If you’ve been thinking about visiting the original Disney park on the golden coast, this summer might be the time! Disneyland is running some fantastic promotions this summer including up to 25% off resort hotels and $50 park hopper tickets for kids! Disneyland and California Adventure are the two parks that make up the Disneyland Resort, along with three hotels and the Downtown Disney shopping district. It can absolutely be a vacation destination all on its own and you would never be bored! However, if you’re visiting California from the east coast and want to maximize your time, there is also plenty to do around the Disneyland area of southern California. When my family visited the happiest place on earth in 2023, we did just that! Although I could talk about Disneyland all day long, let’s review some of the other nearby areas you could parlay in a Disney vacation at the OG park!
Flying to the Disneyland area from Boston, the closest airport you can fly into direct is LA. My family decided instead to fly into San Diego instead since we had neither been there and aren’t big fans of LAX. We would be staying in New Port Beach, which is just a little south of Disneyland on the coast and about an hour and a half from the San Diego Airport, so we rented a car for the trip. In hindsight, I wish we would have planned to stay over in San Diego for at least one night because we didn’t really have enough time to explore the area. We did manage to drive over the bridge to Coronado Island, which is so quaint and beautiful, for lunch and that was really nice. If we had a little more time, I would have loved to visit the beaches, check out the San Diego Zoo restaurant scene and visit the La Jolla area as well – next time!
Another priority any time we’re in California is the food! Some stuff you just can’t get or is harder to find good spots for in Massachusetts – namely In-N-Out Burger and really delicious, authentic Mexican. Luckily, there are tons of In-N-Out Burgers in southern California, so we prioritized going for dinner one night. A double-double animal style with fries and a milkshake always hits the spot. We also found the best little Mexican spot in downtown Laguna Beach called La Sirena Grill for burritos and I’m still thinking about them. That brings me to another fun outing we had on our vacation, which was exploring the charming Laguna Beach. Even if you didn’t watch the MTV reality show, you would absolutely love Laguna Beach. It has a lively, walkable downtown area along the Pacific Coast Highway with tons of artsy little shops and restaurants. We spent one evening just walking around and popping into little shops.
The last thing we did, which just seems so quintessential California to me is surfing lessons for my husband and oldest daughter. We found a great instructor out of Laguna Beach for a morning group surf lesson while my younger daughter and I observed from the beach. The water was a little rougher than normal that day, which made for a challenging first time for my daughter, but my husband was still able to catch a few waves. I was so impressed with my daughter just for paddling out and making some attempts. She was only eight at the time! I’m not sure I would have been so brave. It was a really cool experience and one we still talk about.
Of course, in addition to all those fun outings, we also stayed at an absolutely gorgeous resort in Newport Beach, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It had several beautiful pools and activities for kids including making s’mores, ice cream sundae bars, basketball and putting greens. On top of all that, we still spent two full days at Disneyland! We also had absolutely picture-perfect weather nearly the entire time we were there, just as you would expect in southern California. We definitely hope to go back and next time I would love to visit Universal Studios Hollywood as part of the trip too. There’s truly so much to do on the west coast. It’s well worth the trip, friends!
Thanks for reading and happy travels!