Max Passes are 10$ a day I believe?
No, those were the good old days... now they’re $15 per person per day (hence the original poster’s accurate $60 for two people & two days).
My suggestion would be a definite, absolute, wholehearted YES on the park hoppers. Since you won’t have early admission, get up early and start at the park that does NOT have early admission that morning. If you are like me, you will potentially run out of things to do in California Adventure in the afternoon, when you will be happy to have your hoppers, allowing you to shift over to Disneyland (which has so much more stuff to do & usually also closes much later than the other park). If you have gotten Maxpass, you may, at that time, have some great Fastpasses lined up, allowing you to do lots of great rides after hopping across, even if the parks are busy.
I would suggest that you do NOT get Maxpass when buying your tickets but that you instead add it on using your app once you are scanned into the park. This way you can use it on the first day (for a pricetag of $30 for the two of you) and can then, on day two, decide based on that experience if you feel that it’s worth it to get it again or not.
Maxpass is simply a more convenient interface for DLand’s (“Legacy”) Fastpass system (with a few very nice additional perks that may come in handy if you only have two days & don’t know when you’ll be able to visit again in the future).
Special Maxpass perks are:
(a) the ability to draw more passes overall, due to the wait time for getting another if you have a late return time is only 90 mins and not, as when using the traditional FP kiosks, 120 min (those different 30 mins chunks do add up!),
(b) the convenience of, once scanned into either park, being able to draw Fastpasses from any of the two parks, given the system’s rules and limitations (there are some fantastic Fastpass strategy threads here on the Disneyland portion of the Disboards site, which are well worth reading, regardless of which of the two methods of access—Maxpass or kiosk—you end up using), which will make for far greater efficiency in your touring and less achy feet, especially if you park hop,
(c) the ability to access canceled Fastpasses later during the day, when the regular ones have run out.
Besides those three perks, anything else that Maxpass can do, legacy Fastpass can do, too, with a little more legwork...
So if you get Maxpass day-by-day rather than for the entire trip ahead of time, you are only out $30, if you decide you won’t need it for day two, or, if you do get it on both days, you’ll be able to do so with the knowledge that you’re making a well-informed decision.
Whatever you decide, I’m sure you will have an amazing time!
