Disneyland California Review!

I recently went to Disneyland for the first time! It was a ton of fun! We went for two and a half days and stayed in the Disneyland Paradise Pier hotel.

Hotel

We stayed in the Disneyland Paradise Pier hotel, which lets us have Magic Morning – that’s where we can get into one of the parks (you don’t pick which one though) an hour early, which is really nice so that we can go on some rides before everyone else gets there.

The hotel room was pretty small, but it had two beds, a pullout couch, a nice view of the California Adventure Park, a fridge, safe, closet, TV, and a bathroom.

The hotel also had a restaurant downstairs and a fireworks viewing room. There is a cool little room on the first floor where you can watch Disney cartoons.

Fireworks

We were lucky enough to be driving right towards Disneyland during the fireworks show, and even drove right under the grand finale! Unfortunately, the next two nights the fireworks got canceled because it was too windy. Apparently this happens a lot, so I wouldn’t count on being able to see fireworks every single night. They were super awesome the first night though!

Food

As you know if you’ve read this blog before, I’m gluten free. We did Legoland gluten free a while ago, and it went well, so I was hopeful. I wasn’t disappointed! The staff is super helpful and is happy to make gluten free pasta, pizza, sandwiches, and hamburgers (and a whole bunch of other stuff) gluten free! Make sure you specify your allergy – they have allergy menus and if you order in the Disneyland app then you can view the allergy menu for Gluten/Wheat and then order!

We mostly used the app to order our food, which was nice because then we didn’t have to wait in line and we could order from further away and then once we got to the restaurant then our food was ready.

If you have an allergy, I would for sure bring snacks into the park. Bring water and sunscreen too! Water and small snacks are super expensive to buy in the park, so I would suggest bringing some.

Rides and lines

The lines at Disneyland are super long, especially for the Autopia ride and Radiator Springs Racers rides. The ranges for rides, like It’s a Small World, could be anything between 5 minutes and 75! Sometimes during rainy weather then some rides get closed – we got a Fastpass for Radiator Springs Racers but then it got closed because of the weather. This happened multiple times on our trip.

Fastpass is super useful, especially for rides that get long lines, like Matterhorn. You can get one about once every hour.

Disneyland Overall

Disneyland was awesome! I really enjoyed it but I do wish the lines were shorter and that I had gotten to see more fireworks. It was a super fun trip though, and I would for sure go again!

Have you ever been to Disneyland? Did you like it?