A Disneyland Resort Food Diary.

My only other experience of a Disney park before visiting the OG Disneyland was a day in Disneyland Paris. If you've visited Disneyland Paris, you'll know that the food on offer there are pretty basic theme park offerings. My mind was blown at the difference between the Anaheim and Paris food quality. We had five day tickets but only used them for four but that's more than enough days to do a little food diary post.

We booked a table service restaurant in each park 60 days in advance. For Disneyland, we made reservations in Cafe Orleans. The Monte Cristo available is often cited as a Disneyland must eat. The normal Monte Cristo contains turkey, ham and swiss cheese but we went for the three cheese Monte Cristo which is swiss, mozzarella and double creme brie. The Monte Cristo are deep fried in a light batter, topped with powdered sugar and serves with a berry puree. We also had the pomme frites, which are french fries tossed with garlic, parmesan and parsley and come with a pot of cajun remoulade. we had one of each and shared them between the two of us and it was more than enough. This is one of the most popular restaurants in Disneyland so reservations are necessary as they weren't accepting anyone without them when we visited.

Another Disney must eat, this one isn't just limited to Disneyland as this is also available at WDW. I went for a Dole Whip Float rather than just a standard Dole Whip as Pineapple juice is one of my favourite drinks. This was really refreshing as it was hot (at least for us Brits!) when we visited. This is available from the Tiki Juice Bar.

We also ate at French Market restaurant which is a quick service restaurant is New Orleans Square near to Cafe Orleans. We both had the French Dip Sandwich which comes with in-house seasoned chips and au jus. This was amazing quality for quick service and inside is set up cafeteria style, so they make the sandwich right in front of you.

We couldn't go Disneyland and not get something sweet from Candy Palace and Candy Kitchen on Main Street! Glenn was the chocolate fudge two nights in a row he liked it that much. I had a Cheshire Cat Marshmallow wand.

We visited during Halloween at Disneyland so there were extra food and treats on offer especially. One of these was the Mickey Mummy Macaron, from the Jolly Holiday Bakery. The macaron was cookies and creme flavour. It was great but too big for me to finish.

Another quick service restaurant we ate at was Red Rose Tavern. This is in Fantasyland and is themed to Beauty & The Beast, so trying The Grey Stuff is a must! We also a Slow Cooked Beef Poutine each, which was really filling for the price.

We ate at Disneyland most but Disney California Adventure still had some really great places to eat. I really wanted to eat at Pacific Wharf cafe as they had a bacon and cheddar soup for the Halloween period but we didn't get round to it.

The table service we made reservations in advance for was Wine Country Trattoria. This was the priciest of all the places we ate at in Disneyland but it was worth the money. Glenn had steak and I had Chicken Parmesan. We both had desert too. The cocktails here are really strong!

Mickey Pretzels might be more instaworthy but we both had a jalapeno cheese filled pretzel each instead. 

As if one cheese filled bread wasn't enough, we split a Cheddar Garlic Bagel Twist an hour later from Cozy Cone Motel. We also tried Red's Apple Freeze which we weren't really a fan of. 

We had drinks at the Lamplight Lounge. Food is available here but we stuck to drinks. There's so many to choose from but again, the drinks here are strong!

Have you ate at any of these places in Disneyland? Let me know in the comments below!

Danni
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Los Angeles: A Food Diary.

One of the things I'm missing most about our trip to LA is the food. I thought I'd do a post detailing where and what we ate throughout our holiday. A seperate Disneyland one is coming soon!

Q Smokehouse, Long Beach

This is near the harbour in Long beach and we stopped here for lunch. We both has brisket sandwiches plus a side of mac 'n' cheese. The sidewinder fries that came with them were perfect. Service was great and they were really generous with the amount of brisket on the sandwiches.

Foxys, Glendale

We stayed in Eagle rock which is sandwiched between Glendale and Pasadena so we ventured to both of these cities quite regularly. We ate at Foxys quite late and didn't really enjoy our meals much. I had chicken cordon bleu and found the mashed potato quite sloppy and Glenn was underwhelmed with his burger. Our one place we didn't like.

Zoo Grill, Los Angeles Zoo.

Can't really go wrong with chicken tenders and fries, especially with an endless supply of ranch for dipping!

The Cheesecake Factory, Pasadena & Anaheim.

I knew I wanted to visit The Cheesecake Factory when we were planning our trip but we both ended up liking it so much, we ate here four times in total. Three times in Pasadena and once in Garden Walk, Anaheim. Glenn was obsessed with the complimentary honey oat bread. We tried multiple things including burgers, steaks and chicken. All were amazing.

Krusty Burger, Cletus' Chicken Shack & Moe's Tavern, Universal Studios Hollywood.
Pretty standard theme park grub but not bad for the price. 

Tony Roma's, Universal CityWalk.

Glenn had his heart set on eating at Tony Roma's so when we found out there was one at Universal CityWalk, it was a no brainer. Glenn went for ribs, which is what they're most known for but I went for a turkey cheddar melt instead.

Eggslut, Glendale.

Eggslut was also on my list to go to so I was pretty happy to find there was one nearby in Glendale. A small menu but perfectly done, we really impressed.

La Piazza, The Grove.

Honestly, one of the best pastas I've ever had. This restaurant is in prime position, situated near the fountain at The Grove. One of the more fancier meals of the trip!

Fat Sal's, Hollywood.
This one sandwich alone contains roast beef, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries, mayo and gravy. The sandwiches here are insane but they taste amazing. I knew this was a must visit as soon as I saw the menu a few months before our holiday. I loved it, but Glenn thought the sandwich was a bit excessive, though they do have more normal sized sandwiches too.

Holy Cow BBQ, Culver City.

This is near to Sony Studios so we stopped here for lunch after the tour. I had the grilled cheese which you can have with either pulled pork or brisket. I went for pulled pork and Glenn had the Brisket sandwich. We had a side of onion rings with ranch. Really nice!

Umami Burger, Pasadena.

The best burger ever? We both thought so. We both had the truffle burger and it was amazing. Service was quick and the restaurant itself is in the main shopping area of Pasadena. There is also an express version of Umami in the food court at LAX so we each had another truffle burger before our flight back to the UK.

Jimmy's Famous American Tavern, Santa Monica.

We stopped here during brunch hours. Glenn went for the french dip sandwich and I went full on american brunch. I had The Bubba- Fried chicken, bacon, cheese, sausage gravy and a fried egg on a buttermilk biscuit with tater tots. I loved it here!

Lemonade, Santa Monica.

Lemonade is a big chain in LA and while the food here isn't really for us, we did stop for lemonade as it was a roasting hot day... at least for us Brits. The blood orange lemonade was great.

IHOP, Anaheim.

If you can't have country fried steak for breakfast in America, when can you?! Our first experience of IHOP and we really liked it.

Full Throttle Sports Bar, Six Flags Magic Mountain.

Nice table service restaurant in Magic Mountain. Usual theme park food but done to a higher standard.

Bob's Big Boy, Burbank.

Really near to Warner Brothers Studios, we stopped here for breakfast before the tour. Really nice with great service, this is a typical american diner.

Bea Bea's, Burbank.

I've never seen such an extensive breakfast menu like the one Bea Bea's has. But the tagline for the restaurant is 'breakfast is everything' and oh yeah, it is. A must stop for breakfast in LA. We actually tried to eat here on a Saturday morning but it was so busy! That was the day we went to Bob's for breakfast instead. We tried again a couple of days later on a Monday and it was a lot easier to get a table but still busy.

Have you ate at any of these restaurants?

Danni
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Saving Money with a Go Los Angeles Card.

When we began planning our Los Angeles trip, we made a list of the attractions we wanted to visit during our stay. Then we found out about the Go Los Angeles card by Smart Destinations. It's a good way of saving money versus paying for each attraction separately.

The Go Los Angeles card is available to buy from Attraction Tickets Direct, which we also used to buy our Disneyland tickets. The card covers 35 different attractions and you can get 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7 day tickets that can be used over the space of 14 days. We bought 5 day tickets, as Universal Studios Hollywood is only included on tickets with 3 days or more.

You can visit more than one attraction in the same day as long as you get to your last one of the day by 5:30pm. 

We visited the Queen Mary on our first full day. It was really interesting and you get to pick between one of three tours to do while on board. If I was in Southern California again, I wouldn't hesitate to go back and do one of the other two tours.

In the afternoon of the same day, we did a two and half hour whale watching cruise. You'll have to excuse the fact that I have no photographic evidence of this as I spent the majority of it feeling seasick and counting down til we headed back to land! We didn't see any whales while on the tour but we did see hundreds of dolphins right next to the boat.

We were planning to drive down to San Diego Zoo as this is also included on the card (or a visit to Legoland California) but we got an hour into the drive and headed back to LA. Los Angeles Zoo is another attraction available so that became our back up plan. I'm so glad we decided to do this, not only did we save ourselves a five hour drive there and back but LA Zoo was really quiet. This meant we were able to talk to the employees one on one about the animals and it was a great experience.

Universal Studios Hollywood was one of my favourite days of the whole holiday. The tram tour is a must do, and as a Harry Potter fan, The Wizarding World was a highlight. As for shows, Waterworld is a must watch.

Sony Studios Tour was good. We got to visit soundstage where The Goldbergs is filmed, which is one of my favourite shows. It was cool to actually be on the set where it's filmed and see all the details that are hard to notice on TV.

Warner Brothers Studio Tour Hollywood is a must do, especially for Friends fans. While the Sony tour is a walking tour, Warner Brothers is primarily a tram tour followed by a self guided tour around exhibits plus a photo op at Central Perk!

Six Flags Magic Mountain is a must visit for thrill seekers, these are some of the most intense rollercoasters I've ever been on. Not only was it a really good day out but it was so quiet that we hardly queued for anything!

The card costs £217 for a 5 day ticket though at the time we bought them, they were £206. If we had paid for everything on the day, it would have cost $417 which is about £325. Even if we booked everything in advance separately, it still would have cost about £273. 

If you're planning to visit Los Angeles, a Go LA card is the way to go.

Have you visited any of these attractions before?

Planning a Holiday to Los Angeles.

With only 43 days to go until Glenn and I board a plane headed for LAX, I thought it was time to talk about our planning process, who we booked with and all that jazz. Obviously the first thing to get sorted before heading to the US is your ESTA application. After that, you're good to get booking.

We booked our flights before anything else. We originally looked at Norwegian air as I'd heard that they did pretty cheap flights. The reviews for the airline were all over the place and it definitely put us off. We checked out Virgin Atlantic next and that was out of our budget. We ended up booking with British Airways which was more or less the same price as Norwegian. We also booked our car hire with our flights.

We looked into hotels, but the ones in our price range didn't suit us or weren't in a nice area and we all also had to factor in extra parking costs. A much better idea and the way we ended up doing it, was booking an AirBnB for the first 9 nights. The one we chose has off street parking and is in a residential area of Eagle Rock, about a twenty minute drive from Downtown LA.

For the last five nights, we'll be staying in one of Disneyland's Good Partner hotels in Anaheim. There's plenty of hotels within walking distance if you're planning on hitting the original Disney park on a SoCal trip. We filtered the choice by looking at which hotels offered free parking and weren't too pricey. We'll be staying in the Wyndham Gardens Anaheim which was recently refurbished from a Ramada Plaza Hotel. It's so close that you can see parts of Disney California Adventure from some rooms.

When it came to buying tickets for places we wanted to visit on our trip, we used Attraction Tickets Direct. I used the same company last year for PortAventura tickets and it was one of the cheapest places I found for those. This time we bought 5-day Disneyland park hopper tickets and 5 day Go Los Angeles cards. The Go Los Angeles are print at home tickets and the Disney tickets were posted to us quickly. The Go Los Angeles cards are a great money saving way to hitting up multiple attractions as there's about 40 to choose from. You can visit more than one attraction in the same day as long as you enter before 5:30pm. Some require making reservations beforehand, but I found ringing ahead easy and was sent email confirmations straight away. The passes are available in 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7 day options, with Universal Studios Hollywood only included on passes or 3 days or more. Aswell as Universal, we will be using our passes to go whale watching and visiting Warner Brothers studio, Sony Pictures studio, The Queen Mary, Long Beach Aquarium, San Diego Zoo and maybe some of the smaller attractions if we have time.

We've also applied for tickets to watch The Late Late show with James Corden being filmed but haven't heard if we've been successful yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

We've been changing some money every month instead of doing it in one go before we leave. I use MoneySavingExpert.com to find where has the best exchange rates on those days. I've found Tui to be the most convenient for us, as it's local and has one of the better rates. 

I'll definitely be doing some posts once our trip is over, probably a couple of hauls as the idea of shopping at Sephora and Ulta has me pretty excited already. 

Have you visited LA? Do you have any tips or recommendations?

Danni
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