Canadians visit LA and Disneyland in Aug 2017. Sounds great, eh?

[Canadian Girl 77]

Jetblue flies direct from BUF to LAX. It is a late flight. I just hate all the hassle at Pearson. Waiting two hours to go through customs there last August put me off! We usually make it through customs at BUF very quickly.

 

[Frozen2014]

Flight Watching

There are really neat websites out there that will show you the cost of flights for various options. One example is FlightHub where it provides you a matrix of the cost of each departure and return date combination. I supposed you could figure this out yourself by multiple searches but it certainly saves you the time. You can also track flights and get daily emails of the lowest cost (which is never the actual flight that you want as it’s usually sucky departure and/or arrival times).

SO between the FlightHub matrix and figuring out how many days to spend in LA and in Disney, I came up with a good plan

• leave Thurs Aug 24th

• return Sat Sept 2nd

This will give us 4 full days in LA and lets us keep our Disney days mid week, and lets us recover and get back to Ontario timezone before our kids start school on Tuesday (and DH and I back to work)

Note: Our kids don't know about our trip yet. Hopefully they won't be too upset about missing the last 2 days of camp.

For flights itself, we live near Toronto Ontario and basically narrowed it down to the following options:

1. Fly Toronto to LAX both ways --> direct flight both ways
2. Fly to LAX. Return from Orange County (SNA). --> direct there, 1-stop return
3. Fly Toronto to Burbank. Return from Orange County (SNA). --> 1-stop both ways
4. Fly Toronto to Orange County (SNA) both ways --> 1-stop both ways
5. Drive to Buffalo (2.5-3hr drive) and fly to LAX --> 1-stop both ways

Option 1 is most expensive, but save hassle/stress of connecting flights. On return, we would have to drive back from Anaheim to LAX, which I hear can be a nasty drive.

Option 2 is $500 less than option 1, but has good flight times (e.g. on the way there, leaves 10am, on the way back leaves 9am). Also this option makes logistical sense considering we are starting in LA and ending in Anaheim.

Option 3 is $1000 less than option 1 (big difference!), but flight times are bad (e.g. on the way there, either leave at 6:30am, or another option arrives at 8:30pm at night…which is 11:30pm Ontario time...too late for our kids as we would still need to get luggage, rent car drive and check into hotel). However, makes most sense logistically since our hotel will be closer to Burbank airport than LAX.

Option 4 and 5 are similar in pricing to option 3. (As Canadian Girl mentions above, there is one direct flight from Buffalo but it doesn’t leave until night which doesn’t work for kids).

(I also looked at Long Beach but is more expensive than option 1 as is flying to San Diego)

Well, both emails from FlightHub and the Hopper app are telling me to book now. No idea how their prediction algorithms actually work or if they are accurate, but we'll probably book soon. Pretty sure we’ll go with option 2 for reasons stated. We’ll still have a stop over on the way back, which is stressful as our layover options are 1 hr or 1 hr 42 min (better), both in San Francisco.

 

[Aladora]

I would absolutely go with option 2. Not only is it less money but the airports make more sense. We did option 3 a few trips ago but we were able to get great flight times and since we are in BC there is no time change to worry about. We can never fly without a stop since we first have to get off the island so as long as we are not taking more than 2 flights each way then I am happy.

 

[Frozen2014]

I would absolutely go with option 2. Not only is it less money but the airports make more sense. We did option 3 a few trips ago but we were able to get great flight times and since we are in BC there is no time change to worry about. We can never fly without a stop since we first have to get off the island so as long as we are not taking more than 2 flights each way then I am happy.

Thanks. Option 2 isn't the cheapest option but still a good compromise being mid-way. When travelling with kids, we need to take convenience. If we do the option where we arrive late, then the next day will basically be a waste as they'll be so tired. That's great you were able to fly to BUR as that's the most ideal when touring LA but LAX is still better than Anaheim. And yeah, flying from BC certainly helps if you are still in the same timezone.

 

[VandVsmama]

Option 3 is the most attractive cost-wise. However, I agree with the others and say you should go with option 2...one reason being that if you run into any flight delays or other issues, there are usually more connecting flights from SF to LAX compared with SF to Burbank.

 

[Frozen2014]

Option 3 is the most attractive cost-wise. However, I agree with the others and say you should go with option 2...one reason being that if you run into any flight delays or other issues, there are usually more connecting flights from SF to LAX compared with SF to Burbank.

Thanks. That makes me feel better as there is still the connecting flight on the return trip. But I'd rather get delayed coming home, than on the way there.

 

[DISNEYFOURME]

Here's a sample of the spreadsheet I was tracking for actual wait times. I also included the weather each day, touring plan's predicted crowd level, rain %, and then calculated for each the # rides >= 45 min wait (in red), and the average wait time.

That's amazing. We leave on the 13th otherwise this would have been perfect!

 

[Frozen2014]

That's amazing. We leave on the 13th otherwise this would have been perfect!

"Amazing" isn't the word that DH would use. He thought I was nuts...lol.

Enjoy your trip. We almost went during the same week.

 

[VandVsmama]

SF to Burbank would also probably have a pretty good # of connecting flight options, but there will be more between SF and LAX.

On one particularly bad vacation, my parents had to return early from a trip due to a family emergency and their connecting flight was through JFK. They wouldn't be able to get back home for 2 more days through JFK because of flight delays on their airline...because there were only 2 flights/day from JFK to their destination airport. However, luckily, they were able to switch the connecting flight to leave out of LaGuardia because there were a dozen flights from LaGuardia to their final airport.

 

[Frozen2014]

Where to Stay in LA?

Finding a hotel for our days in LA area is probably the most challenging research so far. LA is huge with so many sub areas. We knew that we’d want to go to Universal for one of our days, do Hollywood tourist stuff and maybe hit a beach area. I also love the Beverly Hills stuff (one can dream of being so rich). We will probably have a car so being near everything isn’t a requirement (and not even possible). But at the same time, we don’t want a 1 hr drive for everything we do.

Our general requirements for a hotel:

• Clean, safe and comfortable with working washrooms
• Under $300 CAD per night (and if close to 300 then it needs to include breakfast)
• Wifi

Not a Requirement but “Nice to Haves”:

• Breakfast included (huge convenience)
• Pool
• Parking

So what area do we stay in? I narrowed it down to 4 different areas: either near Universal Studios (Studio City, Universal, Burbank), Hollywood area (Walk of Fame area), just south Griffith Park , or Beverly Hills.

After much research on TripAdvisor, advice from here, etc., I had "narrowed" it down to

• Hollywood Celebrity
• Hollywood Orchid Suites
• Days Inn Near Universal Studios
• The Dixie Hollywood
• El Royale Hotel Near Universal Studios
• Sportsmen's Lodge
• Farmer’s Daughter
• Century Park Hotel

And above our price range but keeping an eye on

• Magic Castle
• The Garland
• Chain hotels near Universal such as Hilton, Sheraton (very nice but $$$)

After much deliberation, it was between Hollywood Celebrity (#18 out of 347 on TripAdvisor) and Hollywood Orchid Suites (#3 out of 347 on TripAdvisor). Neither are super fancy, but basic and get pretty good reviews. Both include breakfast and wifi. In the end we had decided to stay near Walk of Fame area. I know this isn’t everyone’s area of preference, and I don’t know LA myself. However, I like the idea of having things right there in case we have an hour or two to spare. For example, we can hop in and see Ripley's Museum (our son loves that kind of thing), or the Wax Museum or look at the stars on the sidewalk, or shopping area, etc. These are big pros to us.

The two hotels are quite comparable. Although it’s missing a pool we ended up booking The Hollywood Celebrity as it was a bit less. It’s refundable so don’t mind booking.

But I’m constantly watching prices and tonight (about a month later) I noticed that Hollywood Orchid Suites came down in price so we ended up booking that one too. We’ll obviously cancel one of them before the deadline. When we booked Hollywood Celebrity, we booked it in USD (meaning that the CAD cost to us fluctuates), but the Hollywood Orchid Suites price is locked in CAD. So this may help us decide depending the difference with the dollar.

So now…our hotels for both Disney and LA are booked. We’re getting there.

 

[Frozen2014]

Flights Booked!

As discussed a couple posts back, I have been watching flights and Dh and I had pretty much decided to go with “option 2”, which was to fly direct Toronto to LAX there, and return SNA to Toronto which has 1 stop in San Francisco. The daily emails from FlightHub have been pretty consistent. Last weekend the Hopper app said we should book flights as prices were rising. We still held off but we were planning on booking soon. Luckily we didn’t book right away as Saturday morning I went to charge my phone for the day and noticed the Hopper app said to book now, and the price for a direct flight both ways between Toronto and LAX was super low (same price range and option 3 – with 1-stop both ways). Wow! In total, this was $1000 less than was showing the day before! The times were perfect (e.g. leaving Toronto at 9:30am, and on return leaving LAX at 1pm, which would give us time to drive there from Anaheim). Plus that would mean we don't need to worry about connecting flights at all. I right away showed DH the app notice and at 7:30am in the morning we bought our tickets. Strangely enough our kids, who don’t know about our trip, didn’t question what we were doing even though they were getting hungry for breakfast.

Yippee! We're officially going with our dates set!

 

[chunkymonkey]

Wow you are my trip planning hero. I always struggle to keep up with what parks to visit on which days (for WDW mostly). I look at a bunch of crowd calendars but sometimes they will tell me different things and I have to make the decision which one to choose. I like how you have an almost live-crowd tracker going on! Now that is dedication!

Love the plans so far. Think it is a great option of flights you picked. Saving money while still getting at least one direct leg will be good.
I think you're going at a good time. Although HM will be closed, at least the parks will have their summer hours and won't open late and close early. We went on Sept 5th-10 and we felt as if we spent very little time at the parks because of the shortened hours.

 

[Frozen2014]

Wow you are my trip planning hero. I always struggle to keep up with what parks to visit on which days (for WDW mostly). I look at a bunch of crowd calendars but sometimes they will tell me different things and I have to make the decision which one to choose. I like how you have an almost live-crowd tracker going on! Now that is dedication!

Love the plans so far. Think it is a great option of flights you picked. Saving money while still getting at least one direct leg will be good.
I think you're going at a good time. Although HM will be closed, at least the parks will have their summer hours and won't open late and close early. We went on Sept 5th-10 and we felt as if we spent very little time at the parks because of the shortened hours.

Thanks! I love the planning part and it was actually fun noting down the times, knowing one of those weeks will be our week next year. Besides, what else to do when you have over a year until your trip? lol
We've only been to WDW once, but know what you mean. It's more complicated there, and with 4 parks to choose from, its hard figuring out which park on which day.

Yeah, disappointed about HM, and especially knowing my DD will be, but great to know that the week is still good with respect to hours. Sounds like one week makes a difference. The crowds must have been pretty good though that first week in September.

 

[Frozen2014]

How Many Days?

To be or not to be is the number one question. How many days is the second question. And of course, the third question is, should we get park hoppers? You’ll see the second and third questions posted over and over again on the Disneyland boards, with myself included.

At Disney World, we bought 5 park day tickets (plus Halloween party ticket), which we did 4 full days + 1 evening + party. Disneyland has only 2 parks so it seems like we would only need half the time. But…the original purpose of this whole trip is to go to Disney so seems silly to go all that way, and only spend 2 days there. And although the parks are physically different sizes, I keep hearing that the number of rides are similar. It’s just that they are not spread out (which is nice on the feet, or car/bus travel time). So was thinking maybe 4 days. I have mentioned this to two different friends who have been to Disneyland, and they both thought we were nuts as "you’ll only need 1 to 1.5 days". Oh oh…have we over estimated? I question too as my son won’t go on rides that go in the dark or upside down, my daughter likes most rides but is also cautious, my husband has a sensitive stomach for spinning and roller coaster rides and I am limited to quick accelerating rides due to eye health issues. Nevertheless, thinking about it, I am happy with our decision for a few reasons.

• We won’t feel rushed to get everything done.
• We like shows so can make sure to catch them all (whatever is playing in the summer)
• August will be hot. So we will want to take breaks from the rides and thus, won’t feel guilty of missing precious park time
• It's Disney. How can we get bored?

As for park hoppers, you’ll hear different opinions. Having never been, I can’t say, but I do like the flexibility of not having to stick to a park when it’s so easy to logistically switch from one to another. Not sure we’ll keep running back and forth, but apparently you can have FastPass at both parks as they aren’t connected. It's nice if we want to repeat a ride or area, or there is a show at one of the parks in the day or evening that we want to catch. The difference is only about $160 CAD so for that amount, we thought why not.

Thus, 4-day park hopper tickets it will be.

 

[jenng1983]

Hi! Following along!

I'm also Canadian, but from Alberta. I will have to look into that Forex credit card when we get back from our June trip, for next time! We are planning on using cash for everything except the hotel due to the horrible foreign exchange rates.

If you're still looking for input on hotels, we're staying at the PVI. We stayed there last year and LOVED it. Literally across the street from the gates. Such a delight to be so exhausted and not have far to go. Their breakfast was good, rooms were clean, staff was friendly. AMAZING!

 

[Frozen2014]

Hi! Following along!

I'm also Canadian, but from Alberta. I will have to look into that Forex credit card when we get back from our June trip, for next time! We are planning on using cash for everything except the hotel due to the horrible foreign exchange rates.

If you're still looking for input on hotels, we're staying at the PVI. We stayed there last year and LOVED it. Literally across the street from the gates. Such a delight to be so exhausted and not have far to go. Their breakfast was good, rooms were clean, staff was friendly. AMAZING!

Hi again. Thanks for following. I hear you on using cash vs cc. Hopefully by the summer the dollar slowly rises cause the exchange is painful now. Thankful they have the Canadian discount on tickets.

We looked at Park Vue Inn, and it was down to that or its neighbour Desert Inn. We went with the latter as it's a touch cheaper, even though i've heard the breakfast isn't quite as nice (but it Desert Inn still offers one). We're also touring LA so every bit we save does help. Both are at an amazing location. Hopefully will be ok with any construction.

 

[Frozen2014]

Park Tickets

Disney is offering 25% discount for Canadians on 3+ park tickets if bought before Feb 28, 2017. For Disney World, the tickets don’t expire. For Disneyland, the first use of the tickets must be by Dec 31, 2017. Whoohoo! This is great as we decided our trip before we even saw this deal. Perfect!

My understanding is that February is a regular time for Disney to raise prices. Thus, we made sure to buy our tickets in January. Why pay 25% off of the raised price? Not sure yet if prices will rise, but no reason to hold off and see.

Our total for 4 day park hoppers in CAD ends up being the cost of 4 day park hopper in USD. Thus, Disney is obviously trying to lure Canadians so we don’t feel the pain of the bad exchange rate. We’ll take it.

Flights booked. Check.
Park tickets bought. Check.
LA and Anaheim hotels booked. Check.

 

[jenng1983]

Way to go on all the booking!

 

[Frozen2014]

What To Do in LA?

So now on to researching LA. I was there once with my dad when I was 15 years old. I’m totally into the movie/Hollywood stuff so this was such a perfect trip for me. We had done a tour of the star homes and the rich areas, went to Universal Studios (which was just tour and stunt show type stuff back then), went to Malibu beach (which you never hear anyone mention). I remember too that we stayed at a hotel across from the ABC office tours in Century City (which you often see in the movies so that was really cool) . Ironically, I remember my dad giving me the choice of going to Knott’s Berry Farm or Disneyland. No idea why but I selected Knott’s Berry Farm. Go figure.

On our second last day, we were relaxing at the hotel pool and we saw these helicopters kept landing in the area on the other side of the hotel fence. It was like they were practising. We wondered what that was about and found out afterwards that it was Ronald Reagan's "people" checking out where he would land (i.e. for security and all). We had apparently just missed him on our LA trip. The day we went to the airport, Reagan was landing at our hotel. That was pretty cool! I probably just aged myself..lol.

Ok…for this trip, what to do? I did research and noted all suggestions on a new tab in my spreadsheet…. there’s the area where we are staying with the Chinese Theatre and walk of fame, wax museums, Ripley’s museum, Hollywood museum. Then there are other museums such as Children’s museum, Discovery cube, La Brae Tar Pits, etc. There’s Santa Monica Pier, Newport Beach, Venice Beach or Huntington Beach. There’s Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. There’s Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory. There’s the Farmer’s Market and The Grove. I even noted food treat places like Millions of Milkshakes, Sweet Candy Shop and Randy’s Donuts. And there is movie stuff such as Universal Studios, Warner Brother’s Tour, Paramount Tour. And of course, there are lots of other tourist places I’m not even mentioning.

At first, I was thinking Universal Studios or Warner Brothers, but then thought why not both? My son loves Harry Potter and they both cover that. My daughter also loves theatre and behind the scenes so although she is only 7 (8 when we travel), I think she’ll really appreciate that. DH will enjoy both too. Our full non-travel LA days would be Friday, Saturday, Sunday (and Monday, but we'll need to switch from LA to Anaheim at some point). Based on crowd calendars, Friday seems like a good fit for Universal...so one day decided. Hopefully we won't be jet lagged from the travel the day before.

Next step was to narrow down what works for us. I also started researching tours to see which of the above could be covered by a tour, and was a good fit (e.g. La Brae Tar Pits might not be the best for a tour as we wouldn’t have time to explore). I had noted about 8 different tours (3 within Starline and some others). And to add to the complexity, would a Go Card make sense for us?

Back to the spreadsheet. I started coming up with various permutations of possible schedules. After much research, I found a Guideline Tour (Grand LA City Tour) that covers a lot of things on our wish list…. Griffith Observatory, Beverly Hills/Rodeo Drive, Farmer’s Market/The Grove, star homes, and Chinese Theatre, etc. It seems like a good mix so that’s on our list (for now).

For a beach option, I thought Santa Monica Pier would be a good mix…some beach time, the pier area looks fun with the Ferris wheel, and shopping near by.

I keep hearing how La Brae Tar Pits is great for kids so that’s probably on our list. Also, Children’s Museum is an option.

The location of our hotel makes the Hollywood stuff (e.g. Wax Museum) flexible and we can go anytime.

With all my permutations of possible schedules, I think I’ve come up with a good one. Funny how originally, I wondered if 4.5 days in LA would be too much, but now it’s hard to fit in everything.

 

[Frozen2014]

Yesterday we had an ice storm so good time to add another entry in my pre-report (thinking of summer!)

Summary of Plans So Far

1. Thurs Aug 24th: Arrive at LAX around 12pm. Either rent car or uber to our Hotel in Hollywood, LA (Hollywood Orchid Suites or Hollywood Celebrity Hotel). Explore Hollywood Blvd area for rest of day.
2. Fri Aug 25th: Universal Studios
3. Sat Aug 26th: Grand LA City Tour 9:15pm - 2:15pm (Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Sign, Walk of Fame, Chinese Theatre, Sunset Strip, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Farmer's Market, The Grove, Star Homes). Hang out at Hollywood Blvd area for rest of day. Possibly visit Ripley's Museum or Wax Museum
4. Sun Aug 27th: Warner Brother's Tour in morning. Then head to Santa Monica Blvd for beach time, pier time and Third Street shopping area. Note: If didn't rent a car initially at LAX, then rent car first thing in morning at car rental near hotel.
5. Mon Aug 28th: Check out of LA hotel. Go to La Brae Tar Pits and/or California Science Centre. Drive to Anaheim and check into Desert Inn & Suites. Return rental car.
6. Tues Aug 29th: Disneyland / DCA - park hopper
7. Wed Aug 30th: Disneyland / DCA - park hopper
8. Thurs Aug 31st: Disneyland / DCA - park hopper. Probably use magic morning here if didn't use Tuesday. (note: 1/2 day marathon so parks may be more crowded).
9. Fri Sept 1st: Disneyland / DCA - park hopper
10. Sat Sept 2: Return to LAX for flight leaving back home at 1pm. Boo hoo!