new MaxPasses after 90 minutes have passed OR when the ride time comes up.  You do not have to walk all the way to the ride’s distribution center.  This is EXTREMELY helpful if you have park hopper tickets.  You can pull a FastPass for the other park while you are touring in the first one.

We purchased MaxPass three of our four days at DLR.  In total I spent $270 on this perk and it was wholeheartedly worth it.

At about 7:30 A.M. I pulled our first MaxPass for an 8:20AM ride on the Matterhorn.

We excitedly rode our way around Fantasyland, including Alice in Wonderland’s ride which pleased my Alice-loving crowd.

As much as I would love to offer a ride-by-ride breakdown of the whole morning, the truth is I can not remember.  Using my cameras to recreate is hindered by the fact that the digital camera was set on EST…

At 8:20 AM Stewart and I both got alerts on our phones that we had a notification.  It seems that Matterhorn Bobsleds was not running properly and our MaxPass converted to an “anytime/any ride” fast pass good for Disneyland (not DCA) for the rest of that operating day.

We were actually standing NEAR the Matterhorn at that moment and I looked up.  Men were out standing on the tracks and looking around.  I hedged a guess that they weren’t going to be running any time soon so I grabbed another MaxPass.  (Yes – this one also turned into an anytime/any ride MaxPass as well.  I did pull a third and this one stayed a pass for Matterhorn and was the one we used later in the day.)