Oh, and I almost forgot...

We just got back from Disneyland. Oh, it was lovely. And my family even put up with my occasional crankiness.
Lots of posts on Disneyland to come, but if you're thinking of heading there anytime soon, here's my personal take on how to do a Disneyland vacation.

1- I would NEVER take a child under two to Disneyland. They're just too little to enjoy it and it's going to throw off their schedule. And personally, when my babies are cranky, I'm cranky and so I wouldn't have any fun anyway.
And a side note regarding babies - the Rocket Scientist was talking to one of the cast members and this gentlemen remarked that were it not for strollers and wheelchairs, the lines would never stop. Transferring people is what takes so long and makes the lines stop and really long. Not that he implied that strollers and wheelchairs aren't welcome, it was just an observation.
2- Which brings me to my second point. I would NEVER take a stroller to Disneyland. They honestly just get in the way. We brought ours but only used it the last four or five hours we were in the park on the very last day. It was awful. You have to drop it off at every ride, then fight the crowd to get it back. And you travel much faster through the crowds without it. Yes, you do end up carrying a lot of tired children, but we really preferred that to trying to get the stupid stroller down Main Street in the crowd.
3- Go in the off season. We went the last week of May when our school was out but summer season technically hadn't started yet. We didn't see any real crowds until Friday and most of our waits were less than 20 minutes. The longest was 30.
4- I'd love to stay in a Disney hotel sometime but we used Priceline to find a cheap rate on a hotel directly across the street from the entrance. SOOOOOO good. Even if you're hotel is only half a mile away, you're really going to hate it when you're tired and walking home at 10pm. And find one with free breakfast and free parking. Our breakfast was REALLY basic but I knew that going in and all I really wanted was to be able to feed my children as soon as they woke up and as quickly as possible. We needed to maximize our sleep time and our park time and we didn't want to waste an hour or two at Denny's.
5- Take food on your trip. We packed food for lunch and dinners and some breakfast supplements. We took lunch into the park (sandwiches and such) several days and came back to eat dinner in our hotel room. The room had a fridge and microwave (a MUST). I brought canned fruit and veggies, salad fixings, and things like instant mac & cheese, hot dogs, and frozen chicken cordon bleu that could be heated in the microwave. We never eat this kind of stuff so my kids thought it was great. And I actually preferred the dinners in the room to the ones we ate out (we had planned dinners out for several nights but only went once because we liked not going out better). My kids ate better and we got a lot more fruits and vegetables that way.
6- Take another adult with you. Even with only two kids, we never would have survived the week without my sweet mother-in-law there. Karen helped carry kids, take them to the bathroom, stayed in the room with them during naps, helped chaperon small children onto rides, bought them treats, took our pictures... Seriously though, if you have at least one small child who can't go on a lot of the bigger rides, it's much easier to do if there's more than just the parents there to help.

So there you have it. That's how I like my Disneyland vacation to go. I'm sure there's lots of ways that other people like to do things that work just as well for them. So, what are all of your Disney-ing tricks?