Originally Posted by
gaobest
Hi all,
We are driving to Disneyland around August 15, for 2 days; then we have a reservation at Huntington Beach Hyatt to "recover"
It's our first Disneyland and I may need to step up for my wife.
What's the best way to get 2 days including any fast pass (line jumping?) privileges? And should we just stay at Disneyland hotel instead of Hyatt house Anaheim resort? Or is it easy to drive from Hyatt house to Disneyland parking lot?
Should I just buy from Disneyland website or are there better (legit) 3rd party vendors?
The Hyatt House Anaheim Resort is brand new. It's actually closer to Disneyland than the nearby "Toy Story" parking lot, and is pretty easy to walk to the front gate. Staying at one of the Disney properties is nice, there are a few benefits. Notably, Disney hotel guests can usually get into one of the parks an hour early before they open to the public, and there's a hotel guest only entrance to California Adventure from the Grand Californian hotel (available to guests of all three hotels). It's also nice to be able to remain in the Disney environment when staying at the Disneyland Hotel or Grand Californian, but not critical, especially if you're saving a fair amount of money by staying at a non-Disney hotel.
Disneyland is not like Universal, they don't sell special "front of the line" tickets. Fast passes are distributed on a first come, first served basis at each attraction that offers it, and has a designated one hour time window for you to come back and use the fast pass entrance. It will also have a time you can get another fast pass, usually two hours later or whenever the return window opens, whichever is first. Some shows (Frozen and World of Color, for example), use the fast pass system for ticketing for shows, and having those fast passes doesn't impact your ability to get fast passes for other attractions.
There aren't many legitimate public ways to get discounted Disney tickets; watch for third party sites offering discounted tickets since they may try to resell multi-day tickets for use by several people one day at a time; Disney doesn't allow this and now takes a picture of guests with multi-day tickets at the entrance so they'll catch this and won't let you in. You may be able to get discounted tickets through your employer, credit union, or the AAA; other than that you might as well just get them through the Disneyland web site.