After years of dragging the kids from one National Park to another, we finally succumbed to the long awaited trip to Disneyland. We gifted the trip to the kids for Christmas this year. They were all excited as they opened up suitcases with Mickey and Minnie t-shirts wrapped inside them. We had planned the trip with two other families and rented a house with a pool and hot tub in the backyard. We purchased three day park hopper passes with Genie+, made our reservations, and were ready to go.

We flew into Orange County on the Sunday of President’s Day weekend, arriving around noon. We didn’t have access to our house until 4:00pm, so we hauled all our luggage to Downtown Disney to wander around. Come to find out, you cannot pull suitcases through Downtown Disney, so the nice folks at the Disneyland Hotel stored our bags for us while we meandered around.

Downtown Disney was so fun to wander around. Some of us grabbed Wetzel’s Pretzels (if you’ve never had a Wetzel Pretzel, do yourself a favor and find one ASAP), others sat in a restaurant for a burger and a beer. We strolled in and out of shops and the kids started making their wish lists for their souvenir shopping. We then grabbed a scoop of Salt & Straw before heading back to the hotel to grab our bags and settle in at the house.

After our first Uber driver declined our ride due to all of our luggage, we finally found a driver to get us from the Disneyland Hotel to the house. It was approximately 1.5 miles away from the park, super cute, though much more run down than the pictures eluded. Our friends have family that live in the area, and they were kind enough to come over and make us a delicious taco dinner our first night there. It was so good, I had three tacos!

We then spent our first full day in California in the pool and hot tub. While Californian’s were freezing in the unusually cold weather, the true Oregonians were swimming and sunbathing in the backyard. Us Mom’s also took a quick Uber trip to the near by Target for some items on our shopping list. *Sidenote – the Target nearest the park has a huge selection of Disney merch at a much cheaper price than inside the park!

We then spent the next three consecutive days in the park. We had purchased Park Hopper tickets with Genie+ with our first two days starting in Disneyland and our final day starting in California Adventure. We were able to hop between parks as early as 11:00am each day.

Each morning, we were up by 5:30am and out the door by 6:45 to get to the park for Rope Drop. Once you go through security and then through the ticket line, you can walk through Main Street Disney toward the rides where they have a rope blocking off the walkway to the rides.

There were two rides at Disney (Rise of the Resistance and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run) and one at California Adventure (Radiator Springs Racers) that we wanted to hit first thing. Rise and Racers costs extra to jump in the Lightning Lane and the other always has a super long wait. (Pro-tip: both mornings we started in Disney, cast members at Rope Drop were telling us that Rise of the Resistance was closed. The second day we powered through and stood in line anyway, and it opened shortly after opening. So even if they say it’s closed, head that direction anyway.) There is no extra cost to stand in the stand-by lane, we were just trying to avoid the long wait times. We opted for the single rider line at Cars for our first ride of the day on day three at California Adventure. Even though we ran straight there after the Rope Drop, the line was already an hour wait by the time we got there.

As soon as we got our first couple of rides done each day, we started using the Genie+ service. We watched a few YouTube videos, this one being helpful for example, on how to navigate with this service. I was so overwhelmed before we got there, but by the end of the trip we were Genie+ pros!

Some of our favorite Disney rides were Space Mountain, Matterhorn (the Genie+ side, not the single rider side!), Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Rise of the Resistance, Millennium Falcon and Splash Mountain. Some of our favorite California Adventure rides were Incredicoaster, Soaring California, Goofy’s Sky School, Webslingers, Radiator Springs Racers and Guardians of the Galaxy. The other nice thing about the Genie+ is that our ride photos were included. So each time we’d get off a ride, we’d snap a photo of the picture code on the screen and then upload it to our app.

We also enjoyed some really good food in the park. We had the beignets, churros, Dole Whip, cookies, hand dipped corn dogs, an orange creamsicle vodka drink, pizza and more. Some of the items felt spendy while others seemed more reasonable than we imagined. The key to food is finding places you can Mobile Order at. On the app, you can sort the map to show you what places that’s available at. This helped cut down on the time we had to wait in line for things. We also brought in sandwiches and lots of snacks to the park.

The other thing the kids enjoyed doing was meeting various characters throughout the park. Josie wanted so badly to meet Elsa, so her and I stood in line for two hours only to make our way back and see that only Anna was there. When we asked Cast Members who would be back there, they said they didn’t know and we’d have to wait and see. I was nervous she’d be disappointed, but Josie was overcome with excitement meeting, talking to and posing for a picture with Anna. We also met other characters throughout the park, Goofy, Donald Duck, Pooh, Peter Pan and Wendy, Thor, and more. Henry and Josie also enjoyed getting autographs of all the characters!

We had so much fun at both Disneyland and California Adventure! But we were exhausted by the end of Day Three.

We didn’t fly out until Saturday, so we had all day Friday to find something to do. It was down pouring all day, but one of our friends found a cool place called the Anaheim Packing District. It was an old citrus packing house turned gourmet food hall with different restaurants throughout the building. Everyone found something delicious to eat!

All in all, it was such a fun and exhausting trip. It was one of those that I need a vacation from my vacation. But we did miss the major snow storm that hit Oregon while we were gone, so we were thankful for that! It won’t be for awhile, but I can assure you we’d all love to go back to Disneyland and California Adventure sooner than later!