I’ve been on around 150 Disneyland trips in my life. Some were planned, some were with school, others were a result of us not being able to control the urge to not turn around when we drive south on the freeway. Living so close, we have the privilege of going more than most people and I have to remind myself that Disneyland is a once a year, or once in a lifetime thing for a lot of families. With that being said, starting next week I’m going to be posting a series on my blog appropriately titled, “So I booked a Disneyland trip; Now what?” diving into the different things we do to plan for a more thought out Disneyland trip.

We’ve been annual passholders since our honeymoon in early 2015. Angelo and I quickly got used to the free parking, discounts, and perks. It made Disneyland extremely affordable for us and just worked flawlessly. It was so nice to look in my wallet at my AP and know that at any second, I could go to Disneyland and they’d let me in. We made it our mission to go every month or two, and even after Andy was born, we still made it happen. We didn’t renew this year with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opening, just because we know it’s going to be miserably crowded for months and everything will be unbearable. Living 6 hours away, it just wasn’t going to be worth the monthly payment if we didn’t go as often as we did before and that really tore me apart inside. I’ve lived the last 4 years of my life going to Disneyland every few weeks, and now we’re having to revert back to being standard ticket holders. I know it’s such a first world problem and I’m blessed to go at all, but it really does make me sad that our monthly trips have turned back into yearly trips. We’re going one last time this May for our anniversary before Galaxy’s Edge opens in the summer, and that’ll be it for the unforeseen future. I figured since this is our first longer, ticket based Disney trip, I could post our processes of planning, ordering stuff, and show how we get prepared pre-trip.

This is where I leave it to you guys; what topics are you most interested in when it comes to planning? Is it the methods of travel? Dining reservations? Outfits? How to get those cute matching family shirts? Custom ears? You name it, I have advice for it. Let me know in the comments below where I should dig in!