Pay your parking fee and drive into the park’s 100-acre parking lot. It’s bigger than the park itself. Friendly parking attendants will direct you to one of the 15,167 spaces. Arrive early, and you may find yourself parked in the convenient Bambi section. But if you arrive later on a busy day, you could be way back in Thumper or Winnie the Pooh.

Regardless of where you park, you can walk directly to the front gate. However, you may prefer to take a free tram to save your feet for the park itself. As you cross the lot, you’ll see huge towers supporting cables. Is that the Skyway ride? No, those are high-tension electric power lines.

At the end of the day, it’s time to walk or take a tram back to your car. You do remember where you parked, don’t you? Don’t you?

There was a huge parking lot directly in front of Disneyland’s Main Street entrance from 1955 until it closed permanently, January 21, 1998.

Now most guests park in the massive Mickey & Friends parking structure, in the Simba and Pinocchio lots over by the Disneyland Hotel, and in the Toy Story Lot across Harbor Blvd. from the Anaheim Convention Center hotels.

For a number of years, some guests parked in the Timon lot, which occupied roughly 20% of the old Disneyland parking lot (where the Mickey and Sleepy sections once were) but that lot disappeared as California Adventure added The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Flik’s Fun Fair, and Cars Land.

Here’s a parking ticket from 1963. As the ticket shows, all-day parking in 1963 was 25 cents. Using the U.S. Government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation calculator, 25 cents in 1963 is equivalent to $1.90 in 2013.

Today, all-day theme park parking is $15.00 for cars and motorcycles, and more for larger vehicles.

Pets en route to the Disneyland Kennel Club ride the parking lot tram—the only Disneyland ride that allows pets.

The high-tension power lines have been rerouted along the edge of the property. The new towers do not have the large footprints of the old towers.

High-capacity ramps to and from the Santa Ana Freeway provide improved access to the Disneyland Resort from Los Angeles, but access to the Mickey & Friends structure can be awkward from the south.

Most of the original parking lot is now the site of:

• Disney California Adventure, a theme park based on the history, culture, natural beauty, entertainment industry, and Pixar characters of the park’s home state (after all, Pixar is based in California);

• Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, an “Arts and Crafts” style luxury hotel which blends into the new theme park;

• Downtown Disney, a complex of themed shops, restaurants, movie theaters, and other entertainment.

There’s nothing fun or “magical”—or even particularly efficient—about the Mickey and Friends parking structure. The structure is stark and modern. Aside from Disney characters on signs, it’s not “Disney” in any way.

Because the tram stop is outside the structure, beyond a far corner of it, many guests end up walking a substantial distance—and then they still have to wait for a tram.

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Mickey & Minnie in the Lot it’s a small world holiday Home

© 2000-2013 Werner Weiss — Disclaimers, Copyright, and Trademarks

Updated May 10, 2013.

Photograph of Parking Lot: 1997 by Werner Weiss.
Photograph of Parking Lot with Monorail: 1997 by Werner Weiss.
Photograph of Electric Transmission Towers: 1997 by Werner Weiss.
Photograph of Electric Transmission Towers: Allen Huffman.
Scanned image of the Disneyland parking lot map from Today at Disneyland for Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11, 1987: Copyright 1987 The Walt Disney Company.
Disneyland parking receipt from 1963: Copyright Disney, scanned and provided courtesy of Bob Peart.
Scanned image of the Disneyland parking lot map from Inside Disneyland Today from 1995: Copyright 1995 The Walt Disney Company.
Photograph of the interior of the Mickey & Friends parking structure: 2002 by Werner Weiss.
Photograph of the exterior of the Mickey & Friends parking structure: 2002 by Werner Weiss.