April '19 PTR: Daddy/Daughter Spring Break Trip to Ride Every Ride at DLR (& more) [Updated 4/30/19]

Best way to ride on the Nemo submarines with little wait is to use 1 of your mornings to go on it first thing.

Alice & the Mad Hatter play musical chairs with kids at Coke Corner every afternoon. I've heard it's usually in the 2:30-3:30 time frame, but check w/a CM at Coke Corner earlier in the day to make sure. I bet your daughter would enjoy that!

Also, there's a short 2-3 min long neon light "thing" in Carsland right at dusk. They play the Sh-boom song from the Cars movie and turn on all of the neon lights. It's short, but really neat to see. Just look up when sunset is on your phone beforehand and be in Carsland shortly before that. When we watched it, we sat outside of Flo's V-8 Café. It was a pretty magical moment.

All great tips! We will definitely check out each of these. Thanks @VandVsmama !
 
Traffic to/from Magic Mountain! You'll definitely hit rush hour traffic on the way there if you're driving before 9 am. It's a straight shot on I-5, but you'll be driving through downtown LA, which has some of the worst traffic. I'd recommend instead to consider going I-5 northbound --> 605 --> 210 westbound --> I-5 northbound. It's more miles, but time-wise, it'll be less time because there's a bit less traffic on 210 than I-5.

The Alamo on Katella opens at 7:30 AM and Magic Mountain doesn't open that day until 10 AM, so we should be able to pick up the car early enough to get up there in plenty of time. That Alamo location also has after hours drop off available, so I'm ok on that front as well. MM closes at 9 PM that day, and we have our MM the next day in any event, so I doubt we'll be too late that night. Thanks for the tip about avoiding downtown LA during rush hour. I looked at your suggestion on Google Maps and it makes a lot of sense that this route could be a big time saver that morning. Much appreciated! Thanks so much for all of your tips and advice @VandVsmama.
 
I was watching this video on the Fresh Baked channel on Youtube -->
and it's hard to say whether the Emotional Whirlwind ride will be ready & operational by the time you get there. Maybe there's a possibility, but I'm betting that they're working more towards a Memorial Day or SWGE timeline than before Easter.
 
It's hard to say whether the Emotional Whirlwind ride will be ready & operational by the time you get there. Maybe there's a possibility, but I'm betting that they're working more towards a Memorial Day or SWGE timeline than before Easter.

Thanks. It seems like both the new carousel and Emotional Whirlwind at DCA will probably open later in the Spring rather than in time for our visit. Oh well. Now I am shifting my hopes to the castle. Fingers crossed that the work on it will be complete by our trip so that we can see the castle itself rather than just the scrim around it.
 


We are now less than 6 weeks from our arrival at Disneyland, and the rest of our planning is coming together.

Saturday April 13: After initially planning on no ADRs for our arrival day, my daughter lobbied to go to lunch that day at Café Orleans (she is very excited about Mickey beignets), so I made a reservation for us at 12:30 pm. Our current plan for that day will be to fly out of EWR at 7:00 AM to LAX, then Uber/Lyft from LAX to the Anaheim Desert Inn & Suites (or "ADIS", as we are affectionately calling it), drop our bags off at the hotel, run across Harbor to Disneyland (hopefully arriving by 11 AM or so), explore the park a bit and maybe try to ride a few rides, have lunch at Café Orleans, and then maybe another ride or two before a multi-hour afternoon break. All this time I plan to be stacking FPs on MaxPass for DCA later that day/evening. That night after our break we'll hit DCA and try to ride as many of the rides there as we can before closing at 10. DL is open until midnight that night, so if we have the energy we may head back across the concourse and do a few rides there before retiring for the night, or we may just head back to the hotel after DCA closes since we will probably be exhausted and are planning to RD DL the next morning.

Sunday April 14: On day 2 we will likely focus most of our time at DL. We will definitely be at RD (@WonkaKid , will we see you there?), and our goal will be to finish riding all of the rides at DL that day/night. We have no ADRs scheduled that day, but will probably take another significant mid-afternoon break back at the hotel to recharge before heading back to DL after dark.

Monday April 15: Day 3 will likely be spent hopping back and forth between the two parks and riding any rides that we didn't get to over the weekend and re-riding some of our favorites. We have a 7:40 PM Blue Bayou Fantasmic Dining Package booked that night for dinner, and will then be attending the second showing of F! at 10:30 PM.

Tuesday April 16: Day 4 of our trip will be our day at Knott's Berry Farm. I have already purchased our admission tickets and Fast Lane wristbands for the day. The plan will be to Uber/Lyft from the ADIS to KBF in plenty of time for park opening at 10 AM. We will make a gametime decision whether we might want to head back to the hotel for our usual mid-afternoon break and then return to KBF that night, or whether we just want to stay a little longer during the day and then not return. Some of the roller coasters there seem like they would be awesome after dark, so I am leaning towards the former but we'll play it by ear. In any event, KBF closes at 10 PM that night, so we won't be out too late, which is good because...

Wednesday April 17: Day 5 is our day up at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The park does not open until 10:30 AM, and we have already reserved our member preferred parking for the day, and we also get free admission with our SF membership. Our plan of attack will be to pick up the rental car from the Alamo on Katella by 8 AM or so and then head up to Santa Clarita (likely via the route recommended by @VandVsmama ) so that we can be there before park opening. We will pick up our FlashPass early in the day (our membership gives us an upgrade to Gold, which may be useful given the anticipated Spring Break crowds that week). Given the distance from Anaheim, we won't be able to go back to our hotel for a mid-day break, but we will try to either power through and leave on the early side or take a break somewhere around the park. SFMM closes at 9:00 PM that night. Once we're done, we'll drive back to Anaheim, return the rental car, and head back to the ADIS for a good night's rest before our Magic Morning at DL the next day.

Thursday April 18: Day 6 brings us back to the Disney parks. This is the day we will use our MM at DL, so it will be an early start as we try to maximize our time in FL and/or TL. Based on suggestions, we booked the Plaza Inn character breakfast for 10:20 AM that morning, which should be a nice mid-morning break. After that we have no specific plans until that evening, so we will use our time to re-ride some of our favorite rides, see some shows, and perhaps explore some parts of the parks that we missed during our first few days. That night we have a reservation for the WOC Dessert Party at 9:15 PM (for a 9:45 scheduled WOC show). We may then try to get a few late night rides in depending on how we feel.

Friday April 19: Day 7 is our final day in the parks, so we will RD DL and spend the day park hopping, riding our favorite rides in both parks on repeat, and just soaking up the Disney atmosphere. I'd really like to check out Ballast Point, so I made us a reservation that day for a late lunch at 2 PM. After lunch we will take our mid-afternoon break at the hotel before heading back for our last few hours in the parks that night. If my daughter really loves either F! or WOC we may try to see it again, or we'll just spend the night getting our fill of our favorite DLR foods and rides.

Saturday April 20: This is our departure day, so we need to check out of the ADIS bright and early and Uber/Lyft back to LAX for our 8:15 AM flight back to Newark.

As of now, we are hopeful that there will be 51 rides operating at DLR (34 at DL and 17 at DCA). This is contingent on all rides being operational (I don't believe there are any scheduled to be under refurb during that time), as well as Jessie's Critter Carousel opening by then. The latest announcement is that JCC will be opening "in April" (https://www.ocregister.com/2019/03/...ed-to-open-in-april-at-the-disneyland-resort/), so fingers crossed that it opens before or while we are there. Also hoping that the Castle work is all complete before our trip, as it will be great to have that visible during our trip.

This is where things stand as of today. I'm not specifically planning on booking anything else, but am open to suggestions if anyone thinks there is something else we should be trying. I've appreciated all the tips folks have offered; keep them coming please. Tomorrow starts the 40 day countdown!
 
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How exciting!

I just recently learned that as long as you've entered a park that day you can make the maxpasses anywhere which is awesome! I think thats a great plan to book them while you are out of the park that evening before you head back!
 



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