Hiya, Emily!
Welcome to planDisney! We're so glad that you found us hEAR. It'll be my pleasure to be your planEAR today!
Oh boy! A holiday to The Happiest Place on Earth sounds fantastic to me! It sounds like what might be happening is that you're looking at a
Disneyland Resort Hotel Vacation Package, which bundles a play and a stay together. With Vacation Packages, the minimum number of admission days for your
Theme Park Admissions tickets is two, however, you can use those on either your check-in or check-out day.
Since you seem to be getting in so late on your check-in day, a better option might be to book your reservation at
Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa separately from your
Theme Park Admission Tickets. This would mean you'd have a Room-Only reservation in a separate transaction from your admission passes, but you could select as few or many Disney park days as you'd like.
Do note that
Vacation Packages fall under slightly different rules than when booking everything individually; for example, if you need to cancel your visit (knocks on wood) you have up until 30 days before check-in to do so with a package, vs. five days with a
Room-Only hotel reservation. However, with a Vacation Package, you'd be able to cancel and get a refund on your tickets whereas when purchased separately, you wouldn't be able to refund the tickets but you could apply the value of what you spent on them towards the purchase of future passes.
I'm so sorry that this answer might not have been exactly what you were looking for, Emily, but hopefully, it helped to give you a bit of hope and to clEAR up your question a bit. Your best bet would be to reach out to a Travel Agent who can help set your jolly holiday in motion. Be sure to follow the
official planDisney Panel Instagram account for even more tips and tricks. And if you have any more
Disneyland Resort vacation planning questions, We're All Ears!
~Kristen N.