The kids had their fun at Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway & Radiator Spring Racers at the Disneyland Resort, and your feet are killing you. Now it is your turn parents to have a good time & live it up while hurting their feet on the Las Vegas Strip! Please celebrate responsibly, especially with your kids. Las Vegas is home to many resort hotels on the Las Vegas Strip with casinos, dance clubs, attractions, flagship stores, bars, music artist residencies, celebrity-endorsed restaurants, and in the last decade, home team sports! It is an adult’s dream, if you have kids, make the experience family-friendly if you have kids without. To really live it up, leave the kids at home.
How are you getting to Las Vegas, depending on how you got into Anaheim, it will most likely be your transportation option to Las Vegas as part of a multi-leg trip. Getting to Las Vegas from Anaheim is either driving via Inland Empire & Interstate 15, taking a FlexBus /Greyhound motorcoach, or flying from Santa Ana John Wayne Airport to Harry Reid International Airport.
Driving
If you are going with a whole group of friends and/or family, taking an automobile is the best option, especially if you have a lot of items for your celebration there. bachelor/et party anyone? Just hope you don’t recreate the Hangover movie.
When driving, you need to take into account the energy you need to drive, five hours or more to drive, the cost of gasoline, the fuel efficiency of your car, cost of parking at the hotel as some of the hotels in the strip cost money now, parking maybe comped of a higher tier rewards member like MGM Gold tier member, driving back, and wear & tear on your car. If you are driving to Las Vegas, try not going in on a weekend, as traffic on the freeways can be slow at various points.
If you drive from the Southern California area, pack your patience, you have to go with the eastbound suburban traffic. From Anaheim at 5 pm, we were routed from I-5, CA 22 east to through Orange, then CA 55 north until CA 91, and then I-15 north at Corona.
At CA 91, there is the first automated paid express lane, from 91 to I-15, the express lanes to Orange-Riverside County line were $7.50 which have to get on there and take it all along going to the county line. Past the county line, there is a paid HOV option, and we were forced to go I-15 South as the north was not an option, so we scooted over to the next at East Ontario Avenue and went on to the I-15 North. I-15 North was clear until Fontana where it was stop-and-go traffic through Cajon Pass of the Tahapehi Mountain Range, and then traffic cleared up at the pass. On the way to the pass, we got a clear view of the mountain range and the snow, especially seeing Mt. Antonio. After the pass was the first desert cities of Hesperia & Victorville. We stopped in Victorville to eat at Panda Express at Roy Rogers Drive as In-N-Out has a huge line at the drive-thru, usually indicating a long line inside as well.
After dinner, we got gas at Costco Gasoline, then headed up I-15 for Las Vegas, through Barstow, the Mojave Desert, a rest stop at Valley Wells which was not in the best shape, and at the state line was Primm, or only exists because they can. Then drove straight through to the Las Vegas Valley. We arrived at 11:15 pm on Friday with little traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, and then checked into our hotel room & crashed for the night.
Heading back to Anaheim was bad for everyone who came in on Friday evening or Saturday morning. Leaving the Las Vegas Strip was not bad at all. We got gas at Costco in Henderson, and we were on our way. However, there were plenty of slowdowns on the desert highway of I-15, at Primm, NV, the California-Nevada state border, lanes changed from three to two, slowed for the agricultural checkpoint, gaining and then losing a lane in Baker, and stopped in Barstow at Lynwood Road where everyone has the same idea for 3 pm lunch there. Lynwood is home to the Barstow Outlets and many chain quick service restaurants, so it was a popular spot, thankfully, the McDonald’s on the other side of the freeway was much less crowded. After we had McChickens & fries, we continued down I-15 through Victorville where there were slowdowns for construction. Then went down Cajon Pass where everyone drove really slow, probably because of the steep curves.
From Cajon Pass, we went through the Inland Empire smoothly and then changed to CA 60 West in Ontario to Pomona, and then on to CA 57 South to Anaheim. Drive time was six hours due to slowdowns, another hour for diversion for gas, rest stop, and lunch. It is not a fun drive and my dad said that if we go to Las Vegas again, we will fly there on weekdays, so there isn’t as much traffic during the weekdays.
If you have an electric car, you need to take the battery charging break as well since it is roughly 260 miles, you might need to use a step 3 charger on the way there, which would eat another hour. Before booking your hotel, make sure to check if they have on-site charging so you are ready to go when you depart for an attraction needed to reach by car, the next leg of your trip, or heading home. Check for the best public charging locations at PlugShare.com
Driving is the least cost-efficient as you have to drive, gas mileage on your car, and time as traffic is always unpredictable due to the lane number changes.
Bus
Motorcoach services like FlixBus, who bought Greyhound, are another way to get to Las Vegas from Anaheim. However, there are so many routes that aren’t a direct service, the only one is at 7:15 am on a Grayhound, about 6 hours with a few intermediate stops. However, the majority of them have to stop and transfer at Los Angeles Union Station. The average fare is $40 per person per way.
Flying
The quickest but most expensive option per person is flying, about an hour and fifteen from Santa Ana-John Wayne. My preferred carrier for from Santa Ana to Las Vegas (LAS) is Southwest as most flights are $124 per way with nine nonstop flights throughout the day.
For a more luxurious experience, try JSX, formerly called JetSuiteX, with thirty-person jets that go the same route, a private terminal & security checkpoint at all destinations, and starts at about $200 per person per way for the 7:35 pm flight.
It is good if everybody is paying their way there, however, it can get quite expensive for a family of four or more. For larger groups, driving is the most economical.
Anaheim Resort Transportation, Everybody Ventures Everywhere (EVE) to Santa Ana John Wayne
The best way to get to and from Santa Ana-John Wayne Airport to the Anaheim Resort area is by taxi or rideshares like Uber or Lyft. In Anaheim, you can use Anaheim Resort Transportation, Everybody Ventures Everywhere (EVE) airport shuttle, which you go to the pickup zone, buy the pass on the A-Way We Go app, input the destination, and you will get driven from the airport to your hotel. From the hotel to the airport, place the request, and the shuttle will pick you up, and drop you off at the designated zone. All for $15 per person per way!
Brightline (Future Planned)
Surprisingly, with how many people fly and drive to Las Vegas, there currently isn’t a train line from Southern California to Las Vegas, Brightline wants to change that. Brightline passenger train service, currently operates in Miami & West Palm Beach, with plans to make a train route between Inland Empire and Las Vegas, so you still have to drive your car or take a bus to Rancho Cucamonga but you can take the Inland Empire line from Orange or Anaheim Canyon to San Bernadino, then transfer to San Bernardino line to Rancho Cucamonga. They claim to cut travel time in half, 2.25 hours, with all-electric train sets.
You can watch my Metrolink San Bernardino line video and watch in real-time and see how long it takes to get to Rancho Cucamonga, from Los Angeles is, from San Bernardino. The line is double-tracked from San Bernardino to El Monte and then is single-tracked to Los Angeles as it runs along the median of Interstate 10. Due to this, there is a cap of 36 trains per day in both directions. It is a fairly busy line, so when Brightline opens, there has to be an expansion to the amount to Metrolink trains can go.
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