The Sorcerer's Guide

Picking a hotel is hard. You want a hotel that’s close to the park, clean, and inexpensive. But around Disneyland, you have to compromise a bit. If you’ve been to Walt Disney World, you may expect that the majority of the visitors stay in Disney owned hotels. That’s not the case at Disneyland. Lots of visitors stay at nearby hotels or the rely on the parking system. Disney Hotels Disney has three “on property” hotels. These hotels are owned and run by Disney and are part of Disneyland. These are high quality hotels with the Disney name, which means they can be a pricey. The Disneyland Hotel was built in 1955 for Disneyland’s opening. The hotel has gone through several expansions and upgrades over the years. It’s located at the west side of Downtown Disney. It’s very close to one of the two monorail stops (the other stop is inside Disneyland), so you can get into the park without walking through the shopping district. The Grand Californian opened with California Adventure. It has an ent...

Genie Genie is Disney’s free service for scheduling activities and attractions at their theme parks. It allows you to select a few things you’re interested in – including rides, shows, and dining – and then recommends related attractions you may enjoy. The day of your visit, it will assign times for each attraction. Genie’s approach is to come up with a schedule that you can meet with time to spare. So, you may see it give you over an hour for an attraction that only takes half an hour. Disney’s hope is that you’ll spend the extra time shopping and dining. This is different from RideRouter , which is built around optimizing your day, and getting you to all of the attractions that you’ve selected. RideRouter will also let you create a plan up to 30 days in advance. Genie also shows estimated wait times for the day. It won’t give specific numbers, but it does give a bar graph that can give you an idea about when lines will grow or shrink. You can access Genie through the Disneyland and W...