A first trip to Disneyland trip report!

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Hi -

I’m a bit of a lurker on the Touring Plans forums around the time I plan Disney trips. I posted a trip report from my family’s first visit to Disney World in August 2022. Ironically, I titled it “A Once in a Childhood Trip Report” but we sort of got bit by the Disney bug. We proceeded to go back to Disney World in August 2023 (I didn’t get around to writing a trip report for that one), my husband and I snuck in a secret 1-night Disney World visit on our way to a wedding in March 2024, and we just returned from our first ever visit to Disneyland (and the west coast!) in June. I thought I’d post a trip report because I always appreciate reading about other peoples’ experiences. This first post will be an overview of logistics, and then I plan to circle back and provide a day-by-day recap. Here are some quick details:

Who: Me, my husband, my older son (11), my younger son (8)
When: June 25-29 (3 park days with Lightning Lanes but no hoppers)
Where we stayed: Park Vue Inn

The plan:
June 25 - arrive, dinner at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Room
June 26 - Disneyland
June 27 - DCA
June 28 - Disneyland

This trip was part of a larger two-week trip to southern California. We flew into Long Beach from New England, spent 5 nights in San Diego, 4 nights in Disneyland, and wrapped it up with 4 nights at the beach in the Dana Point area. I hope to get around to writing about the rest of our trip but will start in the middle with Disneyland because that is probably what might be helpful for most people.

Some things to note about our family’s priorities on this Disney trip - we were very character-focused and ride-focused. On our August 2023 trip, our sons got very into meeting as many characters as possible. Because Disneyland has so many characters that do not appear at Disney World (especially the Marvel characters), this was a big priority for them. The other major focus was rides. All of my planning was to maximize character meets and rides.

I do tend to go a little overboard when planning and do a lot of data analysis. For this trip, I analyzed the Lightning Lane return times, drops, and average wait times from Thrill Data. I also looked at patterns of when certain characters appeared using ThemeparkIQ. I put all of this information into spreadsheets to craft my itinerary. I think it worked out pretty well!

Another logistical thing - we bought our tickets through Undercover Tourist and got the 3-day 70th anniversary tickets with lightning lane, which was cheaper than buying directly through Disney. By using Undercover Tourist, I was also able to save a good amount of money on our car rental by booking it in the same transaction. Given the length of our trip and the amount of luggage we had, this was very helpful (we saved $270 and got an SUV when booking through Undercover Tourist versus an intermediate car when booking through Costco).

A few thoughts about the Park Vue Inn. First, I read the Unofficial Guide and combed through reviews of all of the hotels to try to find the best place to stay in our budget. We initially planned to rent a condo on the Disneyland hotels side. We thought it would be helpful to have space to spread out and have access to a washer and dryer. After booking, I began to second guess my choice. Reviews of the unit mentioned that it was a convenient 10 minute walk to the parking structure to take the tram or a 15ish minute walk through Downtown Disney to the gates. The hotels on Harbor seemed significantly closer. After some deliberation, we decided to cancel the condo and book the Park Vue Inn.

This turned out to be a great decision. We got a room with a queen bed and bunk beds, so everyone had their own bed to sleep in. There was a washer and dryer (for a small fee), so I was able to do laundry. We swam in the pool and thought that they did a nice job with landscaping to make it feel fairly private given that it’s in the middle of the parking lot. There was a minifridge in the room so we could keep some breakfast and lunch things. It was also relatively quiet. We did hear some city noise in the morning but absolutely not anything that would deter us from staying there again.

Also, the rate was the best of any of the hotels on Harbor. I monitored the price and, when it went down, was able to rebook at a lower rate. Something that they don’t advertise on their website is that they also have a AAA discount. You can present your AAA card at check in and save an additional 10% per night. But, the thing that absolutely cannot be beat is the location. I have seen great reviews of some of the other nearby hotels but, honestly, no amount of free breakfast or fun hotel amenities would make us want to walk one step further than we had to after such busy days. Even though my kids are a little older, we still went back for afternoon rest / naps. At the end of long Disney days, we were SO glad to literally cross the street and be back to our room.

PS I could post my spreadsheet if others would find it helpful but wasn’t sure of the best place to put it because it contains drops. Somewhere on LaCava? Or the Lightning Lanes topic of the Disneyland board? Or right in my trip report?

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Looking forward to following along! We also had our first Disneyland trip last summer (2.5 days with similar aged kids and also very ride focused! Trip report here)

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Gorgeous photo! Looking forward to reading more.

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I would love to see your spreadsheet. I’m going with a group next week (DH, DSis, DBiL, DNieces 18 & 16, DS17, DNephew 10).

Maybe post in LaCava. The DLR Lightning Lane Drops (Part 2) would probably be a good place. Or if you would DM it to me, I’d appreciate it.

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@NTEI I just read your trip report, and it’s amazing how similar our two trips were! A little bit of a spoiler, but we started our first Disneyland day the same way. I absolutely loved reading about your surprise visit with Aladdin (we had a similar experience with Jasmine at Epcot on our first Disney trip - truly magical!). I also was jealous that your last Disneyland ride was a Main Street vehicle. This was on my list too but, sadly, the timing was never quite right.

@motherofdaughtersthree Thanks so much :slight_smile:

@TonyRydinger I will DM you and post in La Cava!

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Day 1 - Arrival

We left San Diego in the morning and made a stop for some hiking at Torrey Pines along the way. We continued on to Anaheim to catch an Angels game. My husband is a big baseball fan, and we planned the timing of this trip so that we could see all three southern California baseball teams. This game was exciting because the Angels were playing our team, the Red Sox. Unfortunately, our seats were in the sun so it was pretty hot and the Red Sox lost (by a lot). We stayed through the 7th inning but decided to throw in the towel after baking in the sun and continued on to check into the Park Vue Inn and our dinner reservation.

Check in was super easy, and we were glad to have a room on the second floor (no elevator but I wanted to be above ground level). We arrived, set our stuff down, and walked through Downtown Disney to the Disneyland Hotel to have dinner at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar. This took longer (and was way sweatier) than we anticipated. We probably should have just driven, but we wanted to get the Disney vibe.

My younger son and my LOVE for the Enchanted Tiki Room. I booked our Trader Sam’s reservation at the 60-day mark and, within seconds, the only reservation available was for 4:30. This was fine because we planned on an early dinner. A couple of weeks before our trip, I learned that the Tiki Room was down for refurbishment, so we were super happy to at least get a tiki experience.

We were a bit late to our reservation, but they sat us within a few minutes with no problem. We have never been to the Trader Sam’s at Disney World and were so surprised at how small it was inside. We absolutely loved the ambiance and decided to start our trip off with a couple of fun tropical drinks. My sons each got a mocktail, and my husband and I got fancy cocktails. My husband got the Zombie and was excited about the souvenir mug. I got a little too excited because I asked our server whether we could buy a second mug so that each of our kids could have one. He couldn’t remember the price but said we couldn’t buy just the mug but had to order the drink that came in it and he thought the drink was “about $18”. This sounded like a great deal on a Disney souvenir, so I ordered a second mug and gifted the actual drink to a man at the bar who had been friendly to us while we waited at the hostess stand. Spoiler alert - it was not $18 and not a great deal. Each drink was actually $54. Given that I was relentless about trying to look for deals and maximize our budget for this trip, it took the wind out of my sails a bit. The ironic thing is that we are not big drinkers - my husband didn’t even finish his Zombie! So we literally spent $108 on two mugs…

But! we were at Disneyland and not going to let some unexpectedly expensive mugs get us down. We decided that the adult souvenir budget had been spent before we even stepped foot in the park. And now we had a story we could laugh about (plus two mugs shaped like zombie heads that we can drink our morning juice out of whenever we want some of that Disney magic).

We absolutely loved the ambiance of Trader Sam’s. I got the ramen and really liked it. My husband got the Kalua-style pork nacho poutine and said it was okay. I honestly don’t remember what the kids got, but they ate it all so I guess it was good. We mostly loved the theming, and it was a relaxing way to start our trip.

We walked back through Downtown Disney, tried to get ticket cards to scan at guest services on the esplanade. We like getting them at Disney World so that the kids can scan themselves into the park and lightning lanes and stuff, but apparently Disneyland does not have these. Everything is through the app now. Oh well!

Back at the Park Vue, I took the boys down to Coldstone Creamery for some ice cream. We settled on the roof deck and waited for the fireworks. I was able to cue up a Youtube audio recording and got it to sync up fairly well. Our view was pretty good for being outside the park, so this was a neat way to start our trip!

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Do you have any pics of your room at the Park Vue Inn by chance? I’m always curious how the hotels on Harbor compare in cleanliness, room decor, furnishings, etc.

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Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics of the room that show anything really clearly. I will say that I watched this video on Youtube of the room the same room category (1 queen, 1 bunkbed) before booking and found it pretty accurate. Some things I noticed that she didn’t mention:

  • Our room was set up with the bunkbeds on the other side, next to the desk and not the queen bed. This was not a big deal but one strange thing is that the air conditioner was blowing right onto the head of the lower bunk. I tried to get my son to sleep with his feet toward the air conditioner because he was cold, but he rejected that suggestion.
  • There was not a single dresser or drawer in the room. I also found this strange, and it was tricky because we had a week’s worth of clothes. The open closet area was opposite the bunk bed, and I opened up the kids’ suitcase up on the luggage rack in there. I put my husband and my suitcase on the floor under the window. I unpack clothes when I go on vacation, but we had to live out of suitcases for the 4 nights we were there.
  • Our desk area had a bench instead of an office chair. This was actually quite convenient because both kids could sit on the bench to eat.
  • The video makes the room look darker than it is. I think she just has the blackout curtain drawn because she’s on the first floor. Being on the second floor, we kept this open during the day and it was much brighter.
  • I also thought in the video that the bed looked smaller than a queen, but it was definitely a queen size. We thought it was comfortable.
  • We found the cleanliness of the room to be excellent. I think vinyl floors versus carpet help. Housekeeping came every day and replaced towels, remade the beds, etc. Also, I didn’t notice any real wear and tear anywhere. Things clearly have been updated recently.
  • The mini fridge is tucked next to the open closet. I appreciated having the freezer (I DIYed some ice packs that we used to transport groceries on our arrival and departure days, so I was glad to be able to refreeze them). There was also a shelf above that I could use for storing pantry items - big enough for a loaf of bread, a few bags of chips, some paper goods, etc.
  • There is laundry in a the bottom corner of a building near the pool. It only had one washer and dryer and took cash or you could pay through an app (using the app, the first wash was free so I only had to pay $3-4 to use the dryer). There was one person in front of me doing laundry, but she was very prompt in taking her things out. But it would be nice to have two of each…

All in all, the room was quite compact but had everything we needed. It helps that our kids are getting older because we were at the parks most of the day and all slept on the same schedule. Also, I just looked back at the invoice and the AAA rate we paid was $219/night (worked out to be $267/night after taxes and all). This was the best rate I could find on Harbor for our length of stay. We also had a rental car, so we were glad not to pay for parking or other resort fees.

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Glad you had a great time. Seems like you will go back. Awesome!

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Sounds like a great arrival day! I have no doubt the story of the mugs will go down in your family’s Disney lore and eventually justify their steep price :rofl:

Our trips might have been even more similar - I was also considering Trader Sam’s for arrival day dinner, but as you said even at 60 days it was impossible to get a table for four in the evening. So I went instead with Goofy’s Kitchen, which easily had availability and I definitely wanted to do one character meal on the trip. My family is generally not up for standing in line for character meets, but are also content after a handful of encounters so I knew Goofy would serve that purpose perfectly. I was also eyeing the Plaza breakfast, but we’d done that at DLP six months earlier so I decided to switch it up.

So the Tiki Room/Trader Sam’s are still on my list for a future trip - so glad to hear you enjoyed it!

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Amount doesn’t count on vacation. 18=54 :rofl: :alien:

So cool!!

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So excited to read every last bit & comment, but I see discussion on Park Vue so jumping to that first!

I swear I’ve posted a pic of inside the Park Vue and the storage system they had setup in a 2 Queen room that I really liked. I’ll see if I can track it down in one of my past topics.

ETA: I did track it down! Here

The 1 queen/bunk beds are a tight squeeze and definitely lack storage. It’s been a long while since our kids were small enough (and definitely before we had all 4) to fit in this one, BUT I swear we’ve had at least 3 dresser drawers with the desk that we’ve used to unpack some of the clothes. But then yes, living out of suitcases or totes or a shoe organizer rolled with the kid’s clothes that I hang up on a hanger in the closet, is how we’ve managed the space. One of my favorite travel hacks is the shoe organizer for small kids’ clothes and then it either lays flat in a large drawer or hangs up attached to the hanger in some way.

I love all the rest of the layouts at Park Vue much more and all the bigger rooms they have an awesome storage rack that I like much more than any hotel dresser space because I can see all the stuff and there’s still hangers too. And there’s even still a couple of small drawers in that rack (and usually there are 3 drawers with the desk space that we can use too).

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I like this! Very similar to the Courtyard but presumably much cheaper. But no water park. But shorter walk. Hmmm LOL

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My kids probably feel like I am a mean mom about this, but I don’t let them swim unless we’ve got 4 full days or more at DL. I just feel like we can swim at so many other pools for much less of a cost than taking time out of being at DL. So the pool is always such a low priority for me. But of the pools along Harbor, I do feel that Park Vue’s is one of the better ones. They really do try to make the landscaping around it nice so you forget you’re in a ‘puddle in a parking lot’ situation.

And their pool has some emotional tie of a core memory of a dream coming true for me too. We were sitting in the lounge chairs to the side waiting for our room at the Park Vue to be ready when we got the call from the school that a spot had opened up (at THE last minute the Friday before school started) for my oldest DS to get into the elementary program we had hoped he would get into and had been on a waiting list for.

DH & I had driven past the school almost every day on our way to/from picking up our kids from my in-laws while we were at work and I knew they had the program I wanted my kids to do so we applied as soon as it opened, but didn’t get in initially (it went to siblings of older kids in the program first, then in-boundary kids, then out of boundary kids got in lottery style & we were out of boundary and lost the lottery), so it was a very happy moment when I got that call.

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I don’t know how to quote other peoples replies like @lolabear_la andn @Jeff_AZ so I will do it this way for now:

@NTEI It’s funny because we did have a Goofy’s Kitchen reservation for our checkout day. I cancelled it because we had met all of the characters in the park. At one point, I also held a Donald’s Barbecue at Grand Californian for our arrival night, but my kids wanted Trader Sam’s. And you are right about the mugs… definitely will remember it forever!

@motherofdaughtersthree I might need to adopt “amount doesn’t count on vacation” for our next trip - love that!

@lolabear_So interesting that you had drawers… I wonder where ours went?! And I totally get it about the swimming. I see suggestions of “nap or pool time” during afternoon breaks on park days, but the pool tires my kids out more. We also have a pool at home, and they have been quite spoiled in their life experiences so one “puddle in a parking lot” (I love all these new phrases I’m learning!) seemed like a reasonable tradeoff for being at Disneyland! We swam after dinner on our arrival day, and found it to be just like you described (and I love it’s happy association for your family!)

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I have trouble editing things down, so I am going to do my report a half-day at a time. Here’s the first installment of actual park days!

Disneyland Day 1 - morning (June 26, 2025)

Our first Disneyland day! Our plan was to rope drop Fantasyland to get in a bunch of rides quickly with some character meetings and maybe head to ToonTown before a 10:20 breakfast reservation at Plaza Inn. Then, I was planning to head to Tomorrowland and take the train to Tiana’s before taking a break. After our break, we’d return and hit up Frontierland, Adventureland, and New Orleans Square before swinging up to Galaxy’s Edge for fireworks (perhaps popping down for Fantasmic afterwards). Things did not really go according to plans, but we still had lots of fun. Here’s what really happened.

We got through the turnstiles around 7:40 and were able to rope drop Fantasyland. We knocked out a bunch of dark rides - Snow White, Pinocchio, Alice, Mr Toad, Peter Pan’s Flight. This made the kids super happy (and me too! I love the classic dark rides). I was also fully prepared to skip Peter Pan because we’ve done it at Disney World. But, from watching enough Fresh Baked videos on Youtube and noticing a dip in wait times a bit after park opening, we were able to hop in line when it was relatively short.

We also had our first character sighting - Peter Pan. This was actually a bit of a letdown for my kids because he was already engaged with other families, and my guys couldn’t figure out how to get a turn. I also wasn’t sure of Disneyland etiquette and if he’d sign autographs, and he seemed to be quite “on the move”. (We did get better at this, but we were a bit awkward at this first attempt so I got a picture of Peter Pan but not with my kids in it at all.)

While this was a failed first attempt, it was more than made up for by our second interaction - the Mad Hatter! My boys had watched videos of him playing with kids at Disneyland. We missed him at Mickey’s Not So Scary, so my kids were really hoping to meet him. I had sort of crafted my itinerary on being in Fantasyland when he would be out, and he came out and even interacted with Peter Pan a bit! He went up into the seating area in front of Casey Jr’s, and we were able to have a tea party with him. So fun and a highlight of our trip!

We then headed up into ToonTown and rode Runaway Railway (we had booked this as our first lightning lane, which converted into an anytime - it was a walk-on so I decided to hold onto the lightning lane in case I would need it later in the day). We also walked onto Small World, and my kids liked looking for the Disney characters within the scenes. Then, it was time to head to breakfast. We met Princess Jasmine along the way so we were a few minutes late to our reservation. It didn’t seem to matter.

Plaza Inn breakfast was fine. It was the most expensive, free hotel breakfast quality meal I’ve ever had, but we were there for the characters. The highlight was Suzy from Cinderella because we had never met her. My kids were also happy to meet Minnie, Tigger, Pluto, Daisy, Chip, and Winnie the Pooh. It served its purpose in that we got a lot of autographs at once. We also ate enough that we were able to skip lunch so, even though it was pricey for what it was, if we thought of it as replacing two meals, it wasn’t a terrible valuable (Disney math).

I had booked a lightning lane for Space Mountain, so, on full stomachs, we headed there. My youngest was just learning to like roller coasters on our last Disney trip (where he rode Tron and decided that he was braver than he thought). He never rode Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom, so he was pretty pumped to ride at Disneyland. We all agreed that we liked the Disneyland version much better. And my youngest instantly wanted to ride it again. This became the motivation for me to try to hold onto my anytime lightning lane for as long as I could (I don’t know why we didn’t just hop in line again, but I guess I was worried that I might want it for something else later in they day so I started mentally adjusting our plans so that we could try to return to Space Mountain.)

I had seen on the app and Themepark IQ that there are usually a ton of characters out at Fantasyland Theater from 10:30-5:30. We did not plan to be in this part of the park during these hours again, so we decided to walk up and see what characters we could find. It turns out that an assortment of Pixar characters meet in between shows. They will take pictures but won’t sign autographs. We got there about 15 minutes before a show was beginning. Merida was on her way out. We were able to snap a quick picture with Woody and Bo-Peep (who we had not yet met). Then, we headed for the ToonTown train station.

There was a little bit of back up with the trains, but we did get to see the Lilly Belle! We rode the train to New Orleans Square. This worked out well because I knew my kids would enjoy the dioramas between Tomorrowland and Main Street. I had a lightning lane for Tiana’s, and we were excited to ride because we hadn’t been to Disney since it changed from Splash Mountain. We also got super lucky because the ride went down for awhile right after we rode. We thought it was cute (but did like Splash better; maybe it was nostalgia because it was my older son’s absolute favorite at MK).

We had planned to take a break after Tiana’s but, since we were in the area, decided to knock out a few more rides. After tapping into Tiana’s, I was able to book Haunted Mansion. I did have to use drop times a lot more in Disneyland to try to get Lightning Lanes. We also rode Winnie the Pooh with a very short wait, which was great because it was now the middle of the day and crowds seemed much heavier. It was around 1:30, and we decided that this was the ideal time to take a break.

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Thank you!!!

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Wow!

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I’m sure the drink was $18, it’s the mug that brought the price up to $54! :rofl: So I guess you paid $36 for the mug? I’ve done that in Oga’s, but not Trader Sam’s.

Correct. I am with your youngest. I think Space might be my favorite ride at DLR.

Can’t wait to read more! I think plans at DL are more “guidelines” than anything else. It is very different from WDW where planning is imperative.

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