Road trip: Phoenix, AZ to Disneyland – Anaheim, CA

My family and I just got back from an epic trip to see the Mouse in California during our daughter’s winter break from school. I’m not going to get into pricing and hotel purchasing strategies, or the best time of year to go, or any of that. I’m not going to detail the rides, or the parades, or much about Disneyland itself because there’s plenty of Mom blogs that go into way more detail on all that than I would ever wish to do.

However, I will share details of the trip itself that make the 6-hour drive from Phoenix to California less brutal. I will also share a few of the things we did this time (our second trip to Disneyland) that worked out really well, and some lessons learned.

The road trip to Anaheim from Phoenix

We live in east Gilbert, so we get to drive allllllll the way across or around the whole valley pretty much anytime we want to go anywhere, and LA is no exception. To make that easier, I highly recommend taking the 202 South Mountain freeway and circumventing the 60/10 if you are leaving at rush hour. But in general, I’d recommend leaving around 8:30 AM or 9:00 so that you can avoid most of the Phoenix rush hour traffic, and also get into Anaheim by 3:00 before the evening rush hour there.

We hopped off the 202 to fuel up at Costco, and again at the 40th street exit and stopped at Parlor Doughnuts and Cotta Nostra (coffee). And let me just say. If you haven’t been to Parlor Doughnuts and you are a doughnut person… As a doughnut connoisseur who flatly rejects big chains (except this one) and makes it a point to try local shops and smaller chains on road trips… easily a top 5 doughnut. Parlor Doughnut is in there with The Local Donut in Scottsdale, The Goods in Carlsbad, and Dad’s Donuts in Colorado Springs for me.

The coffee from Cotta Nostra was pretty good, I’d call it above average and would stop again but perhaps make a little more time for the stop, as the barista took some time to make our order and the one in front of ours.

Once we had our fill of premium octane, sugar, and caffeine, we were ready to officially begin our trip. We rode around the awful rush hour traffic via the 202 South Mountain freeway, which again I cannot recommend enough, and didn’t stop again until Ehrenburg, which is located off Exit 1 at the state line.

We historically fuel up at the Arco in Quartzsite on our way to LA since Arco has a reputation here in The Valley for being so cheap yet also being certified as a Top Tier gasoline. But the last couple times, we stopped at the 76 in Ehrenburg because its restrooms are significantly nicer and cleaner. The 76 also has a few food options inside, including Fatburger, Wetzel’s Pretzels, a smoothie shop, and usual gas station food like hot dogs.

Our original plan was to stop in Coachella (the town, not the music festival in Indio) for lunch, dessert, and coffee because there are a ton of highly rated birrierias, taco shops, a paleteria, and Sixth Street Coffee, which looked like a great caffeine option. But unfortunately, when we stopped for gas and a bathroom break, it was already 12:30 and we were hungry. So I grabbed some pretzel dogs at Wetzel’s Pretzels, and my wife and daughter got a gas station turkey sandwich and a smoothie.

Side note in case you are planning your first ever trip to California – the gas there is MUCH more expensive than it is in Arizona, so if you care about your wallet, definitely stop here or in Quartzite and fill up – these are your last chances to save $2-$3/gallon on gas before crossing the state line.

The return road trip from Disneyland to Phoenix

It’s not often I will even try, much less recommend, a place that serves breakfast and espresso. It’s definitely a situation where, generally speaking, the “jack of all trades, master of none” thing applies. It’s rare that one place is good at both, in my opinion – in fact, until this trip, I only recall one place, called Harriet & Oak in Rapid City, that I can recommend for both breakfast and coffee.

But let me tell you, we stopped at Poached Kitchen in Anaheim for breakfast on our return trip. The menu and photos and reviews looked amazing, so we gave it a shot, and it was easily both the culinary and caffeine highlight of the trip. I got chicken and waffles – maybe the best I’ve had, and Maggie got the chilaquiles verde.

She is hard to please when it comes to chilaquiles, she inevitably orders them at an American breakfast restaurant, and is disappointed every time… but not this time.

We got a Vietnamese latte and an oat milk vanilla latte to go, which were really good – one of the top places for coffee that we’ve been to all over the United States in the past year!

After breakfast, we stopped at a nearby Costco for just enough gas to get us to Arizona, and were on our way.

We again wanted to hit up Coachella for lunch and coffee, but we passed it too early. We were still stuffed from our delicious breakfast, and Maggie still had half her coffee left – so we kept going.

We wound up at the same 76 in Ehrenburg as soon as we crossed back into The Grand Canyon State, where I realized we’d probably have to eat lunch again because it was already 1:30. This time, I bought an overpriced chicken sandwich combo at Fatburger, which I can’t recommend, and my wife and daughter got a smoothie. But for gas, I price checked this time vs the aforementioned Arco, another 76, and a Mobile all in Quartzsite, and found that for my truck’s recommended premium fuel, the 76 in Quartzsite was cheaper by more than 30 cents per gallon. It also seemed to be unusually neatly kept, at least on the outside. It will be the first place I check next time.

Our last stop on the way home, if you’re into this kinda thing, was a ten-minute detour to the Kimes Ranch Outlet store in Glendale near State Farm Stadium. I found that generally speaking, the jeans, hats, and some men’s shirts and hoodies were a good deal, but certain shirts and hoodies were regularly priced lower on the clearance section of their website. The store itself was fairly small and it seemed like the selection was good and bad – worth a stop if you like the brand and are closeby, but probably not worth its own trip.

Disneyland Tips and Lessons Learned

Like I said, I won’t get into a ton of detail, but I do want to share some overall tips for planning a trip to Disneyland from Phoenix:

1. Make a budget and stick to it. We budgeted a little over $2100 for the trip. This included the park tickets, hotel parking, food and snacks at the parks, meals outside the parks on travel days, gas, and dogsitting. We went over by only $40. Use gift cards in the park – we bought them one at a time in denominations of $100, budgeting up to 3 cards for eating and shopping.
2. Use credit card points. You may have noticed I did not include our hotel stay in the budget, and that’s because we booked all three nights for free with Chase Travel using points from our Chase Sapphire card (Get 125,000 bonus points* by applying using my affiliate link – this is enough to cover FIVE NIGHTS in a hotel by the park, depending on days and hotel selected – point bonus at the time this article was posted and changes frequently). Apply now for a Chase Sapphire card!
3. Leave Phoenix at 6:00 AM if you can. This will get you out of Phoenix by the time rush hour gets too bad, and will get you to your hotel by 1:00 or 2:00, even with multiple stops. This will also circumvent Anaheim afternoon pre-rush hour. We left Phoenix at 9:00, and got to Anaheim at 4:00 – it wasn’t too bad, we were going against the flow of the worst traffic – but there were slowdowns that could have been avoided if we’d left earlier.
4. Plan your trip stops, especially for food. There aren’t a lot of places to stop, and they’re nearly exclusively fast food or questionable bars. It’s best to estimate when you will be where and plan meals, gas, and restroom breaks accordingly.
5. Get gas in Quartzsite or Ehrenberg to avoid having to fill up in California for $2-$3 more per gallon.
6. Go to Downtown Disney if you get to Anaheim before it’s time to check into your hotel. You have to go through Disneyland security, but you do not need a ticket to the park. This is a good way to give your excited kids a taste of Disneyland and kill time until check-in.

7. Say “yes” to Lightning Lane… strategically. Our friends suggested that for us, getting Lightning Lane in California Adventure Park only would be the best “bang for the buck,” for the rides we wanted to ride that had the longest lines. At California Adventure, we used Lightning Lane at the Incredicoaster, Tiana, Star Wars, and more. For us, Lightning Lane cost a total of $111 for one day, which our friends graciously bought for us.
   
   It sounds like a lot – and it is. But when you break it down to a per-ride basis, it cost us about $8 per ride and it would have been less if we went to more rides with older kids. Each ride had an hour wait. That’s $8/hour (or less). Is it worth $8 to stand in line for an hour with bored children and sore feet? Only you can answer that for yourself, and we answered “no” and would have bought it for ourselves if our friends hadn’t. We did not buy it for the main Disneyland park on Day 1, because we mostly rode rides with shorter lines there so it wasn’t worth it.
   
   Now, you may not have to choose if you find a package deal that includes Lightning Lane already – but if you’re going to buy it separately, do it strategically.

8. If there is rain in the forecast, plan carefully. The forecast for our trip varied greatly per day and per news outlet in the days leading up to our trip. The forecast ranged from, only rain in the 7:00 hour on day 1, to all day rain on both days. What actually happened was somewhere in between – it rained from opening until around 2:00 pm (so nearly all day) on day 1, and didn’t rain again after that.
   
   With that, we brought shoes that were old (and didn’t matter if they got ruined) but also comfortable to walk in. We also brought rain jackets, and purposefully chose to not bring an umbrella as another thing to have to carry.
   
   However, we didn’t think about the fact our backpacks would get soaked, so we had to buy ponchos at our hotel for $10 each. We also didn’t bring an extra pair of comfortable shoes so that we could have dry shoes the next day, which meant we had to dry out our shoes on our hotel room’s A/C vent (gross). Next time, we’ll buy cheap ponchos at Walmart or somewhere, and bring extra shoes.
9. Bring foot relief if you are prone to sore feet/ankles. We brought a massage gun and some Tiger Balm, and it helped a lot.
10. Bring snacks, especially for the kids. Of course the park snacks (especially the churros) are part of the Disney magic, but bringing your own can help offset the expense of buying snacks in the park, and you never know when you’ll find yourself waiting for a parade or in line for a ride with a hungry kid.
    

11. Don’t carry a lot. As I mentioned, we chose not to bring umbrellas because it’d be something else to carry. We did bring water bottles, but they probably were not truly necessary in October and wound up being cumbersome to deal with all day. Plus, many rides don’t allow you to have loose items, even the harmless kid rides. This meant we had to scramble to put our stuff into a backpack, which the park allows but will search at the security checkpoint. We also brought only one backpack and alternated who carried it so that no one was stuck with a sore back.

Summary: It’s all in the planning

If I could summarize what made this road trip from Phoenix to Disneyland in Anaheim a success, or the things that would have made it better, it all comes down to planning:

• Budgeting: This won’t affect your trip directly, but it will affect your level of buyer’s remorse when you get home and log into your bank account.
• Planning carefully for rain: This will make or break your experience if you experience rain at the park.
• Be strategic: Plan your road trip start time, end time, and stops ahead of time; strategize with Lightning Lane use; and intentionally select the items you carry with you into the park
• Have fun: Do these things and prepare yourself with tons of patience – for your kids, for other drivers, for waiting in line for rides – and you will have a blast and make tons of fun memories.