It honestly wasn't that bad for driving. To get from San Diego to Magic Mountain, yeah it took a little over two hours and we had to wake up at 4:00am to get there on time. (That's nothing I haven't done before considering I do that going to Great Adventure.) However, from Magic Mountain to Knott's was really not bad at all. It was only around an hour drive, but with these parks being close to LA there's obviously traffic and things to worry about when driving that the time goes by real quick.
Probably the worst part about the driving was going from Magic Mountain to San Diego on the last day. It took over three hours to get there because of the traffic and I was getting paranoid that we wouldn't make our flight if the traffic increased. Being me though I loved driving through it all and going a constant speed of 80mph (with no traffic).
But the first two nights we stayed at Kevin's brothers apartment in San Diego. Saturday and Sunday night we stayed at the Knott's Berry Farm Resort right next to the park.