We are moving to Phoenix and thrilled because now we are 6 hours from DL instead of 18 hours! We have an 8 year old and are expecting a baby in July. Are we nuts to consider a 2 day DL trip once the baby is a few weeks old? (it wouldn't be for the baby, it would be for our older child and us :D ). Anyone take an infant to DL? Do you have any strategies to share?

I say go! As long as you guys don't mind having to take turns on rides with the older child.
By the way, depending on where you are moving in Phoenix the trip could be as little as 5 hours!! It takes us just at 5 hours to get there....sometimes less depending on traffic and construction.
Welcome to Phoenix!!!:cool:

You are going to get alot of varying thoughts on this subject.

We are local so we took our son at around seven weeks or so. There are some I know here who took their kids at a much younger age.

I think it all depends on what you expect out of your trip. You won't be able to take the baby on coasters and such, but certainly slow boat rides and the trains you can take the baby. Be sure to check out baby swap where you can wait at the exit with your baby and then swap with whomever you are visiting the parks with for the bigger rides. You can do lots of shopping, dining, and walking around the parks. Be sure to go by Mickey's House and get pictures with the baby and Mickey Mouse.

Have fun!

This is a little OT, but I recommend that you get annual passes if you don't already have them. Living so close makes it easy to go to DL several times per year. :)

Wow! Thank you for the responses! I am so excited to hear the trip can be a little as 5 hours, that is great. We have also considered annual passes since I am sure we'll go several times a year now. (Yippee!!) Thank you all for the information.
This will be quite a transistion for us, but we are really excited about it. Of course if I hear "it's HOT there." one more time, I am going to lose it. Yea, it's hot in the summer, but it is in Colorado too and then it's FREEZING sometimes in the winter. Gotta take the good with the bad anywhere right?

Well, it is hot here. Not going to lie about that. I have lived on the west side of Phoenix my entire life. But you know what??? We have AC for a reason! LOL! Pools work great too! But seriously, it is a different kind of hot than most people are use to. But you will get adjusted after a summer or two.

We are getting annual passes this June as well. We go usually about 3-4 times a year and have just never gotten around to buying the passes. But our son is only 7 (going to be 8 in June), so we still have a few good years of him really enjoying the trips. So we will suck it up and get those passes bought this trip.

If you have any questions regarding Phoenix or AZ please don't hesitate to send me a private message and I will help you out in any way that I can.

DL has a baby center that gets rave reviews. I haven't used it so can't comment, but do a search here for baby center and you'll find lots of good info.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... my DS was 12 days old on his first trip to DL! And DD#2 will be about 2 weeks on our first planned post-partum trip. DL with infants is completely doable. We didn't do many rides and I spent a lot of time in the Baby Care Center nursing him (this was before I became the fearless public nurser). Lots of character pics, lots of shopping, and still tons of fun!

Elizabeth :cool:

Wow! Thank you for the responses! I am so excited to hear the trip can be a little as 5 hours, that is great. We have also considered annual passes since I am sure we'll go several times a year now. (Yippee!!) Thank you all for the information.
This will be quite a transistion for us, but we are really excited about it. Of course if I hear "it's HOT there." one more time, I am going to lose it. Yea, it's hot in the summer, but it is in Colorado too and then it's FREEZING sometimes in the winter. Gotta take the good with the bad anywhere right?I used to visit Tucson often, and wha I liked best was Monsoon season. The lightening shows are EXCELLENT. Yes, it is hot. But its a dry heat! Now that that is said ITS HOT. But, AC is your friend. Most houses have pools there for a reason.

Get the AP, you'll need it!

Others have given good advice regarding the visit to Disneyland, but I want to comment briefly on the driving. When our son was a little over 3 months old, we drove from the Los Angeles area to Phoenix to take him to visit his grandparents. To be blunt, that drive was pretty much a nightmare with a child that young.

First of all, the earlier note that the drive can take as little as 5 hours is simply not going to happen when traveling with a newborn. A five hour drive might be possible if you can get by with no stops or only very short ones. With a newborn, you are going to have to stop every couple hours to feed the child and each of those stops are going to take an hour or so. In addition, keep in mind that the parents get very little rest during the first several months after a child is born, which means that I was already rather tired by the time we left home and my wife wasn't really feeling up to taking on much of the driving that soon after giving birth. That resulted in the need for some of the feeding stops to be extended even more as rest stops for me.

That first drive to Phoenix with our son took us about 12 hours. We had left home around noon and had made dinner plans with my wife's parents based on our expectations for how long the drive usually should take, but we ended up calling them from around the half way point to let them know that they shouldn't expect us to be there in time for dinner. We ended up having dinner at a McDonalds just inside the Arizona border and actually got checked into the hotel around 1am Arizona time. Pretty much the first thing on the agenda the next day was to get on the phone and make necessary motel reservations to allow us to split the return drive over two days.

I'm not saying all of this to discourage you from taking your child to Disneyland. By the time we did this trip, our son had actually been to the park at least once and we took him there pretty often during his first year. To be honest, we went more frequently back then than we do now that he is 3 years old as visiting the park with a child that young is actually somewhat easier, in many ways. I'm firmly of the belief that children (and their families) do get quite a bit out of a visit to the parks, even at that young a time. Our visits to Disneyland were among our most valued early family bonding experiences.

I do believe you need to have realistic expectations about the trip, though, and plan accordingly. If you plan to drive, I very strongly recommend that you allow two days of travel time in each direction and get reservations to stay the night somewhere at the half way point. If at all possible, you might even want to see if you can find a friend or relative who isn't a primary caretaker for the child (and, thus, won't be involved in late night feedings and such) to come along as the primary driver. As an even better alternative, I would seriously suggest looking into air travel. Southwest Airlines has some very low rates available between Phoenix and the L.A. area and, quite frankly, air travel with a child that young is almost certainly going to be a lot easier than driving, particularly for such a short flight (Phoenix to L.A. or Orange County should take about an hour).

I'm all in favor of traveling with a small child, but do be prepared for what you are getting into.

-Jeff

We never had that sort of trouble. We drove at night when our son was an infant/toddler. He was on a pretty good schedule and starting sleeping through the night at 3 weeks old, so it was easy for us to make long trips! We even made it all of the way to Alabama in 30 hours with him in the car once!

But those are good points for the original poster to keep in mind about the drive. Maybe if they drove at night it would be easier?

We had experiences closer to Backs. My kids were very close in age (they are now 21, 20, 18, and 17.) We could usually drive 3 hours, stop for 45 mins to an hour, then finish the drive. Even now with teens, we still end up stopping.

My parents live in Arizona, past Phoenix and the only way we survived the drive with an infant was by me mastering the art of nursing a child in a rear facing car seat without unbuckling her. Neither of my girls slept thru the night until they were ~ 18 months old, in fact I think they ate more at night, less going on then. My oldest I could pump in the car and then feed her a bottle in the seat, but my younger rejected all milk that didn't come straight from the source.

living in Phoenix with two little girls, and making about 10 trips/year, i can speak to some of this.

the drive can be as little as 5 hours. Or 6 or more, depending on what part of Phoenix you are driving from, the time of day you travel, and how many stops you make. It is so much easier driving when the kids are asleep, so i like to leave in the early evening (actually i like to leave as soon as i can because i want to go to DLR ASAP :~D , but because of work, etc., i often leave at 5-6 pm. or later. ) we camp so an extra night's lodging isn't much. but if you want to make the best time, drive at night ---- and then get into DLR as early as possible the next morning when its the least crowded.

And yes definitely buy APs - it's a nice convenient trip - especially to get out of the heat in the summer (but there are some summer days in Anaheim that are too hot too).

And finally, i'll take 4 months of heat anyday, rather than months of cold!!! And your first summer is always the worst - you'll adapt.

living in Phoenix with two little girls, and making about 10 trips/year, i can speak to some of this.

the drive can be as little as 5 hours. Or 6 or more, depending on what part of Phoenix you are driving from, the time of day you travel, and how many stops you make. It is so much easier driving when the kids are asleep, so i like to leave in the early evening (actually i like to leave as soon as i can because i want to go to DLR ASAP :~D , but because of work, etc., i often leave at 5-6 pm. or later. ) we camp so an extra night's lodging isn't much. but if you want to make the best time, drive at night ---- and then get into DLR as early as possible the next morning when its the least crowded.

And yes definitely buy APs - it's a nice convenient trip - especially to get out of the heat in the summer (but there are some summer days in Anaheim that are too hot too).

And finally, i'll take 4 months of heat anyday, rather than months of cold!!! And your first summer is always the worst - you'll adapt.

10 trips a year - now that's what I am talking about!! We haven't been in almost 2 years. Driving in the evening/night seems to be the way to go also.

Thanks for the advice about the first summer, I am sure it will be the worst for me since I'll be very pregnant. I plan on staying in A/C and using the pool alot. Then, about February, (my normal "I am SO sick of winter/snow/cold period) I will be living it up in the sun instead!

Others have given good advice regarding the visit to Disneyland, but I want to comment briefly on the driving. When our son was a little over 3 months old, we drove from the Los Angeles area to Phoenix to take him to visit his grandparents. To be blunt, that drive was pretty much a nightmare with a child that young.

First of all, the earlier note that the drive can take as little as 5 hours is simply not going to happen when traveling with a newborn.

What. He. Said.

We love driving trips. Love. Them. I have no problem taking a baby to DLR young, much to my sister's dismay.

But I did a driving trip with a very young infant. Once. It was miserable.

I figured the baby would sleep. HA HA. No. I've also driven to the bay area with a child who was about 5 months old. While that wasn't miserable, it took several hours longer than we thought it would.

Just don't plan on a 5 hour drive if you do this.
Adrienne

ETA I had lots of people giving me advice like this when we took our trip with a 2 month old. I blew them all off. In hindsight, I should've listened!

All 3 of my children HATED the baby carrier and would therefore cry, cry, cry...in the car. This did not get better until they were switched to a convertible car seat and were a bit more upright. Granted, the baby carrier is so much easier when you can remove it from the car when baby is sleeping, but my babies hardly slept in it. I bought a convertible car seat that safely fits a newborn. As a matter of fact, my dd (2) is still using it, facing forward now.

We just returned from a drive to Eureka (6 hours away) and it was breeze. My DS (7) and DS (5) read for a couple of hours and then played with their gameboys or leapsters. DD slept for a couple of hours then kept herself entertained. I am so lucky that she doesn't need a gameboy or dvds to keep her happy.

When we go to DL , we alway leave in the dead of night (1:00am) so by the time we hit Magic Mountain, the kids wake up, we stop for breakfast, then we just drive straight on through to DL. For some reason, the boys love to be carried to the car in the middle of the night. I think they associate it with going to Disneyland!

gloria

I'm going to be the spoilsport who throws in what no one else seems to have mentioned. How are YOU going to handle an at least 5 hour drive when you are just a few weeks postpartum?

Even at the 6 week mark, I wasn't up for a long car ride, iykwim.

And then standing on your feet and walking the park...it works for some people. Others can't quite handle it. And every baby is different, if you did well after your first pg don't expect it to be the same recovery time after the second.

Babies can be very adaptable, the younger they are the more adaptable in my opinion. But, just beware that you may not be up for as much of a "vacation" as you think.

I might go anyways...but plan a stopover, stay super close to the park, and expect it to be more of an "enjoy the atmosphere" trip than a "lets get there at opening and stay through the fireworks" trip.