This is such a great thread!! I read every post and look forward to reading more.
It's been really helpful in the past for me when there were posts about hotels, so I will add our experiences and opinions and hope that helps others plan.
We've had APs a couple times before and we'll be having another "Year of Disney" in 2017 starting with New Year's week and I'm already planning our trips. For us, staying close enough to walk to the entrance crosswalk is our #1 priority. We like to do rope drop, take a nap break in the afternoon/early evening (when the park is most crowded anyway), and then stay till park close. Here's where we've stayed:
Best Western Park Place Inn: This is where we've stayed the most in recent times. When our family expanded to a family of six, we needed a room to accommodate us all and the mini suite at BWPPI was the best option (the little one was in a pack-n-play and yes, there was enough space for that in the room). It's right across the street from the entrance, has free breakfast, decent prices, and free parking & WiFi. We became reward members too, so after a few stays, we ended up getting a free night's stay which we used on a night that was one of the higher priced nights of the year. Nice!! We're not pool-users on DL vacations, so I don't have any comment on that, but we like that the free breakfast includes the hot/protein items and it's a great time and money saver. The beds are hard for me, but I like a really soft bed, so I started bringing a foam-top for myself and that solved THAT problem. My husband who likes hard beds thought the beds were great. Never had any problems with checking in or customer service. Have always been pleased with our stays here.
Best Western Ahaheim Inn: Just a few doors down from the BWPPI. The hotel rooms look/feel the same. We stayed here on our Mother-Daughters trip when it was just me and our two daughters, so we could get away with a two double bed room and it was less expensive for the smaller bed/room option. The breakfast was pretty much the same as at BWPPI and we thought the breakfast room (on the 2nd floor) was also really nice. Would stay here again if we needed a smaller room.
Park Vue Inn: Also right across the street from the crosswalk and has the free breakfast (including hot/protein) and free parking. My husband loves this place and I like it too. It's been awhile since we stayed there, but we just booked our next trip with them and got a 2 Queen with bunk bed room and we're really excited about it. Got a returning customer discount too.
Howard Johnson: LOVE this place so much! Started staying there back in the day with the Entertainment Book discount (did get a couple $59/night deals!). If you're staying in the summer/warm weather and you have little kids, this place is such a great option for the pirate-themed water play area. The interior corridors make the rooms quieter. The beds & bedding are awesome. Customer service is great. Free and plenty of parking. No free breakfast, but we loved being close to Mimi's or picking up an Egg McMuffin from McDonald's on the way in. We stayed once in a room on a top floor with the high-windows and loved how big the room felt. We've also stayed in a Kids Suite and loved the two rooms and pirate theming. No breakfast and it is about a 5-minute longer of a walk to the crosswalk which is not a big deal. My 8 year old daughter remembers it well and REALLY wants to stay here again. She does not remember the walk being any longer. I plan on staying here again for sure!
Disneyland Hotel: Oh, how I loved staying here! We've been twice and it's been magical both times. I love the Disney-theming. Beds are comfy. It's definitely a stay-in-the-bubble feel hotel. It's just so darned expensive, so it's hard to justify spending that much more money on the hotel room when we're more commando-style park-goers and don't spend much time in the room. I do plan on staying here for Dapper Days in April though. I can't wait! I do hope that we can stay there next summer and leave some time to spend at the pool and maybe even rent a cabana.
Grand Californian: My husband LOVES this place. He loves the lodge-theming (he REALLY loves it) and likes how close it is. If we could afford it, this is where he'd stay every time. I'm not as big a fan. Our 2 Queen room was so small and it took us forever to get from our room to the lobby/outside. The whole place felt dark to me and I'm not a fan of the lodge-feel. But the beds are comfy and I did like that our balcony was right over Downtown Disney. For me, if we're gong to spend that kind of money, I'd much rather stay at the DL hotel for the theming/Disney magic and bigger rooms.
Stanford Inn & Suites: This was a departure for us since this isn't a walking-distance place. But we wanted to take a last-minute trip over 4th of July and only had the two little kids (the two older kids were at camp that week), so we just needed a standard two-bed room. Since it was last-minute, the only rooms closer that we liked were either all booked or really expensive, but I found the SI&S for a
great price and they had the free breakfast too. My husband and I were also in the midst of a fitness challenge and part of the challenge was steps walked per day so we thought it would be fun to add the extra distance to get more steps. So we actually did walk the mile to and from each day (we had a double stroller for the two little kids so they didn't have to walk it). If you don't mind walking or taking transportation and need an economy place, this place was fine.
Tropicana: We stayed here years ago, and frankly, I don't remember it, lol! So it couldn't have been outrageously bad or good for me to have almost no recollection of it.
Anaheim Plaza Hotel & Suites: Ok, this was over a decade ago in 2003! But it's kind of funny because I had actually bought vouchers for this place on eBay. And I kid you not, it was $35 a night. We had two kids at the time who were 4 and 6 and we knew they wouldn't care or notice anything about the room and we were prepared for it just to be a place to sleep and shower. The pictures of the grounds on the internet looked so pretty though so I figured it wouldn't be TOO horrible. The room was so run down and our socks turned black from the dirty carpet almost immediately. We were mostly prepared for this and it didn't dampen our spirits or anything, but we vowed to never stay there again. I'm really looking forward to seeing the new hotel that will be going up in its place!
Carousel Inn & Suites: I booked a room there within the last year (maybe about 8 months ago) through Hotels.com and decided to accept a slightly higher per/night price to not pay the whole thing in advance (you just had to pay for one night instead of the whole stay) because we weren't 100% sure of the trip happening or what the exact dates would be. I had called about week later to change the reservation (I think I wanted to try to add a night) and
our reservation was not there anymore. Apparently, if you don't pay the whole thing up front, Carousel has the option to bump you off to accept a reservation for someone who's paying the whole thing.
No one ever notified us that they cancelled the reservation. I only found out because I was trying to change the reservation. Can you believe that?! So wrong. They also charge you all kinds of extra fees (resort fee, forced valet/parking fee, WiFi fee, $20 dollar fee for each key you don't return, etc.) which is so crappy. I know the DL hotels charge for parking, but Carousel has to do it apparently because their parking lot is so tiny they have to do tetris with your car. So if you ever need to run down to Target or something, you have to wait for them to get your car out. How inconvenient. This wasn't stuff I realized until later, or I wouldn't have booked it in the first place. But because of this,
I will never never never stay there unless they change all of this nonsense. Just thought I'd share this experience even though we didn't actually end up staying there. Thankfully.
