🎠DISNEYLAND REGRETS!! + SO many tips!!! Disneyland with 4 kids🎡

I don't feel like I could start a Disney video without my ears. So I actually got these off Amazon. I'll have them linked in the description. Hey guys, welcome back to another video. Today, I'm going to be going over all of the details of our Disneyland trip that we just took and a lot of the regrets that we have. It's been a few years since we've been to Disney. In fact, we had taken our twins, who are our oldest, five times by the time they were five years old. And then we haven't been back in five years. So they don't even remember any of the times that we've taken them. And I have forgotten all of the things, all of the things that are do's and don'ts of going to Disney. I think also because this time around, we do have two additional children. So we had four kids ranging from one to 10. So there's just a whole lot going on. And I feel like I could have been a lot more prepared. And so we were thinking of possibly taking another trip in October. And I'm kind of doing this video for me too, to remind myself of the things that I need to remember next time to make it go a little bit more smoothly. But to start, I feel like I need to show you my one souvenir that I got for myself. And that was this mug. Are you kidding? Are you kidding? And it has the two faces. If you guys know my love for The Nightmare Before Christmas, this will make sense. So yeah, it's a mug. You'll probably see this all over my Instagram come Halloween, because I'm going to be drinking out of this every single day. I just think this was so fun. Also, if you're new here and you miss my Halloween videos, this was from a few years ago, actually. I did a whole DIY on these costumes, the whole crew of Nightmare Before Christmas. So I will have those linked below. The only other souvenirs I would say that we got, and I don't know if I would even consider this a souvenir, but this is what my twins wanted. They were 10. And this was the number one thing that they wanted were some autograph books for all of the characters to sign. So this was the number one thing they wanted. As far as cost, just get these at Disneyland. They're the same price on Amazon or anywhere I've ever seen them. They're like 9.99 if I remember right. But do not buy the pens. Those are, I think, about the same price, and they're the worst pens. So make sure you bring a pen with you to Disney if you have these books. Okay, I was done filming, and I totally forgot about something else that we did as far as souvenirs go. So if you guys have ever heard of at Star Wars Land that you can build your own lightsaber, well, we looked into that, and it's very expensive. It might be like $200 per lightsaber. So we found another way that you can still have the experience of building a lightsaber at Disney without it costing very much. So our twins built these two lightsabers. I think it came in six different parts, and you get to choose everything that you want to include, like the color and just all the different parts. And it was only $29 per lightsaber. They got it at Disneyland. They got to build it themselves. It was actually at the Downtown Disney, so it's outside of the park, but it's right down that strip at the Star Wars store. So that's where you're going to be able to build your own lightsaber, and you're going to save a ton of money, but your kids will still have that experience of building their own. I have a lot of stuff to talk about. So I opened up a Q&A on my Instagram, so I'm going to go over a lot of those questions. But the first thing I want to talk about are the regrets that I have. One of them being we had contemplated bringing our youngest, who is, he'll be two in August, but he is very difficult to deal with right now. This is, I would say, if there were the terrible twos, he's experiencing them right now. He's very hard in the car, which Disney was a 10 plus hour drive from our house. So we thought all this through, and we were like, okay, we're going to leave him with my mom, and then also my husband, Thomas' mom. So we had organized all of this. They had planned to each take him for two days, and then we were just going to have our five-year-old and our two 10-year-olds, which I know Disney isn't necessarily for the young children. Like I said before, we took our twins basically every year until they were five, and they literally don't even remember going at five. So I know taking young kids is kind of more for the adults. I wouldn't say that we regret taking him, but there are some moments that I definitely did. Before we made this decision, we were on our way to take our youngest, Elliot, to my mom's. We were dropping him off, and right at that last minute, I'm like, I think we should just bring him. So we brought him. He was actually pretty good on the way down and on the way back. Surprisingly, he was pretty good in the car, but at Disneyland, he threw the worst tempers that he's ever thrown in his entire life. He just wanted to be able to walk around. So when we would put him in the stroller and take him somewhere else, he was so frustrated and would scream. I've never heard him scream. So if I could go back, I would definitely have left him. I know that sounds mean probably, but I think our whole experience would have been a little bit better if he wasn't throwing tantrums the entire time. Now that we're home, we are glad we have those memories with him and that we took him because there were some really cool experiences with him there. But if you're contemplating leaving a kid, stick with that gut feeling. Basically, I would say, however the naughtiest your kid will be, he'll be naughtier at Disney. That was my experience anyway. But the other thing is, again, we took young, young kids to Disney, and we've never had a problem. So it kind of depends on your kid. I did get a lot of questions on, should I leave younger kids at home? And so that's just my suggestion. If your kids are great all the time, then they're probably going to be great at Disney. My twins have always been great kids, even when they were really, really young, and I've never had any issues. And at Disney, they were perfect. So this was a little bit of a shock to us to have this kind of experience. Anyway, I don't want to talk about that one thing for too long. I have a lot of things I need to cover. Another regret is if you have kids, I would say, honestly, under probably eight, bring a stroller. So we have a little stroller, and then we have a big wagon stroller that actually can seat four people in it. I know you're not allowed to bring... I don't think you're allowed to bring actual wagons to Disney, but this is a stroller. It looks like a wagon, but it's actually considered a stroller. We decided against bringing that, and I regret that so bad. If you can get at least a double wide stroller or something like that. Our second youngest, Ezra, he is five years old, and he was complaining the whole time about his feet hurting. And I remember back when we took our five-year-olds, we actually had them in strollers the whole time. So on that second day, we were going to rent a stroller, and then we had a lot of things going on that day, so we didn't end up renting one. So that's just another regret, is having a stroller for both my baby and my five-year-old Ezra. Another regret is making sure, double, triple, quadruple check that you have all of your batteries. Our camera died on the first day, and I could not find the charger or the battery that I thought I brought, which we did end up finding it in a glove box. So I don't know how it got there. Just make sure that if you're bringing cameras, know exactly where you are putting them when you're putting them in the car or whatever, because I feel like we've lost out on a lot of footage because of that. We obviously had our phone still, so we were able to get some things on there, but because I like to vlog things, I was so bummed out that our camera died one day into the trip. Along those lines, if you have a power bank, I would suggest fully charging that and having it in your purse or diaper bag or whatever at the park so that if your phones die, because you do find yourself on your phone a lot, not necessarily... You're not on social media, but filming or taking pictures. I feel like our phones die a lot quicker at Disney. They were dying really fast. So bring a power bank so you don't have to go back to the hotel and charge it, or just so you don't have to worry about the battery life. This is another regret that we actually had, and we've never again had this issue before, but I think post-pandemic, it's different now with the Park Hopper. If I could go back, I would not do a Park Hopper ticket. Number one, the lines to switch parks is ridiculous, and you have to be in one park until one. Then you can swap parks after one, but then the line to get in there is an hour long. So I would just stick with one park a day. You're going to save, I think it's $60 more to do Park Hopper per ticket. So next time I'm not doing a Park Hopper for a few reasons. Number one is that line, but also the amount of walking, if you're going back and forth to different parks. I've walked between 40 and 50,000 steps a day. Actually, I think that was just the first day. I think we walked even more the second day. And then you have to think of your kids and how much they're walking. We were all over the place. So another regret is not kind of planning out exactly how we are going to hit each park. We use the app. That's something you definitely want to download is the Disneyland app, and you can see where everything is. But next time we are going to plan, okay, we're going to start the park over here. We're going to be at Disneyland this whole day. We're going to hit this, this, this, and this. And I know it kind of also depends on the wait times, but I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But just planning, we're going to stick to this side of the park. Maybe tomorrow we're going to stick to this side of the park. And then the next day, you're going to do like three days, we're going to go to California Adventure, and we're going to do these certain rides. It makes so much more sense. There's way less walking. Your kids aren't going to be complaining about their feet hurting, and then your feet are hurting, and everyone's just tired, and no one's having a good time because they're so tired. So I think that the walking around at different parks really played an effect into all of our kids kind of just being over the top, tired, hot, and cranky. So I think if we had planned everything out, it would have gone a lot smoother. I want to talk about these little autograph books, because like I said, this was the highlight of my kids' trip. They actually, none of my kids cared to even go on rides. They were not into the rides. I feel like we were more into the rides, but we were like, we've got to go on this ride, and this ride, and this ride, and they just wanted to meet characters. They did not care about rides. So that might just be an age thing, but if your kids are anything like my kids, I would do my best to do a character dinner. We did not have the opportunity to do that because we tried to book it too late, but where you sit down with the characters and all the characters in there, I have heard the best stories about that. And so the next time we go, we will make sure we do the character dinner where all of the characters are eating dinner with you. I think the cost was like $30 to $40 a person, but I feel like that's definitely worth it for the memories that you would have, and it would be the highlight of your kids' trip. Also on that note, some of the characters do not sign autographs. So my kids were really bummed out when they found out. And the Stormtroopers, actually I don't know if anybody over in Star Wars land signs autographs. So just make sure you have your camera if you're meeting any of those characters. And then Iron Man couldn't sign. I actually think it might have to do with the fact they have those plastic fingers. That might be why, because Spider-Man did and a lot of the Avengers were able to sign their autographs in here. So anyway, that was a huge deal for my kids, the pictures and the autographs. Now I want to talk about the highlight for all of my kids. I asked them individually what was their favorite thing at Disney. Both of my twins said meeting the characters, watching the Spider-Man performance where he jumps off the building. That was one of the coolest things that happens at 10 a.m. I remember that 10 a.m. was the first one. And then there's other times obviously at the park, but the Avengers land is over by Cars land. So it's over in California adventures. If you're wondering about that, Star Wars land is in Disney and it's where the Toontown, Toontown, Toony, what was that one called? It was like the little kid area that's gone and it's Star Wars land now. So anyway, those were their favorites. It was a Spider-Man performance. Actually the Avengers performance too was really cool. And then all of them agreed that their favorite thing, which is so funny, was this 3D show that we watched over in California adventure. And I think it was a highlight for all of us because you just got to walk right in. I don't even know exactly what it's called, but you're in a theater, you have 3D glasses on. It's like 20 minutes long and it's so cool and air conditioned. I think it was just great for all of us to sit for a minute to have the AC blowing on us and be inside. So I think it was just a nice break for all of us. Elliot loved it too. That was one of his favorite things. We actually did that twice. So that's something my kids suggest you guys do on your next trip at Disney. All right, now I'm going to be reading off the questions that I got. A lot of the same questions, so I'm going to try to answer every single one. One of the questions was what restaurants did you guys eat at in the park and how were the food lines? So the food lines are ridiculous if you're trying to eat during the regular eating hours. We had lunch one afternoon at 10 AM and it was like we just walked in, got our lunch, sat down, within 10 minutes it was done. The next day we actually pre-ordered our food, which is something I highly recommend. So get on their app and reserve your food. I actually didn't even do it, my husband did. So I'm not quite sure exactly how you do it. I just know it was through the app that he was able to reserve our food. We actually ate at the Flo's V8 Cafe two days in a row. That was our favorite food and it was about $40 for all of us to eat. So me and Thomas shared a club. It was like the best club sandwich I've ever had. So we got the same thing both days. The kids all got chicken strips with fries, came with carrots and a drink. So anyway, all of us to eat was about $40. I feel like that was pretty good considering this was Disney food. So everything is way more expensive. If you are not familiar with the prices of everything inside of Disney, it's probably like four times what you would normally pay outside. So again, that restaurant I felt like was pretty fair. Where else did we go? We were eating all the time, I feel like. But I would also suggest bringing snacks for your kids. So we had goldfish packs and Capri Suns and stuff like that that were in our stroller because you're going to find, especially walking so much, and if you're going anytime where it's hot, you're going to get thirsty and hungry a lot. So just come prepared with some snacks. The next question was, what are the best rides for the younger kids? So our favorite ones were Winnie the Pooh. That was a ride we were able to just walk on. We loved Peter Pan. That's one of my favorites. That was our longest line, actually, was Peter Pan. And it said it was 30 minutes, and it was over an hour. So that was fun, especially if it was the hottest time of day and the sun was just beating on us. So anyway, Peter Pan. Oh, Little Mermaid, for sure. We went on that ride like three times. That is always my favorite ride because you just get on fast. It was maybe five minutes. I don't even know if it was five minutes of a wait. So that one was so fun. And then the carousels in both parks, we loved going on, and the kids loved those, especially Elliot and Ezra. They loved all of those rides. Ezra also, but he's a different little kid. He loved the Star Wars area, and so those rides were really fun. I am a little bit mad about Star Wars Land. That was the number one reason we went because it was over Star Wars Day. My kids are Star Wars freaks. Their whole bedroom is Star Wars. They love everything about Star Wars. If you ask them a question about Star Wars, they will know the answer. They love it. So we get to Star Wars Land, and we know we had to start the day over at the other park. So by the time we got over to Disneyland on the first day, which was May 4th, Star Wars Land was insanely busy, but we actually were able to get on, what is the ride called? I don't even know. It's not the Rise of the Resistance. It's the other ride. There's two rides. So we were able to get on that ride within about 15 minutes, which was great, but the wait time for Rise of the Resistance was like 95 minutes or something. And with Elliot, I was like, no, there's no way. There's no way we're going to do that. We had decided we're going to wake up early. We did that at both parks both days we were there first thing in the morning. We went straight to Rise of the Resistance so we could ride that ride, and it was shut down, and it was closed the whole day. So my kids didn't get to go on that ride. We didn't get to go on that ride, and that was the one ride all of us were so excited to go on. So I'm kind of bummed about that. Actually, I'm really bummed about that and really annoyed. If we had known that that was our only chance to go on it, we would have waited in the line. So that's something I suggest is if there is a ride that you are dying to go on, go on the ride even if there's a crazy wait for the chance that you might not be able to go on it the next day. I had no... I never anticipated the fact it would be shut down for a whole day the next day, which was our last day at Disney. So we lost the chance to go on it. Someone else asked, what is your biggest tip to avoid lines? And that would be to go early. We were literally on the monorail at 7.45. That's right when the park opens at 8. So we were there with the first people onto the monorail. We got into Disneyland. Literally nobody was there. We saw a group of three people over here and two people over here. So anyway, get there first thing in the morning because we were able to go on four rides before crowds really showed up. So that's something I suggest is if there are rides you want to go on, just get there first thing in the morning. Like don't wait till nine. By nine o'clock it was insanely busy. So that first hour in the park is kind of a free-for-all. No wait times at all. Like zero to five minutes on all of the ride. Anyway, that's why we were so bummed about rides that the resistance is because that was our plan and then it backfired. Okay. Someone asked what the cost of our trip was. We always book through Getaway Today. This is not sponsored, but we always save so much money if you book through them. I will go and just book straight through Disney and then go to their website and I'll see the difference. It's always hundreds of dollars of a difference. So we like to book through Getaway Today. The whole total cost was $2,700. So there was five people. We got two-day park hoppers for everybody. And then that's also including our hotel. So we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel. If you're not familiar with the hotels, there's California, the hotel, I don't know. It's not the Hotel California. What is it? California something hotel. We've stayed at both. The Californian one was way nicer, I would say. Not way nicer. You'll see in the prices, it's like a whole $1,000 or more to stay at the California versus the Disneyland. They're both in the park though. So the benefit of going and staying there is, especially if you have kids, you can kind of come and go. We'd go to the park for a few hours, come back, Elliot would take his nap, the kids would play at the pool. Then we'd go back out to Disney and we would just walk right in. So that's the benefit of staying at the hotels. Also, I think it's if you have a three-day park hopper, they do the magic morning. I don't know if they still do that. We weren't able to do it because we just did two days this time. But look into that because if they do magic morning, we've done that before where you get to go in an hour early before anybody else. So we were like 7 a.m. I think. And then the park opens at 8, so you literally got to ride on every single ride. There was no one else in the park except for the hotel people. So this is another thing though, I don't know if I will stay at the hotels again because if you're bringing your whole family, I think I would rather stay at an Airbnb just for the convenience of having a whole house, like a kitchen and all of that. It was a little hard with a baby. If he wasn't there, it would have been easier, but it just made it a little bit harder with our youngest at the hotels. The other thing is I didn't plan this very well. We got there, we stayed there one entire day. Then the next day is when we started our Disneyland trip. And then the next day was Disneyland again. And we had to check out in the middle of our day. So that was really annoying. I would have planned that differently. If I did that again, I would make sure I booked at least three nights instead of two. I don't know. I feel like there was a lot of poor planning on my end. So I'm just trying to warn you guys not to do the things that I did. And I felt like if I would have just done things differently, it would have made our trip a whole different experience. Oh, another thing with getaway today, sorry, this is kind of all over the place. You can do layaway plan. And that's what we always do is we will book it. We booked this one in January and then you just make monthly payments on it. And I feel like that just makes it a lot easier when you're looking at a $2,700 bill that you can just pay monthly. Someone else asked about flying or driving. So because we live 10 hours away, I feel like it's not too far. We were able to do it in one day, just get there. But it also depends, again, on your situation. We would have to buy a lot of plane tickets. So it would have cost us, I did the math, $1,500 to fly, where it cost us a few hundred to drive. I mean, gas is ridiculous right now. So I mean, again, it just depends on how many people you have in your family and if it would be worth it to fly. We have flown before. It was really nice because we got there in one hour. Flying is way more convenient, obviously, but I don't know if flying would be convenient with all of our kids. I've never done that with all four of our kids before, especially Elliot. I don't know if anybody would appreciate that baby on a plane. Okay. Someone else asked about food reservations, which I talked about that. Absolutely do that. It saves you hours, especially if you're trying to eat during rush hour. Okay. Someone said, how bad were the lines and the crowds? The crowds were just as busy as ever. The lines, I feel like were pretty okay. Like I said, the longest we waited for, they'll tell you what the wait time is on all of them. We always try to get to ones that were like 15 minutes or less, which was pretty ... We were able to do that for the most part, except for Peter Pan. For some reason, that ride took forever. Okay. I think this will be the last question because there were some like, what's a good age to bring? I've kind of talked about that. It's really up to you and your kids. Favorite time to go to Disney. So we went at Halloween time. That was the last time we went when my twins were five and it was the best experience. We had so much fun. I think the temperature too is just like, it's so nice outside. Where this time around, it was in the eighties, which might not sound too crazy, but we were dying of heat. Like dying. I was so hot the whole time. I think I would prefer fall or winter. I've actually never been at Christmas time. That's on my bucket list. I would love to do that sometime. But I think this year we might try to go again at Halloween because we love it so much. I love what they do to the Haunted Mansion, the parades, the trick or treating at night. All of it was so much fun. So I would recommend, if you had to choose one time a year, I would probably try to go during one of the holidays, like Halloween or Christmas time. Like I said, I've never been at Christmas, so I can't tell you what that experience is like. But if you have, please leave a comment and tell me what your suggestions are. If we should wait to go at Christmas time or if we should just do Halloween time again, because we loved it so much. It was so much fun. I did have another question was if we've ever been to Disney World or Disneyland. So Disneyland, I've only ever been there. I've never been to Disney World, which actually blows my mind because we've been to Florida probably 12 times, like Orlando, Florida, and we've never been to Disney World. So I'm kind of mad about that, that we've never used... We always were doing work trips down there. And so anyway, I'm like, why don't we just take one day and go to Disney World? I don't know why we've never done that, but that's something I would love to do hopefully soon because you have to go to both. I feel like you have to go to both. I love the experience of Disneyland. I love the vibe of it. I actually, I like rides, but that's not I have to be on rides. I feel like it's more of just being at Disney is what is just so fun and special. Anyway, that was our trip in a nutshell. I hope that you guys got some good tips or advice on going to Disney. If you're planning a trip or you want to plan a trip, hopefully this will help you avoid some of the mistakes that I made and help you plan your trip a little bit better. Number one, download the Disney app. We were on that thing like 24 seven. That also shows you where the restrooms are, where characters are. I actually don't know if it shows characters. I feel like it's supposed to, but I don't know if it was showing up for us, but it shows you where food is. There are so many different things on the app, but it also just maps out where you are, where the closest bathroom is, where the closest ride is, and how long the wait is, all that stuff. If you haven't downloaded the app, it's something you definitely want to do. I did have someone ask about the Genie Plus. That one doesn't really make sense to me. I think you have to pay 20 bucks a person, and I'm pretty sure I might be wrong, so comment if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure you can only jump the line one time, which to me, I'm not going to spend $100 to skip the line one time. I think you can only use it one time a day or something like that, so that's why we decided against the Genie Plus app. Anyway, if you guys have any other questions, please feel free to comment below, and I will try to respond to those. Please also share any of your tips and advice that you might have for someone else that's trying to plan a Disney trip. Thank you guys again so much for watching, and we'll see you guys in the next video.