The Disney Frontier Blog

Here are 12 tips inspired from my recent 5 day vacation in Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure:

1. Bring your own water into the parks: This is allowed and was even recommended to me by a cast member – as long it’s not in a glass bottle. Bottled water costs $2.79 per bottle for a 16oz Dasani. This makes you apprehensive to buy water which makes you dehydrated. Also, if you can get buy without ordering drinks with your meal – instead drinking the water you brought in – you will save $5 a meal for a party of two and $10 a meal for a party of four. This could be a savings of $15 – $30 a day that you can use on Pins (see tip 11).
2. Avoid Park Hopping: Obviously you want to visit both parks as you’ve paid for a ticket that allows this. What I mean is try and focus blocks of time in each park, if not whole days. It can take as long as 30 minutes to go from one park to the other depending on where you are and where you want to go. If you are jumping back and fourth in the same day, you are wasting valuable time that could be used to go on attractions or watch shows.
3. Ride the popular attractions in the morning: This one is simple, the lines get longer as more people show up. If you can hit the Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion or Space Mountain early enough, you won’t have to wait as long. Sometimes you can hit it two or three times or hit two or three different attractions walking right on with no wait. This may mean eating breakfast really early or eating really fast.
4. Use the single rider line for Soarin’ Over California: I believe many attractions in Disney World have single rider lines. The only one I saw in Disneyland or California Adventure was on Soarin’ Over California. If you can manage it with your group, it will save you time.
5. Designate a meeting spot in case you get separated: If there are a few in your group that don’t have cell phones or phones that work out of their area (aka Cricket), designate a spot to meet if you get separated. This seems trivial but it happened to our group twice. Make it somewhere central so you don’t have to walk too far. For example, you wouldn’t want to make it the Main Street Station because chances are you won’t be spending too much time in that area of the park. Instead, the statue of Walt or the entrance to Sleeping Beauty’s castle works much better.
6. Use your early admission if you have it: Again, this seems like a no brainer but you can do all the Fantasyland attractions, usually multiple times, with little or no wait. It can be tough to get up early especially if you stayed late the night before, but it will be worth it. Get up and go. You can rest when you get home.
7. Find your parade or Fantasmic viewing spot early: If you want a good view, you need to stop and wait early. Sometimes up to an hour early, depending on the show.
8. Souvenir bags can make good rain ponchos or rain cover:
   
9. Use the PhotoPass cards: I posted about PhotoPass previously and it’s a great idea. Any Disney photographer can give you a PhotoPass card and any photographer can scan you card when they take you picture. It’s great at character meet ups and photo spots. If you see a photographer, ask him to take your photo. It doesn’t cost you anything and you can purchase them online for a reasonable price when you get home. I take decent snapshots – I’m a self proclaimed snapshotographer – but the Disney photographers are very good.
10. Buy souvenirs the last day of your trip: Especially if you have kids. What you or they want will change from day to day as you see more and more merchandise. If you wait until the last day, you purchases will be more satisfying as you won’t see something different or better. Also, there is less time to make one last purchase. When you do purchase, you can have your merchandise sent to your hotel – if you are staying at one of the Disney hotels. If you are staying off the property, you can send send your merchandise to the main gate to be picked up when you leave.
11. Become a pin trader: If you book your vacation from Disney’s site, Costco, or AAA you get a free lanyard and Disney pin. Since we get three pins each time, we have two extras. You can trade these pins with cast members in the park. Basically, when they start their shift, they pick up a lanyard and will trade any pin on it for the ones you have. They aren’t suppose to trade for any pins that are already on their lanyard but other then that, there are very few rules. The pins themselves are usually $8.95 so when you get hooked and want to buy more, they aren’t that expensive.
12. For your safety while on attractions, please keep your hands, arms, feet and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Popularity: 3% [?]