Our First Disneyland Family Vacation Is Coming Together…

Disneyland Family Vacation

Living on the east coast, we took advantage of the Walt Disney World’s proximity during the wheelhouse ages of our two little ones.  We focused our Disney experiences exclusively there for that and other reasons.  My feeble brain can only take on so much without overloading, and I wanted to maximally leverage this info while it was still floating around in my beautiful mind.  We had our fill of Disney World after about half a dozen trips, but this sealed the deal for the foreseeable future.  We’ve been on a break the past few years.  Now we’re back and coming at Disney from a different angle.  We’re taking our first Disneyland family vacation soon, and it’s coming together quite swimmingly.

Flights

To Southern California

Getting to and from Southern California for our family of four will be no small feat.  We have exactly zero non-stop options for a transcontinental flight from our smallish regional airport to anywhere in Southern California, let alone the airport we actually prefer flying into – SNA.  We’re also in the unenviable position a bit too far out of the way of any (dare I say it) aspirational domestic routes from the big three on wide-body aircraft.  Trying to make one of those happen would generally involve a tight (no) or overnight (egads) connection.

So we’ll be on narrow-body aircraft to and from.  I’m doing my best on the way out, where I booked domestic first on United with my stash of Travel Bank funds.  We paid an amount I assessed as a square-enough deal.  The first class tickets were negligibly-more expensive than the economy cash rates.  More importantly, we’re flying into SNA for a convenient connection to our Disneyland hotel (more on that in a bit).  We’ll also enjoy a healthy connection at DEN and visit a United Club or two.

Returning Home

Again, we preferred to fly home from SNA, and I couldn’t find any remarkable deals to convince us otherwise.  We opted for booking Main Cabin Extra economy seats on American, with an optimal connection at DFW.  I certainly didn’t get a great deal here, paying well over 20k per passenger one-way.  But the departure airport and connections are right, and we have plenty of AA miles.  Minor details – United connections weren’t viable, and Delta award rates were/are outlandish.

Hotel

Location is definitely coming into play with our hotel choice, as well.  We’re opting for the Westin Anaheim Resort across the street from Disneyland.  Due to Marriott’s relatively-stringent point transfer policy (only 100k annually), we took the opportunity to book with the wife’s points.  Our five-night reservation came in around 300k points, but we’ll keep checking for lower rates as we get closer.  We don’t have any big expectations for the property beyond the convenience of walking to and from the parks.  Anything more will be a pleasant surprise.

Tickets

We certainly didn’t opt for Disneyland because it was some remarkable deal way better than what Disney World offers.  Rather, if we were going to be subject to these prices, we wanted it to be a completely new family experience at Disneyland rather than one we already had several times at Disney World.  Still, we found ways to keep prices substantially down thanks to rewards and other mechanisms.

Okay, sit down and take a deep breath.  We paid about $2.4k for our family’s four-day Disneyland tickets.  We opted for one park per day tickets – that’s our touring style, and we saved a bit, too.  I splurged on the Lightning Lane Multi Pass option for all four of us daily at the parks.

We paid for these tickets with cash back rewards via discounted Disney gift cards obtained from a variety of methods.  I’ve continued amassing these over the past few years so we have an ample amount for dining and other fun, as well.

Disneyland Family Vacation – Conclusion

We still have plenty to determine, but fortunately we have loads of help.  After all, we’re dealing with the best travel agent for Disney experiences, MTM’s Joe Cheung.  I won’t ever be a Disneyland expert, but I don’t need to be.  I’m still getting my head around all of the dining options and touring strategies, but I’m up for the fun there.  It’s a refreshing change from our Disney World past.

So Disneyland fans, throw your recommendations my way in the comments!