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A Magical 2-Days at Disney California Adventures & Disneyland: Our Family’s Complete Itinerary (Day 1)

Hawaii Girl

Prior to social media, I would have said I was the biggest Disney park fanatic around. Now I realize that I don’t even come close. But I do take my park days extremely seriously and try to maximize my park rides while minimizing how long I have to stand in line. Here’s how we spent 2 days at Disney California Adventures and Disneyland.

Visiting theme parks used to entail racing around the park collecting fast lane passes from ticket kiosks. With the advent of the many iterations of the lightning lane system, my out of pocket expenses have increased, but I’ve saved wear and tear to my shoes and it involves a lot more smart phone finagling and a lot less steps. I also had to calm down on my schedule once I had kids, which has involved not staying out until midnight and going back to the hotel for a nap. While those two things haven’t changed, the kids are getting older and we are able to push what time we leave the park by a couple of hours.

Some thoughts used when planning out our day

First ride selected and other ride comments

As you’ll see below, our first ride was Soarin’ Over California. While I personally love this ride, it isn’t a family favorite, especially with two members of the family with pretty severe heights phobia. However, Soarin’ always tends to have quite a long wait, even when using a lightning lane pass. Therefore, the idea of bumping up Soarin’ to the first ride of early access had everything to do with trying the find the ride that would minimize wait times, versus going with everyone’s favorite ride.

My husband and I LOVE the incredicoaster. However, my daughter didn’t want to ride any upside down rides (something we talked her into the next day) and my son is too short. Therefore, our plan was to just use the single rider line whenever we had free time, which turned out not to be the case on day one.

Speaking of single rider lines. I LOVE them. Pre-kids we utilized them like crazy. Post-kids, we are waiting out the day that the kids can ride by themselves so we can all go in the single rider line.

Food thoughts

During our last 2 visits to Disney parks I obtained reservations for various meals. I ended up regretting it every time. Either it interfered with lightning lane passes for rides everyone wanted to go on (read: Tron) or we ended up eating at food booths for festivals and weren’t even hungry by the reservations time.

Parade / Entertainment thoughts

We tend to skip the parades and nighttime entertainment options. We’ve tried them in the past and the kids don’t care enough about it to wait for it and would rather go on rides while the ride lines are longer.

Park Hours and Ride Closures

We stayed on premise so we had access to a 7:30 AM – 8:00 AM early entry at Disney California Adventures on Day 1 and the same early entry at Disneyland on Day 2. Note: I would have preferred to have stayed off-site for a MUCH shorter walk, but since we are DVC members (read: Disney timeshare) it was cheaper for us to stay at the Villas at Disneyland Hotel. Disney California Adventures was open from 8 AM – 10 PM on the days we were there and Disneyland was open from 8 AM – 12 AM. Park Hopper availability started at 11 AM.

While we were there Indiana Jones and It’s a Small World were closed for refurbishments. Click here to see hours and ride closures during your visit.

Our Detailed Timeline of Day 1

Early Access Timeline (6:30 AM – 7:30 AM)

The security guards gathering before opening the entry point to Downtown Disney

Grizzly Peak (7:30 AM – 7:45 AM)

Cars Land (7:45 AM – 8:00 AM)

Paradise Gardens Park (8:00 AM – 8:30 AM)

Pixar Pier (8:30 AM – 9:00 AM)

Paradise Gardens Park (9:00 AM – 9:25 AM)

Breakfast burritos at the Cappuccino Cart. Splitting 2 burritos between the 4 of us was a great way to give us all a snack to keep us going before sitting down for a longer meal at lunch time.

Cars Land (9:25 AM – 10:00 AM)

Avengers Campus (10:00 AM – 10:30 AM)

Hollywood Land (10:30 AM – 10:45 AM)

Park Hop over to Disneyland (10:45 AM – 11:15 AM)

Galaxy’s Edge (11:15 AM – 12:45 PM)

Toon Town (12:45 PM – 1:30 PM)

Fantasyland / Tomorrowland (1:30 PM – 1:30 PM)

Rest / Nap / Break from the Theme Parks (2:00 PM – 5:00 PM)

New Orleans Square (5:00 PM – 5:40 PM)

Frontierland (5:40 PM – 6:00 PM)

Tomorrowland (6:00 PM – 8:40 PM)

Fantasyland (8:40 PM – 8:50 PM)

Tomorrowland (8:50 PM – 9:40 PM)

Final Thoughts

Our original plans included returning to Disney California Adventures for dinner (on both nights). However, after a morning in the park, everyone preferred to commute via the monorail, which resulting in coming and going out of Tomorrowland, Disneyland.

Make sure you know where food options prior to 11 AM are. On both days, the family started getting grumpy for food at 10 AM but we were not too close to a lot of food options and always wanted to park hop right at 11 AM to enjoy more rides. While on the topic of food, mobile ordering in advance is the way to go. For each meal we strolled by LONG lines to pick up our food quickly thanks to our mobile ordering.

If you liked this post, maybe you would like these posts from Hawaii Girl Travels:

Our 1-Day Planned Disney’s Animal Kingdom Itinerary for Families And How It Worked For Us

Our 1-Day Planned EPCOT Itinerary For Families And How It Worked For Us

Universal Studios Hollywood: Itinerary for 2 adults, 1 child rider, and 1 child too short to ride most rides

Check out Destinations to see all the other places I’ve talked about.

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