August 22, 2019 - September 1, 2019: D23 Expo / DLR Parks / Knotts Berry / Vegas

tobikaye

DIS Veteran
Joined
Dec 6, 2009
Introductions:

Welcome! My name is Tobi. I am a huge Disney fan that is making a couple of my dreams come true with this trip. I am visiting Disneyland and going to the D23 Expo.

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Traveling with me will be my younger, by two years, sister, Rachel. She enjoys Disney, especially going to WDW. She is more excited about going to Las Vegas, I think, than the expo.

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Rachel has spent the last year scouring YouTube for videos on Disneyland, California Adventure, Knotts Berry, and Southern California. Our original plans were to spend 6 days in Anaheim, 3 for the Expo, 2 for Disney Parks, and 1 for Knotts Berry. Then we were debating on what to do with the last 3-4 days of our trip.

Rachel has always wanted to go to Vegas and San Francisco so I offered those options off the bat. She decided that maybe staying in Southern California would be better. About 6 months ago, she decided on Santa Monica, but never got around to booking anything. Then at the beginning of June, we finally booked, in Las Vegas for the last part of our trip.


Day 1 – August 22: Travel and Check into Hilton Anaheim Convention
Day 2 – August 23: D23 Expo
Day 3 – August 24: D23 Expo
Day 4 – August 25: D23 Expo
Day 5 – August 26: Knotts Berry
Day 6 – August 27: Disneyland / California Adventure
Day 7 – August 28: Disneyland / California Adventure
Day 8 – August 29: Road Trip to Las Vegas
Day 9 – August 30: Las Vegas
Day 10 – August 31: Las Vegas
Day 11 – Travel Home
 
Pre-Trip: Friday, August 16, 2019

Up to now, we have booked the D23 tickets, flights, hotels, car services, rental cars, park and park tickets. We still need to reserve D23 panels, but like everyone else, that attempt will not be tomorrow afternoon. There is only one more reservation to make and that is for a wheelchair for Rachel for the days we are at the Expo. She will be more secure using that than her EVC.

The hope over the weekend is to pull together all the clothes and toiletries. We still want to make some ear headbands and possibly some graphic t-shirts, but those will be determined based on time left. If we get them done, I will post them here.

I hope to update again before we fly to California, especially once I get the reservations made for the D23 panels. Hopefully, we can make those tomorrow now.
 
Day 1: August 22: Travel and Check into Hilton Anaheim Convention

So, it was a bit of an early morning as we had a 2 hour drive to the airport. I could have gone with one of the closer airports, but the flight times and price was better for the extra hour going Southwest out of IND. Our parents rode over with us to IND to take my car home so that I did not have to pay for the parking, which I appreciated.

On the drive to the airport, I got a text message that our flight was delayed 2 hours, and of course, we were already an hour into the drive. I figured if we got near the airport with too much time to spare, I would just find something close and we could all have lunch. About 30 minutes after the first text message, I got another that the flight was only 1 hour delayed. Yeah!

Once our flight arrived, I knew there would be a large number of people still on the plane, so we had to go about midway to find seats even with preboard. I had purchased an extra seat so at least I knew we had our row to ourselves. The flight was long and smooth until about 30 minutes from landing. She did get a bit restless the last hour of the plane.

When we arrived at LAX, we headed straight to baggage claim and the driver I had hired with Lansky was already waiting for us. He helped us get our luggage and take them to the SUV, I had reserved. He was efficient and nice and got us to the Hilton safely. My only issue with this experience was that when I made the reservation, I informed them I would have the EVC, 3 checked items, 3-4 carryon/personal items. When we got to the vehicle, there were 2 large car seats in the back. I started to suggest how the items we had would fit in the vehicle, but he started putting everything he quickly. It was not an easy process for him in the way he put the luggage in.

Arriving at the Hilton Convention Center, it was great seeing the D23 expo signs as we pulled up. When we got to the lobby, there was a bit of line, but the desk clerks were very pleasant and had us on our way to the room within about 30 minutes. We could tell that a lot of people were their solely for D23, just from that time frame. Our room was nice and big so we had room to spread out. We unpacked and then left to get some food. We ended up just getting food from the food court that night for ease. We laid down around 7 or 8 pm, which for us, was 10 or 11 at home.

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