Visitors to the Anaheim Resort may take planes, trains, and automobiles to arrive to the general area, but all face the same crucial dilemma of Disneyland transportation when traveling that last mile to the Happiest Place on Earth. Park or walk, take a tram or shuttle bus, Uber or ART? We’ve got your breakdown of the best ways to enter and exit Disneyland, direct from the new Unofficial Guide to Disneyland 2025.
Whether you’re a local from Los Angeles or on vacation from halfway around the world, every guest at the Disneyland Resort who isn’t staying on-site must begin the day by getting to the front gates. So before your next visit, be sure to check out this guide to Disneyland transportation when planning your approach, as well as your entrance and egress from Anaheim.
Disneyland Mickey & Friends and Pixar Pals Parking Trams
The main parking facilities, the Mickey & Friends and Pixar Pals parking garages, can be accessed directly from I-5, Disneyland Drive, or Ball Road. One of the largest parking structures in the world, the garages are connected to Downtown Disney and the theme parks by Disney trams. Non-collapsible strollers are permitted on trams only in the first or last car, where there are extra-large sections for strollers and wheelchairs.
Take a ride on Disneyland’s Mickey & Friends parking tram with this 4K POV video:
If you’d rather hoof it, the walking distance to the park gates is about a mile, cutting south to Downtown Disney; use the pedestrian bridge on the Pixar Pals garage’s south side to cross over Magic Way and access the sidewalk past the parking lot. You’ll have to pass through Disney’s metal detectors and baggage screening on the ground floor of the garage before walking or tramming to the parks.
Disneyland Toy Story Parking Buses
The secondary parking area is the Toy Story lot south of the corner of Katella Avenue and Harbor Boulevard, a favorite of local passholders and our top pick for the most convenient place to park. Toy Story, which is the only lot that accommodates oversize vehicles like buses and RVs, offers shuttles to and from the bus loop east of the Esplanade, or you can walk (about 0.9 mile). A security checkpoint here before boarding the bus allows you to bypass the screening at the Esplanade during the peak morning arrival period, but if entering later in the day, you may get screened after riding the bus to the Esplanade. The Toy Story buses can accommodate collapsible strollers, but larger models can be challenging to wrangle inside.
See the trip from the Toy Story lot with this 4K POV video:
If you are coming from I-5 southbound and want to park in the Toy Story lot, the shortest route is to exit at Katella Avenue and make a left on Clementine Street. However, this entrance is not open to vehicles all the time, unlike the lot’s main entrance on Harbor Boulevard. If you are staying near the corner of Harbor and Katella, you can walk into the Toy Story parking lot and use its park shuttle for free; just be aware that the bus stop is located at the eastern edge of the parking lot, near the pedestrian gate at Clementine Street and Katella Avenue, which is over a quarter-mile walk from the Harbor Boulevard entrance.
Disneyland Area Hotel Shuttle Buses and Anaheim Resort Transit
Shuttle buses service many of the hotels and motels in the vicinity of Disneyland. A few hotels (like the Candy Cane Inn and Anaheim Majestic Garden) have grandfathered-in shuttles driving directly to Disneyland, while all newer hotels use the shared ART buses, which make stops at other motels and hotels in the vicinity. Either way, they represent a fairly carefree means of getting to and from the theme parks, letting you off near the entrances and saving you the cost of parking. The rub is that they might not get you there as early as you desire (a critical point if you take our touring advice) or be available at the time you wish to return to your lodging.
If the shuttle provided by your hotel runs regularly throughout the day to and from Disneyland and if you have the flexibility to tour the parks over two or three days, the shuttle provides a wonderful opportunity to tour in the morning and return to your lodging for lunch, a swim, or perhaps a nap; then you can head back to Disneyland refreshed in the early evening for a little more fun.
Be forewarned that most hotel shuttle services do not add more vehicles at the parks’ opening or closing times. In the mornings, your biggest problem is that you might not get a seat on the first shuttle. This occurs most frequently if your hotel is the last stop for a shuttle that serves several hotels. Because hotels that share a shuttle service are usually located close together, you can improve your chances of getting a seat by walking to the hotel preceding yours on the pickup route.
Anaheim Resort Transit (ART) provides shuttle service to the Disneyland Resort, Anaheim GardenWalk, and the convention center. The service operates over a dozen routes, each with its own designated number and color. There are just three to nine well-marked stops on each route, so a complete circuit on any given route usually takes about 20 minutes, but some take up to 1 hour. All of the routes originate and terminate at Disneyland’s bus loop east of the Esplanade near Harbor Boulevard, where each stop sports a digital sign displaying destination and time until next departure. There is also service from Disneyland to Knott’s Berry Farm, downtown Anaheim’s Packing House district, and Angel Stadium (in case you want to catch an afternoon ballgame).
The colorful buses are wheelchair accessible. They ideally run every 20 minutes during the mornings but can take up to 30 minutes or more later in the day. Service begins 90 minutes before park opening and ends 30 minutes after park closing (may vary seasonally). If you commute to Disneyland on ART and then head to Downtown Disney after the parks close, you’ll have to find your own way home. All shuttle vehicles and respective stops are clearly marked with the route designation.
One-way fares are $4 for adults, $1.50 for children. ART also sells one-, three-, and five-day passes for $6 ($2.50 for kids), $16 ($3.50 for kids), and $25 ($5.50 for kids), respectively. Children ages 2 years and under ride free with a paying adult, but they must be taken out of strollers to ride. The most convenient way to buy bus passes is through the free smartphone app, which can be found by searching for “A-Way WeGo” on the Apple or Google Play app stores. Passes cannot be purchased from the driver using cash, but you can tap your contactless credit card or mobile wallet to pay the one-way fare. For more information, call ☎ 888-364-ARTS (2787) or check rideart.org.
ART’s service is usually pretty reliable with frequent service in the mornings, but there are too few departures at night and the app can be confusing, with buses often late or even missing from the tracking map.
Walking to Disneyland from Nearby Hotels
A pedestrian walkway from Harbor Boulevard provides safe access to Disneyland for guests on foot. This pedestrian corridor extends from Harbor Boulevard west to the Disneyland Hotel, connecting Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure, and Downtown Disney. The eastern gateway, which leads between the guest drop-off and bus loops off Harbor Boulevard to a security checkpoint at the edge of the Esplanade, is the most popular entry point for pedestrians.
It’s hard to overemphasize how beneficial it can be to stay at one of the hotels in close proximity to this entryway. Enjoy a virtual walk from the Disneyland Resort to the popular Anaheim Hotel with the 4K POV video below:
Farther south on Harbor are some of the best hotels in the area. They are a little far removed for commuting to the parks on foot, but you can walk into the Toy Story parking lot and take a free bus to the parks. Additionally, these hotels are close to the Anaheim Convention Center and tend to cater, though certainly not exclusively, to business travelers.
While the hotels near Disneyland Drive appear close to Disney property on a map, pedestrian access to the parks from the west is a bit more circuitous. If staying along Katella Avenue to the west of the convention center, you can walk north on Disneyland Drive past the Pixar Place Hotel and through the security checkpoint on Downtown Disney’s western end, which is usually less crowded than the eastern entrance. A keycard-operated pedestrian gate on the Grand Californian’s Disneyland Drive entrance prevents anyone not registered there from entering, and the neighboring entrance into DCA is exclusively for guests at the Pixar Place hotel. From West Ball Road, you can’t enter the Mickey & Friends garage from its north side; instead, you must take a long walk south along Walnut Street or Disneyland Drive to the parking structures’ tram stop, which isn’t particularly convenient with children in tow.
Taxis and Rideshares at Disneyland Resort
If you stay in a park until closing and lack the energy to deal with the shuttle or hike back to your hotel, you may want to hail a cab or rideshare. When you face the alternatives of fighting your way onto a hotel shuttle or trudging back to your hotel on worn-out feet, spending $10–$15 for a ride often sounds pretty reasonable.
You’ll find a passenger drop-off loop (where parking is strictly prohibited) off Harbor next to the pedestrian entrance; taxis and rideshares may also pick up and drop off here. A cab stand/drop-off loop is also located behind the monorail station in Downtown Disney, or rideshares can be summoned to the driveways outside the main lobbies of the Grand Californian or Disneyland Hotels.
Disneyland Transportation Tips
- Stay as close to Disneyland as possible, and leave your car at the hotel if you can.
- If your hotel is more than 5 miles from Disneyland or you must use the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5), give yourself an hour or more to arrive.
- Any time you leave the park just before, at, or just after closing time, or during a hard rain, you can expect considerable congestion in the parking lots and in the loading area for hotel shuttles.
- If you are depending on ART or hotel shuttles, exit the park at least 45 minutes before closing.
What is your preferred method of arriving at the Disneyland Resort? Let us know in the comments below!
For all there is to see and do at Disneyland, check out The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland by Seth Kubersky with Bob Sehlinger, Len Testa, and Guy Selga Jr. All Disneyland fans should also check out The Disneyland Story: The Unofficial Guide to the Evolution of Walt Disney’s Dream by Sam Gennawey.
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