First trip, need some suggestions about transportation

MaC410

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 29, 2015
Hello all! My wife and I are planning our first trip to Disneyland. We have a little over a week booked at an off-site hotel. Since most of our time will be spent at the parks we didn't plan on renting a car and just using either uber or the disneyland resort express to get to and from the airport.

Since we will be staying for a good amount of time we were also thinking about taking a day trip or two to visit the hollywood area. Our plan is to use our first two days at the Disney parks, then take use two days for hollywood/universal and then finish out our trip with 3 days at the Disney parks again.

Planning the hollywood/universal day trips is giving us some trouble. There's so many options to do this so I'm looking for some suggestions. Should we just rent a car for those two days? Should we use uber? Should we book a tour service that provides transportation to where we want to go? Just looking to see what other people have done since we obviously aren't the first people to do this.
 
Uber from Disneyland to Universal Studios looks like it's about $80 - $100 each way so I would rent a car. I don't think I would like a tour where I couldn't set my own schedule.
 
This is a little more cumbersome, but I wouldn't want to have a car and have to park it and such while in LA proper. I would take a train in and then use the subway to get around. You can get to Hollywood, Universal, etc. all very easily on the subway. The most complicated part is the train from Anaheim as that will be a commuter line. I think that should take you to Union Station and then you can use the subway. You can always use Uber/Lyft for short jumps throughout the city too.
 
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Uber from Disneyland to Universal Studios looks like it's about $80 - $100 each way so I would rent a car. I don't think I would like a tour where I couldn't set my own schedule.

Yea the high price of an uber trip like that was making us not lean towards that option. We have the same concerns about the tours where we can't set our own schedule and most tours end up returning earlier than we would like to. The only thing that makes me hesitant about the rental car option is driving in that traffic and parking. Universal parking I'm not worried about. Mostly worried about what we will do about parking when we visit the other hollywood sights.
 


Yea the high price of an uber trip like that was making us not lean towards that option. We have the same concerns about the tours where we can't set our own schedule and most tours end up returning earlier than we would like to. The only thing that makes me hesitant about the rental car option is driving in that traffic and parking. Universal parking I'm not worried about. Mostly worried about what we will do about parking when we visit the other hollywood sights.
As far as traffic, driving in LA surprised my hubs and I. It was weird in an unexpected way. People let us merge and didn't cut us off. It's not like that in Portland, haha, where everyone seems willing to run you over for being in "their" lane!
 
Not a fan of tour services, too restrictive on times and options.

Personally..I would rent a car and drive to open places like Universal but for the touristy busy areas just leave car at your Hollywood hotel and Uber in and around from there. Does not need to be either/or.

I travel a ton for work and we Uber to and from places and the hotels all the time even when we have our car with us. Just a heck of a lot easier sometimes.
 
We Uber'd from Disney to Universal - looking back at my receipts, it was $53 there and $70 back. Not really cheap, but it was definitely the easiest route for us. And by the time we'd rent a car and pay for gas and parking, I figured it would probably even out in the end.
 


Another suggestion, just to think about: would it be possible to start your trip in Hollywood/USH, do USH and all the Hollywood sites you want to see (then you wouldn't have to rent a car, using Uber/Lyft would be easy, using public transport like the Red Line would be easy, etc.), then end your trip in Anaheim with all your DLR days in a row? If you want to break up your DLR days, you could put a shopping day or a beach day in there. Some posters say that they find USH disappointing after being at DLR -- don't know if that will be true for you, but it is something to consider if the Disney magic has a strong hold for you -- so they prefer to get other parks done first, then finish a trip with all Disney days.
 

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