One Day at Disneyland and California Adventure

DisneyUSA Travel Guide
Written By Jordan Booth

What can I say? I love a Disney park. I’ve been to Walt Disney World over 20 times (competitive cheerleader and family also loves Disney), Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland in California once. This was my second time visiting Disneyland and California Adventure and it was great having an entire day to spend at the two parks.

Let’s get into the details.

Price

Every time I visit a Disney park, I opt for the park hopper option - meaning I can visit multiple parks in one day. For a one-day park hopper option, it was $234.

We also visited during the Food & Wine Festival, so my friend and I bought the sip and savor pass for $68 which included 8 picks from the full menu of choices. I thought this was a great deal as most menu items were over $13 and this made each $8.50.

Parks

When booking a park hopper, you typically have to reserve which park to start in and can’t visit another park until after a certain time. We chose to start at Disneyland and could visit California Adventure after 11am.

When we entered the park, we immediately saw the core characters (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, etc) with super short lines so we got a cute picture with Mickey. Then we booked it to the very back of the park to Star Wars Land. We hopped in the single-rider line for Millenium Falcon: Smugglers Run and walked straight onto the ride without waiting. Rise of the Resistance was down for the moment, so we continued on to New Orleans Square for some snacks. We got the Mickey beignets, mint julep (mint lemonade), and cheesy biscuits. Of all of these, I recommend the mint julep and the cheesy biscuits.

Then we went over rode a few rides in quick succession:

  • Indiana Jones

  • Big Thunder Mountain

  • Tea Cups

Then it was time to hop over to California Adventure! As soon as we walked in, we bought the sip and savor pass and bought our items. We ordered:

  • sirloin and gruyere mac and cheese

  • lemon pepper wings

  • mini street hot dog

  • chicken taquito

  • bbq burger baw bun

  • musubi fried rice

  • birria mac and cheese

  • cherry pie pot de creme

We ordered them all at the shortest line and then the trick is to pick up throughout the day at their respective booth pick-up lines when they’re short.

We also got some cocktails/drinks:

  • spring beer flight

  • mango guava vodka cocktail

  • mango peach mimosa

  • mango chamoy margarita

  • mango grapefruit paloma

  • dole whip shots

We rode single-rider Incredicoaster, but it didn’t cut down on the wait time any, so I wouldn’t recommend it. We also rode Radiator Springs Racers. Guardians of the Galaxy only had 2 working elevators out of 6 so the wait time was 4 hours…

We decided to give Rise of the Resistance a shot before we left, so we walked back to Disneyland (magic of the park hopper) and got in line. However, after 20ish minutes of waiting, the ride went down again. So we waited maybe 30 minutes and then decided to call it a day :)

Tips

  • Get the park hopper!

  • Create a strategy! I liked starting at the back of the park and working our way across. We also knew we’d be spending more time eating/drinking in California Adventure, so it was nice to spend the morning at Disneyland and make our way back after our food tour.

  • Get the sip and savor pass and split with a friend or two!

Jordan Booth
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