Castaway Cove looks cool and would run us close o $100 a night - WOW!!!
Can someone tell me if it is close to the Carousel Inn?
If you walk from HoJo on the "hotel side" of Harbor, you'll pass right by Carousel in about 5 minutes time.
FYI, the Cove is NOT a pool. It has a hot tub, but is otherwise a water play area. A very fun and cute water play area (from the pictures), but still, not a pool. They do have a pool in the "garden" area of the hotel grounds, and it's lovely and big! But they aren't together. It took me, a HoJo enthusiast, WAY too long to get that there is no pool in the CC area, so now I tell everyone, just in case they don't know.
Another nice thing about staying on-campus, is that you can have your purchases (souvenirs, etc) sent to your room. That way, you don't have to pack them around the park, or wait in a long line to pick them up when you leave the park. We also use the room paper to charge everything we buy in the park.
FWIW, when we stayed on site last September, every store we tried to have purchases sent to our room coudln't do it, b/c they were out of the forms they needed to fill in. They told us to just take the stuff to another store, but when you're with a 3 year old and trying to keep purchases from his eyes for even a few hours, taking the bag full 'o stuff to yet another store is actually harder than just giving him his toys right then. So just b/c you're staying onsite does NOT mean you'll be able to send stuff back to your room.
Heather - you mention the room paper which you use to charge everything to (food and merchandise, I guess). Whenever I have gotten that, I always wondered what the biggest benefit of using it is, and have never used it. It can't be any easier to dig that out of your wallet than cash or a credit card. Is it faster?
We use debit cards, and before I started the "buy a hefty gift card and use that to buy stuff" routine, we stayed at PPH. I much preferred just having the ONE hefty charge to account for in the checkbook, rather than the umpteen little charges.
And heck, it's just fun.
I would like to go Mother's Day weekend - DS's birthday is May 9th and we would like to be there for that plus a few days before or after. However, the kids promotion ends April 30th so I will need to see what the difference is.
How would I get an "entertainment" rate? Is that thru the Entertainment coupon book?
If you're talking about the kids fly free, then I *believe* that's a package deal, and you won't be able to get the Entertainment Book discount on top of that (buy an Entertainment Book valid during your trip, for any area in the country, and you can book with the special rate by calling HoJo Anaheim *directly* and talking to "in house reservations"). Hojoanaheim.com has forums where they list the future dates that are covered under the Entertainment rate, so you would want to check out full prices (or non-kids fly free prices) on various airlines for the various airports in the area, plus the hotels' rates, and see what's a better deal for you.
I like staying off site. If I'm going to put out large sums for a hotel, it had better be really nice and have VERY comfy beds. HoJo has been installing the same sort of bed that Westin uses for their Heavenly Beds, and I've heard too many negative reviews of the housekeeping even at GCH (and we had a bad first impression of PPH b/c of housekeeping issues) to think that it would be as 'really nice' as rack rates at those hotels would need to be. Not saying I wouldn't turn down an amazing AP rate, or a free night, but if hubby is footing the bill and I"m finding ways in our accounts to budget the bill, we're staying offsite.
So for us, there's nothing that we're missing ENOUGH to justify the cost to us.
