We're on the plane right now and plan on full days at Disneyland Monday and Tuesday. If anyone has any must-do kind of stuff at Disney or the area please post tips!

After Disney we're driving to Santa Barbara area. Are there some good places to stop for kids?

TIA

Cobb Salad at the brown derby

Ride one of the cars on the oval track on the Ferris wheel

Naples for pizza and black tap for burgers in DTD

The Cars ride in Cali Adventure is a great ride. Dole Whip is terribly overrated. I am happy I never have to do Disney again. Post up your daily step count.

I grew up going to DisneyLand and brought the kids back last year after having not seen it for over a decade. I recommend Genie+ and LL

Try and be there at rope drop and hit up the big rides first like Rise of the Resistance if you don't want to pay extra for LL.
It takes about an hour to get from the road entrance to where you've paid for parking and gone through the garage to your parking spot and getting the shuttle to the main entrance before you're even walking up to the park.

I always do Space Mountain, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mtn, Splash Mtn (Tinanas Ride now or whatever its called).

I don't know how old your kids are but right at the entrance where the train station is and the main street roundabout, the characters come out and your kids can get pics/autographs or whatever and Royal Theatre area if the kids are into princesses.

My family just got back from Disneyland. We had a great time there. I felt like the food at Disneyland is not as good as Disneyworld, but we really didn't research it as closely or choose the fancier restaurants due to our kids' picky appetite.

My son (9) has autism, so we were able to get a DAS pass--I recommend getting a virtual appointment to get this if you qualify instead of waiting until you get to the park. We also paid for the Genie+ Lightning Lane. We didn't wait in a line longer than 15-20 minutes due to both of those. It got a little tricky since my son had to ride the rides that we used the DAS pass for--he chickened out on Guardians of the Galaxy, Incredicoaster and Space Mountain. They were gracious to let our party still ride them though.

We spent 2 days at Disneyland and 1 day at Disney California Adventure. At Disneyworld, the character meet and greets are much more structured, but at Disneyland, the characters really mill about the parks more so than Disneyworld.

Disney California Adventure
My son's favorite thing was Cars Land. I was super impressed by how detailed the theming is there. It looks exactly like the movie. Radiator Springs Racers is a great ride, especially at night. With our DAS pass, we were able to ride it 4 times in one day. The line was consistently 2 hours long all day we were there. He was geared up to meet Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater. He wanted to take a picture at every spot in Cars Land.

Our family is a little young for Marvel and Star Wars. Guardians of the Galaxy is a great ride--adapted from Hollywood Tower of Terror. Web Slingers is pretty cool too, but the kids kind of freaked out from all the spiders.

Make sure you get in the virtual queue line at 12 noon for World of Color for "reserved" seating. I was impressed by this show and how they incorporated the lighting on the ferris wheel and Incredicoaster into the show.

We wanted to do the Animation Academy, but it was a zoo in the animation building since it was so hot. Elsa and Anna are posted up there for photographs, which also led to the big crowd.

Parade at DCA was boring and slow.

Disneyland
My kids' favorite ride at Disneyland was Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway. They enjoyed meeting Mickey Mouse, but it was short lived because they were closing ToonTown at 8 pm for the fireworks show.

We all rode Millenium Falcon and enjoyed it. My son and I rode Rise of the Resistance. I haven't seen any of the Star Wars movies, but I was super impressed with the lead up to Rise of the Resistance and the ride itself. It uses similar technology to Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, but is way better. The AT-ATs in the ride are impressive. The theming of Galaxy's Edge is amazing--even the Coke bottles at the concession stands are Star Wars themed.

Also the classic rides are here - Pirates, Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh (closed while we were there), Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Snow White, Pinnochio. (Splash Mountain is closed for renovation to Tiana's Bayou Adventure)

Fireworks and castle projection show was pretty unremarkable to me, having already been to Disneyworld.

We ate breakfast at Plaza Inn with the characters (Minnie, Pooh, Eeyore, Daisy, Chip, Dale, Piglet). Food was bad, but kids got to interact with the characters.

Parade at Disneyland had more and better characters than DCA. A tour guide approached our family and offered us reserved seating for the parade near the castle since we had on 1st time visit buttons and Mickey Mouse gear.

We bought a package deal for a meal at River Belle Terrace to have reserved seating for Fantasmic. The food was ok, but the kids menu was not great. My son did not like the food there, so I ended up getting chicken strips for him next door. They were gracious enough to comp his meal at River Belle Terrace and still give our party of 4 reserved seating for Fantasmic even though we only paid for 3 meals. He also had a huge meltdown there since he was hungry and tired. The waitstaff was very accommodating to us.

Hotel
We stayed at Hyatt Regency Orange County in a kid's suite--king with kids bunk beds. I can understand the convenience of staying on Disney property after dealing with the hotel shuttle, but it was about $1400 more to stay at the Pixar hotel than Hyatt Regency and even more for Disneyland and Grand Californian Hotels.

Just got back from a quick trip to DL for the kids spring break. We've been to DW a few times so comparatively a lot of the rides are the same. But I must say I prefer DL. Smaller footprint. Weather was gorgeous. And we were able to stay in a reasonably priced hotel within walking distance to the entrance.

Biggest con is it's located in Anaheim. We booked last minute so we flew into Burbank on a Friday around early afternoon. LA traffic makes Houston traffic feel like child's play.

Did one day at California Adventure Park and one day at DL. We also splurged on Premier Pass at DL and rode every LL ride which was really neat and the kids loved it.

Overall I'd def go back to DL over DW. If only they had an Epcot equivalent!

Agreed. Honestly I haven't been to WDW in 10 years, and really have no desire to go back. I would totally go back to Universal Studios in Florida though, especially now with Epic opening.

We did Disneyland and Universal Hollywood last Christmas. Even on the busiest week of the year, I did not find DL to be that crazy (although we did pay to ride some rides). While Universal Hollywood was fine, I much prefer Orlando.