Planning to Travel Part III: Disneyland

We've gone a few times with the girls. I am not a theme park lover. But I love Disneyland. We have great family memories. I haven't gone in the summer since I was a teen, but the crowds are greater then and the planning will be more important. I would say crucial. Even if you hate to plan. Of course, if you go for a week the plan won't be as important. But because I am neither made of money nor a theme park lover I can do Disneyland for about two days. Then the magic is gone.

We always fly into John Wayne/Orange County airport, which is smaller than LAX but much closer and the tickets usually cost the same or less. We take a taxi to Disneyland because it is the cheapest for the four of us (versus a shuttle or several days of rental car) and then we don't have to figure out traffic. Sometimes you can find limo services for the same price as a taxi and be whisked away in leather towncar fabulousness. If you plan on continuing to the beach or other destinations you can always get a car later. Why pay to have it parked?

The first time we went I got the book The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland and read/devoured it for tips. We used one of the touring plans in the back of the book. It helped. The book also gives you the scoop on things like early entry, rides and shows, and restaurants and hotels that are nearby.

But then I found a little thing called Ridemax.

Ridemax is true.

It is software some enterprising person devised that creates personalized touring plans of the Disney parks. They make the plan for you, better than you can do it yourself. Beautiful.

I guess they study traffic flow, popularity of rides, wait times, etc., and put it all together with some complicated wizardry to analyze the patterns within the Disneyland parks so you can take the road less traveled. You can Google it to find the site. They'll describe it better than I can.

So you put your information into the system: the day you'll be in the park-- Disneyland or California Adventure, although they also have Ridemax for Disneyworld -- and your estimated arrival time and departure, which attractions you want to do that day, how long your afternoon break will be -- and trust me, you'll want to do that to cope with sensory overload for you and the kiddoes -- if you move fast or slow (choose slow) and whether you can send a runner for fastpasses. I'm the runne. And BTW, it helps if the runner is familiar with the basic park layout. So unless you grew up in the OC or spent every summer of your life visiting Disneyland, get a map and study it before you arrive.

Once you've put in all your preferences, Ridemax whirrs away and spits out an itinerary with the order in which you go to each attraction, complete with times so you know if you are staying on schedule. If you don't like it for whatever reason you can re-run the program for an alternate plan. I do that when I don't like the afternoon break schedule or I don't like the ordered mix of rides. But I print out the first option first so I can compare. You can do that as little or as much as you like. Guess which category I fall into?

Ridemax also estimates how much time you'll stand in line with the itinerary plan v. doing it yourself. On busy days you can save hours. Hours, people! Spontanaeity is not all it's cracked up to be. Gimme the plan. Last trip we got ahead of schedule and rode the Matterhorn twice with no wait.

You can print out several Ridemax versions for each day with15 min. arrival intervals if you think you may run late in the morning. Better safe than sorry, I say. I guess if you bring a laptop with you on vacation, something I discourage, you can do it each morning before you leave your hotel. But I don't recommend that plan. What if the WiFi is down? What if you sleep late and there is no time to work your plan? What if the hotel's printer is out of paper? Make the plan. Take the plan. Be the plan. : )

Again, this is not spontaneous theme park behavior. Your kids have to be prepared so they know you'll be walking past certain rides but coming back later. Our girls were fine with it. They were excited to be there, we'd explained the schedule to them, and miraculously they suspended their usual need to question my actions in the thrall of vacation extraordinariness. I heart Ridemax. It is right up my alley. Check out the Europe post: I am Ridemax.

If you are big autograph seekers you would have to skip parts of your itinerary to stand in line for them and still stay on track. We don't do autograph lines. But we always go to Goofy's Kitchen in the Disneyland Hotel for an early character dinner the day we arrive. This is the night before we enter the parks. The kids get to see several characters and get their fix and it introduces the Disney fun without adding an extra day on the ticket. Which is good, because Goofy's aint cheap. Then we go to the hotel, swim if we haven't been to the pool already, and get to bed at a reasonable time so everyone is fresh in the morning.

One benefit of going to CA is that with the two-hour time difference we can sleep normally and still be up early for park entrance the first day. How old are your kids? We used the big park strollers part of the time. They are big enough for most grade-schoolers and great for stowing drinks and stuff -- the kids love being tooled around and they also get to relax in the shade while we push them around the park and are therefore happier. We got one for our first grader last year and our fifth grader wanted one by the afternoon. Not much excessive vanity at our house.

We've stayed all over the place. The first time we stayed at the Embassy Suites one. John loves the big FREE made to order breakfast, as do the kids, and I like putting the kids on the pullout and having my own room. Another time we stayed at the Howard Johnson's because of its great reviews; it is nothing fancy but we had a nice-sized quad room with a balcony and park view, two blocks down across from the main entrance. Last trip we were at the Hilton adjacent to the convention center. It's reviews were mixed, but we had a very nice stay there.

Each hotel had it's perks. We walked from HoJo's and took the resort transport for a small fee for the other two. I think I like the Embassy Suites the least -- but mabe because it was the first trip and we were farthest away on the transport route and breakfast was a huge atrium affair. When we stayed at HoJos we had breakfast in the room (cereal and fruit) or at the Mimi's next door.

I've never stayed on Disneyland property, but Karen and I are going to do that this December as our birthday celebration. Because you should celebrate getting older by acting like a kid.

We've already started to plan.