Ah Disneyland! We took a quick trip on May the 4th (AKA Star Wars Day!) and boy do you need to go in with a game plan. Far from the carefree visit I remember as a child, in which I didn’t have to worry about anything, this time as an adult I found myself googling tips several weeks leading up to our trip to make sure we fit in everything we could in our 1-day visit.

Finally got to check out the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and on May the Fourth no less!

So if you’re planning a trip to Disneyland and California Adventure in Anaheim, here is a quick and dirty list of need-to-know tips (for further reading, I’ll point you to some more detailed pages I found below!) plus a little explainer about the Lightning Lanes and how they work.

We started the day on the California Adventure side, which had much shorter lines than Disneyland at opening.

Download the official Disneyland app and familiarize yourself with it. You will be using it all day!

Reserve your ticket in advance and definitely select the genie+ upgrade.

If you are only going one day, do the park-hopper ticket and I'd suggest starting on the California Adventure side. Everyone wants to go to Disneyland first, so it will be more crowded. After 1 pm, you can move to the other park and back and forth.
Gates open before the rides, so get there by 7:30. You can even get there at 7 if you really want to be first in line, but rides open at 8.
Go straight to your must-do ride. Right at opening time is when the lines will probably be the shortest.
You can bring your own food, and we thought the picnic tables to the left of the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail entrance in California Adventure (Grizzly Peak Land) were the most peaceful and shady. Everywhere else seemed crowded or in the sun. The French Market in Disneyland is also a good option.
I'd recommend using lockers just outside the California Adventure gates to the left for $7 the whole day, unless you have kids and just keep your stuff with a stroller.
You can request the specific seat you want on any ride when you get to the front of the line. DO NOT sit in the front of Splash Mountain unless you want to be absolutely soaked. On Soarin' Around the World on the CA Adventure side, ask to sit in the middle.
Wouldn't recommend our budget hotel that was a 1.2 mi walk each way. Especially for a birthday or special occasion, I'd probably splurge for one of the official Disneyland resorts that is connected to the Monorail, which takes you straight to the parks. Or just book a non-Disneyland hotel as close as possible.
We didn't need to rent a car, just ubered from the airport to the hotel and walked from hotel to the parks.
Bring a phone charger/external battery! The app is essential to your day, so you definitely don't want your phone to die.

About Lightning Lanes

Lightning Lanes are the short-track to the front of lines. I would say if a ride has a wait of 30 minutes or less (check the map in the Disneyland app for wait times), stand in the regular "stand-by line" because you can only use a lightning lane reservation once per ride (so you'd be wasting it if the wait is short).

All the top rides are almost guaranteed to have a wait of at least 45 minutes, so that's when you'll want to reserve a Lightning Lane entry. In the Disneyland app, you line up your next reservation one at a time, and you can only hold one reservation at a time.

The best strategy is to pick out the popular rides you know you want to ride and then scroll through the Lightning Lane open reservations and select the ride that is first available. For example, say it's 10 am and your options in the app are Pirates of the Caribbean at 2 pm, Indiana Jones at 11, or Splash Mountain at 12. You'll want to pick Indiana Jones at 11 because it's the earliest available. If you picked Pirates, you can't reserve anything until you've redeemed that 2 pm reservation. Reservations have a 1-hour window to redeem, and they open up to reserve in the app at 7 am the day of your ticket. There is a quota for reservations, and they do fill up.