My wife and I want to take a vacation next year for our ten-year anniversary and one of the ideas we had was a combination vacation to San Francisco & Disneyland. The reason we thought of this was because we really want to go to San Francisco and we have been to Walt Disney World 2 times but never stayed at one of the resorts. In fact, staying in SF or at one of the WDW resorts were our two top choices so we decided on a compromise: 10 day trip to California with 5 days in SF and 5 days at Disneyland at one of the resorts. Has anyone ever done this or have any advice on this trip idea? Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hi-Just a suggestion, but I might re-post this with California or San Francisco or Disneyland in the title to catch those who may have done this. You really want to spend 5 days in the Disneyland area -- that would be pretty over the top. There really are a lot of great places between SF and Disneyland - like Carmel, Monterey, etc. that I would do instead. Or even going north of SF to Napa if you've never been.

unless you are disney fanatics there is absolutely no reason to stay in Anaheim 5 days. DL is a animal than WDW. 1 day for DL, part of 1 day for CA Adventure. Accounting for arrival/departure schedules - 3 nights is the MOST you would need there. 2 nights should be plenty. And doing so means you can splurge on the Grand Californian.

3 to 5 days in San Francisco, 2 days at Disneyland and 3-4 days to see some of the coast would be a great vacation

The original Disneyland area in Calif. was not as planned as the ones in Florida or France. So there are a lot of very tacky places that surround the park. I can't imagine spending more than 2 days there. So why not fly into Anaheim from where ever you are living. Spend a couple of days in DL..then a couple in LA..probably around the Santa Monica or Westwood area..then work your way up the coast.. Santa Barbara, Route #1 to Carmel, San Francisco. You could easily drive #5 or #101 directly from LA to SF. But you'll miss a lot of pretty sights. Think about a day trip or over night to Napa or Sonoma Counties... lots to see just North of SF too.......... Fly home out of SFO or Oakland airports.

Looking at the Disneyland layout, I can see why five days is too much to spend in that area if that's all you will do. If you add Universal Studios Hollywood and Sea World in San Diego, 5 days would be good to spend in the Anaheim area.

Universal Studios, Hollywood and San Diego are all a long, looooooong ways from Anaheim. Anaheim is not a good base for visiting any of them.

So I repeat, 2 days is all you'd need IN Anaheim. If you also want to visit Universal and/or San Diego - you need to stay elsewhere for them . . . . .

Have you booked your flights yet?

Anaheim is anywhere from 1 hour (if you're VERY lucky) to 2.5 hours from both Universal and San Diego.

If you want to do the theme park thing, you may want to consider something like this:

Day 1 - Fly from your home to San Francisco
Day 6 - Fly in the morning from SF to San Diego/Sea World
Day 7 - Drive to Anaheim/Disney
Day 9 - Drive to LA/Universal
Day 10 - Fly home from LAX

It might not cost much more than a straight round trip. And you might actually save money as it will prevent the back-and-forth drives in a place that has one of the country's highest prices for gas.

Thanks for the advice, Pomme949. We have not booked our flights yet. We have not decided where we want to go on our trip. Looking at your itinenary, it seems like it would be a lot of running around and not much relax time. At this point, we are thinking of spending most of the trip in the SF area and doing 2-3 days in Disneyland.