Santa Ana Airport is our top choice for visiting Disneyland. It is located about 20-25 minutes from the Disneyland area. EVE bus services this airport, which is very convenient as well. Security lines are short, and there are a few food options while you wait (like McDonald’s, California Pizza Kitchen, etc.)

-Price: Depending on the airline carrier, you can typically expect higher prices than LAX, but you are gaining the convenience of a more “local” airport to Disneyland.

It’s important to note that some airlines, for example Southwest Airlines, do not fly into Santa Ana airport except on flights with connections. So if you want a non-stop flight via Southwest you aren’t going to be flying into SNA, you’ll be flying into Long Beach or LAX.

On the flip side, there are some airline carriers (like Breeze airlines) whose ONLY Disneyland-area airport is SNA, so if you are in a city (like Utah County area, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Bernadino, Orlando, and others) who are serviced by Breeze Airlines, it can be a pretty economical choice over all, and you should definitely consider those options. (Remember that Breeze airlines is a budget airline like Jet Blue and you will need to take into account baggage costs when choosing them for your flights. You are only allowed a personal item (that will fit under the seat in front of you) unless you pay for a higher level ticket or additional baggage.)

-Flight Options: As mentioned above, flight options for SNA vary, so you just have to weigh the pros and cons of the flight cost, the convenience of the flight times/connections, etc. and remember that not all airline carriers fly in and out of this airport.

-Proximity: SNA is the most convenient airport to Disneyland. It is also the only airport serviced by the EVE bus, which is a great perk for that airport. Definitely look into it if you are flying into SNA. READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE.

Because SNA is so close to the airport, you also won’t need to allow yourself nearly the travel time that you would for LAX, which means more park time if you are traveling on a park day. If we are flying out of LAX, we make sure we leave the Disneyland area at least three hours before our flight. If we are flying out of SNA, we can leave Disneyland about an hour and a half before our flight and have a comfortable amount of time to get settled at the gate before boarding. (Obviously, you need to make your own judgement call here—we’d hate for someone to miss their flight because of what we say here. You should always be generous when budgeting time to the airport.)

Cons:

-If your flight is cancelled or delayed, there aren’t a lot of alternatives. Because SNA has relatively few flights per day compared to a larger airport, you can suddenly find yourself in a bit of a pickle if your flight is delayed due to weather or other issues.

-Noise Ordinances: Because SNA is a local airport, they do have to adhere to strict noise ordinance laws, which means no flights are allowed to take off from the airport after 11PM at night. Again, this means in the event of delays your flight could get rerouted to another airport, or delayed until the next day. We have heard of this happening, but we have never personally experienced it. It is a pretty rare occurrence, and probably not something to worry about, especially if your flight is in the afternoon/early evening.