Disneyland Hotel Happiest Hotel on Earth Tour

[laughinplace2]

Hello everyone,
I'm just looking for info on the tour of the Disneyland hotel...I heard something about it last time I was in Disneyland and I'm interested in doing it. However, we aren't staying on site. Is it ONLY available to onsite guests? Or can offsite guests join for a fee?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!

 

[planningjollyholiday]

sorry, only for onsite guests as part of a perk for staying there.

 

[laughinplace2]

What a bummer!! Would have paid to do it (but can't afford to stay on site). Are you able to just walk around the hotel to explore it, like you can in all the reports WDW?

 

[Nonsuch]

...Are you able to just walk around the hotel to explore it, like you can in all the reports WDW?

Yes, you are able to walk around the hotel -- except not the pool areas.

 

[laughinplace2]

Ok thanks! (And I meant *resorts not reports lol). So u can't go out to see the Disneyland themed pool?

 

[planningjollyholiday]

You can see the pools from behind a gate. one of my favourite quick service restaurants is tangaroa terrace. My favourite bar is trader sams. both are on the DLH property. I would suggest going to one of these places at night. Sit on the patio, enjoy the ambiance of the tiki torches and palm trees as you listen to the live hawaiian musicians play. Then wander around the grounds and explore when you are done. Each tower has its own theme that you can recognize by the music, plants, and decor that surrounds each tower.

 

[helenb]

We will be staying at the DLH this summer, but I have never heard this tour. How do we sign up for it? How much does it cost?

 

[laughinplace2]

It's free for onsite guests! You just have to sign up at the front desk. Enjoy!!

 

[laughinplace2]

You can see the pools from behind a gate. one of my favourite quick service restaurants is tangaroa terrace. My favourite bar is trader sams. both are on the DLH property. I would suggest going to one of these places at night. Sit on the patio, enjoy the ambiance of the tiki torches and palm trees as you listen to the live hawaiian musicians play. Then wander around the grounds and explore when you are done. Each tower has its own theme that you can recognize by the music, plants, and decor that surrounds each tower.

Thanks for the advice! I'm definitely going to do dinner at Tangaroa Terrance one night!!! Looking forward to it

 

[marchingstar]

Can you take the tour if you're staying at any disney hotel? What's it like?

 

[laughinplace2]

It is supposedly for guests staying at any Disney onsite hotel. Here's a blog with details:

http://blog.touringplans.com/2014/08/07/disneyland-hotel-happiest-hotel-earth-tour/

 

[Malcon10t]

There are quite a few on site activities. One my kids like is wash cloth folding. They teach you to make various animals. I think it is Wed and Sat mornings at 830am in the Adventure Tower lobby. You can do tours of both the DLH and GCH. When you check in they will give you a list of things happening each day. I think they still do the power walk in DCA. You can go in early to Ride Makerz on a certain day. I will see if I can find an old sheet.

 

[westcoastminnie]

We did the tour in December. We did not stay onsite and when we signed up at the front desk they didn't even ask if we were guests there, just how many in our party. There were 5 of us - four adults and one child. There was no cost. It was a great experience! Maybe we got lucky? Anyway, it couldn't hurt to ask!

 

[planningjollyholiday]

We did the tour in December. We did not stay onsite and when we signed up at the front desk they didn't even ask if we were guests there, just how many in our party. There were 5 of us - four adults and one child. There was no cost. It was a great
experience! Maybe we got lucky? Anyway, it couldn't hurt to ask!

I think you got lucky. They have always asked us for our room number when we sign up for the extra activities. To be honest i find it a bit disappointing to hear that they weren't more strict with regulating when you signed up. I choose to pay a premium to stay onsite for the perks. If offsite guests are able to sneak in and use those perks then it is definitely unfair to onsite guests, especially if an offsite guest were to fill up a spot that resulted in soneone else not able to attend due to capacity issues.

 

[westcoastminnie]

We certainly didn't mean to "sneak in" We had no idea it was a perk of being an onsite guest. If they had asked at guest services we would have told them the truth, that we weren't staying onsite. We only found out about this tour from a friendly airport employee; he made it sound like it was to encourage people to stay there in the future (it did!). And if I go by the leftover headsets, there were definitely spots open in our group. I won't speculate on why we were allowed, I'll just consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity.

Just curious, are there any other offsite guests that have taken the tour?

 

[MommyJKM]

I think you got lucky. They have always asked us for our room number when we sign up for the extra activities. To be honest i find it a bit disappointing to hear that they weren't more strict with regulating when you signed up. I choose to pay a premium to stay onsite for the perks. If offsite guests are able to sneak in and use those perks then it is definitely unfair to onsite guests, especially if an offsite guest were to fill up a spot that resulted in soneone else not able to attend due to capacity issues.

I don't think it's a big deal to tour the hotel. I'm sorry, that's not what I'm paying for to stay onsite. I'm paying for EMH and location and the luxury of GCH. I do not mind at all that the above poster got to tour the hotel. She didn't "sneak" in.
There has probably NEVER been a hotel tour too full..I mean it's a tour of the hotel. ugh.

 

[westcoastminnie]

MommyJKM actually makes a valid point. I mean, as far as perks go, it's not very "perk-ish", when compared to some of the other amenities and events offered exclusively to the hotel guests. It's a brief history of the hotel and a tour of the grounds. If you are an onsite guest I can see doing it once, but after that, you probably won't feel the need to do it again. And with the amount of guests that stay there regularly, there probably are a lot of tours that don't fill up. And like I said, it intrigued me enough to plan a stay there in the future. Not that DLH has issues reaching capacity, but it sure doesn't hurt marketing the hotel to offsite guests!

 

[planningjollyholiday]

Yikes looks like i ruffled some feathers with my comment. Westcoastminnie, never meant to imply that you snuck in. After rereading my post i can see how you might have read it that way, and for that i apologize. However, what i did mean to imply was that there are a lot of dishonest people in the world that do take advantage of disney all the time. I have read countless threads about how someone is staying onsite and they have snuck in family or friends to the pool area. To me this isnt right. If you want the perks, stay onsite and pay for it. As far as it not being the reason people stay onsite i disagree. I stay onsite for the whole experience. This includes the emh, the ambiance, the service, the pools, and the added perks. I try to utilize all the options at the resort and enjoy the experience As a whole. Perhaps a tour has never been full, i really dont know what capacity is. But i have tried to sign up for washcloth creations and been told that sorry its full. Ive also been there and watched people being turned away in the morning for the early morning walk through DCA because it was already at capacity.

 

[MommyJKM]

Yikes looks like i ruffled some feathers with my comment. Westcoastminnie, never meant to imply that you snuck in. After rereading my post i can see how you might have read it that way, and for that i apologize. However, what i did mean to imply was that there are a lot of dishonest people in the world that do take advantage of disney all the time. I have read countless threads about how someone is staying onsite and they have snuck in family or friends to the pool area. To me this isnt right. If you want the perks, stay onsite and pay for it. As far as it not being the reason people stay onsite i disagree. I stay onsite for the whole experience. This includes the emh, the ambiance, the service, the pools, and the added perks. I try to utilize all the options at the resort and enjoy the experience As a whole. Perhaps a tour has never been full, i really dont know what capacity is. But i have tried to sign up for washcloth creations and been told that sorry its full. Ive also been there and watched people being turned away in the morning for the early morning walk through DCA because it was already at capacity.

I see what you're saying now, feathers smoothed out That morning walk and the washcloth class do fill up, but I suspect the tour isn't that popular. The pilates class is kind of intense so I've never seen that full

I'm just looking for info on the tour of the Disneyland hotel...I heard something about it last time I was in Disneyland and I'm interested in doing it. However, we aren't staying on site. Is it ONLY available to onsite guests? Or can offsite guests join for a fee? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!

By the way I remember my Mom always recommending the GCH Art of the Craft tour years ago to friends going to DLR but not staying onsite. They used to let anyone do it. I think Disney says "hotel guests only" because people have a tendency to want to do EVERY free thing available to them and having a free hotel tour would cause madness! Can you imagine how many people would sign up for that?

I say, ask a Disneyland Hotel CM nicely and if they say "Yes" then great. Don't feel bad by any means, it's just a tour of the hotel and enjoy yourself

We once stayed in the Arcadia suite at GCH and asked to see the suites before booking and were offered to see the DLH suites as well. I think it's a matter of if they have the staff/time and again - to weed out letting EVERYBODY do a tour.

Have fun either way

 

[gottalovepluto]

This sounds neat! Thanks for posting about this tour, I hadn't heard of it before. We stay GCH when onsite but the Art tour never sounded too intriguing to my tastes, I didn't know DLH had one with bits of Disney history included. Putting this on our list of to-dos for this summer!