On this holiday week in the United States, I wanted to point your attention toward the trip-planning resources we have available for you here on Theme Park Insider.
In addition to our daily blog posts, we maintain visitors guides to more than 30 top parks from around the world, which you can find at themeparkinsider.com/reviews. Today, I would like to focus on the parks in the greater Los Angeles area, as an invitation for theme park fans to come visit Theme Park Insider's hometown.
Compared with much of the rest of the country, the weather's been great here in LA. (Must find wood now to knock on!) With no storms, reasonable temperatures, plenty of sun (now, finally), and little soul-sucking humidity, Southern California offers comfortable weather for a summer getaway.
And this is the place to be for new, world-class theme park attractions this summer. Super Nintendo World is open at Universal Studios Hollywood, and Disneyland is celebrating The Walt Disney Company's 100th anniversary with new shows and a major new ride. Knott's is plussing the park with a refreshed Fiesta Village section, and Six Flags Magic Mountain... well, it's got some of its shortest wait times in a while, for coaster fans wanting to experience the park's expansive line-up.
You can find Theme Park Insider readers' attraction rankings, strategies for visiting, maps, and even links to discounted tickets in our visitors guide for these Los Angeles and Orange county parks:
The Los Angeles area offers much more than just theme parks, of course. You can discover some of those attractions, as well as ticket deals for visiting, through our partner's Los Angeles attractions page.
If you are flying into the area, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is nearing the completion of a massive, multi-billion-dollar improvement project that has seen the opening of several new terminals, including those for Delta and Southwest. A new automated people mover system will open next year. LAX offers the most nonstop flights from destinations around the world, but two other local airports stand closer to the local theme parks, if you are looking to avoid LA-area traffic, especially around LAX.
The Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR) is just five miles from Universal Studios Hollywood and much closer to Six Flags Magic Mountain than LAX is. For Disneyland and the Orange County parks, consider John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Santa Ana, too. It's about 10 miles closer to the Disneyland Resort than LAX, with often much less traffic in between. Airports in Long Beach (LGB) and Ontario (ONT) also are available, though flight scheduled are limited there.
California is a delightful and welcoming destination for visitors from around the nation and the world. If you have any questions about visiting California, the Los Angeles area, and any of its attractions, please ask in the comments or over on our Theme Park Insider discussion forum.
Have a great summer!
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Good job here, our Disneyland trip in March wasn't bad with planning. My sister felt it better fare-wise to fly to LAX and shuttle to the hotel but Orange County airport can be easier for some visitors. Man, right now California seems better weather than Chicago, much cooler and wishing there now.
June and early July are a great time to visit California — it doesn't actually get toasty here until late July/August. Of course, now it's hot until October, so keep that in mind.
Long Beach airport is a marvel, you're out of that tiny little place with your bag in under 10 minutes. Orange County is also great, getting from there to Disney and back is a piece of cake. LAX, meanwhile, always sucks, and getting to and from there can take an eternity.
Out of town visitors should understand that getting anywhere in LA, even someplace that looks close on a map, can take an inordinately long time because of very poorly managed traffic. So if you think you can stay in Hollywood and zip down to Disney, think again, you might spend 1.5 hours in traffic on what appears to be a short trip.
Disney hotels are ridiculously expensive, but for us there's no better way to do Disneyland. Always just a short walk away from your air-conditioned room, or from a drink at the pool, you stay inside the Disney bubble and don't have to see the grime that surrounds the parks. Of course, it used to be much better before Disney killed the Magic Morning Hour, and the ability to charge everything to your room key (why would they eliminate that?!?), but yeah, if you want the full Disney delight and can afford it, definitely the way to go.
Native tip: If freeway traffic is horrible, slide that little "Avoid Highways" toggle on your mapping app and go surface streets to get across the city. I can get from Pasadena to Disneyland in a little over an hour on surface streets. Sure, the freeways are quicker when everything's flowing smoothly, but if accidents and jams push the estimated drive time toward an hour, I will bail and hit the side streets, where at least I will keep moving.
Sometimes, you just have to limit the time damage.
I stayed at Knotts Berry Farm hotel in May and I thought it was a great central location. Especially with them having a shuttle to Disneyland.
Worst part was the crappy gray weather that wasn't in any hurry to disperse.
Driving was a bit of a bear at the wrong time of the day, but I wouldn't suggest to anyone to fly into anywhere other than LAX.
My sister knew Disneyland Hotel expensive but yep, worth it for how close to everything and saved us so much time as well as early entry.
If you can get a good deal on a flight to SNA or BUR, those are good flight options if you're doing a Disneyland centric or Hollywood centric trip, respectively. Otherwise, I'd just bite the bullet and go for LAX, as LGB is great for departing locals but not so great for arriving tourists and ONT is so far removed from the core attractions it's just not worth the commute (you'd be better off using SAN than ONT).
Driving times should definitely be overestimated in SoCal. For example, it's only about 40 miles between the Disneyland Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood, but that drive is going to take an hour on a good day and up to about an hour and forty-five minutes with traffic. My general rule of thumb is to double the miles to get a minutes approximation when planning. It's also a good idea to check a map and get a good idea of where SoCal's freeway network leads in case a diversion is needed (the main ones for to know as a tourist are the fives (5, 105, 405, and 605), the ones (91 & 101), and the 110). Unfortunately, SoCal is pretty difficult to do without a rental car unless you're staying in one particular area, so if you're planning to see multiple non-adjacent destinations, be prepared to drive. It's possible to pick one place to stay and drive everywhere, but particularly for a longer trip, it might be a good idea to have separate base camps for the LA attractions and OC attractions.
If you're trying to decide how many park days, plan 2-3 days for the Disneyland Resort, 1-2 for Six Flags Magic Mountain, and 1 each for Universal Studios Hollywood and Knott's Berry Farm. I would also recommend spending a couple days in the greater Los Angeles area for non-park stuff if you're flying out here, and perhaps a day for the beach if that's your thing as well. In short, I'd say 5-10 nights is a good length for a LA/OC trip depending what all you want to see and do.
I would echo a lot of the comments from others. We've done quite a few big California trips over the years and have always stayed somewhere between 7 and 14 days. Given that you're almost certainly going to lose a day on each end of the trip to travel, less than 7 days just doesn't make sense for those of us coming from the East Coast.
During our most recent visit in 2019 (primarily for the debut of Galaxy's Edge), we flew in and out of Long Beach, which was by far our favorite arrival/departure experience into the LA Metro area (we've flown in and out of LAX and Orange County/John Wayne before). We allocated at least one day for each of the big theme parks (SFMM, USH, KBF, DCA, DL, SW, and Legoland), and added a couple of extra days for DL/DCA and also spent time at other local attractions including the San Diego Zoo, Warner Brothers Studio, Grammy Museum, and all 3 SoCal baseball stadiums. Looking back, we probably packed a bit too much into that trip, but since it had been over 5 years since our previous trip and a 9 year old in tow, we felt there was a lot of stuff we needed to experience that time around.
As AJ noted, a rental car is an absolute MUST in SoCal unless you're willing to limit your visit to one area, which will probably mean visiting no more than 3 theme parks. Coming from the DC Area, LA traffic is not that bad comparatively, and we already know from our experience here to plan extra time to get between points of interest. The advantage of SoCal is that there are lots of options and routes to get around the region. There's always another highway parallel to your selected route that can provide an alternate, and then there's always surface streets if all the highways are gridlocked - we don't have that luxury here in the DC area. Also, if you're visiting the region with your family, take note of HOV lanes (at least those that don't require an electronic tolling transponder, which you can sometimes get from your rental car provider if you want to use the toll roads and Express Lanes), which don't always pop up on navigations systems.
I also recommend looking into the SoCal City Pass and Go City LA Pass, which can get you admissions to a number of theme parks across the region as well as other points of interest for a pretty significant discount.
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If you're flying Southwest, it's definitely worth looking into Long Beach. It's not quite as far south as the Orange County theme parks, but it gets you outside the dreaded stretch of the 405 you'd need to take from LAX to the Anaheim area.