Hi Heather!
Welcome to planDisney! Thank you so much for sending this Disneyland Resort vacation planning question to us hEAR. I'm Kristen, and I'm happy to be your planEAR today!
Oh boy, this sounds like the most magical visit to Mickey's house indeed! I love seeing
Disneyland Resort all decorated for the holidays. And I know that you and your family will too! I very much understand wanting to do everything possible to ensure that you can get not only
Theme Park Admission Tickets but
Park Pass Reservations during your desired Disney dates as well. From what we, as panelists, have seen in the last yEAR,
Park Pass Reservations open for booking 120 days in advance of every day but dates don't start to completely book up until a few weeks out with prime days (ie: school holidays) filling up four to six weeks out. And even then there have been giant sprinklings of pixie dust when certain dates, or even whole months, that were booked solid once again had a mass of openings.
Your one true best bet would be to buy your theme park admission ticket and book your
Park Pass Reservations as soon as they are available to you. While you can book your park passes one day at a time if you already have your
theme park tickets purchased elsewhere, ideally you'll have to wait until your last theme park day is in that booking window to secure all of your Disney days.
Another option that might work out better for you, Heather, is to look into a
Disneyland Resort Vacation Package or a
room-only reservation at a Disneyland Resort Hotel. Disneyland vacation packages, at both Disneyland Resort hotels as well as the
Good Neighbor Hotels, offer wonderful benefits, like the ability to make payments,
and you'd have a full money back cancellation policy if you need to back out up to 30 days before check-in. But the current biggest benefit to booking a
Disneyland Resort Hotel Vacation Package or a room-only reservation is that
Disneyland Resort Hotel Guests have access to a separate pool of Park Pass Reservations just for them that pretty much ensure you're getting into the parks over your time in town. You'll still have to make the Park Pass Reservations, which you'd want to do sooner rather than later just to be sure, but this really is the best way to guarantee access and availability.
I hope that this helped to clEAR up your question, Heather! Be sure to follow the
official planDisney Instagram account for even more tips and tricks. We even just launched the brand new planDisney Podcast! And if you have any more Disneyland Resort vacation planning or holiday questions, We're All Ears!
~Kristen