Thunderbird,
Have a blast on your trip!
This coming January, I'll be bringing my Mom out to Disneyland and we're staying at the Best Western Park Place Inn, for the first time. (I usually stay at Marriotts to earn points.) Please post any advice, reviews, etc. when you return! I'd love to hear about your experience of the place.
Thanks,
Ray
We were there 4 nights, and really liked the hotel. We were in room 376, which is a standard room with 2 dbl beds and one of only a few rooms that looks out on Harbor Blvd. If you can picture the hotel shaped like this:
(except much taller), Harbor Blvd runs across the top of the hourglass. The front desk is on the first floor at the top of the hourglass, then there are 3 or 4 rooms on the second and third floors directly above the front desk. Our windows looked out towards Harbor Blvd and the parks, so we had a good view of California Adventure (Tower of Terror, California Screamin' and the Sun Wheel), but a large palm tree blocked most of the view of Disneyland (we could see the Matterhorn peeking out through the leaves). It's too bad, because we would have had an awesome view of the fireworks.
The only downside to these rooms is they are as far as possible from the elevators, which are located at the middle of the hotel (or the center of the hourglass). If you don't mind one or two flights of stairs, and you don't have more than 4 people, I'd highly recommend these rooms. Ice and soda were just steps away, and we had a shorter walk to the park and breakfast than those at the back of the hotel.
The rooms were a little dark, and there were no in room safes, but the bathroom was fine, showerhead was new and good, we had a fridge and microwave, and it was always clean. It seemed like there was plenty of parking, but we just let the car sit for the 4 days we were there, so I couldn't say for sure. Didn't use the pool, so can't comment on that, but it's better than it appears in pictures (though still woefully small).
Continental breakfast was exactly was Ty described earlier (get there early--they do run out of stuff towards the end), and you could also get pancakes in the restaurant downstairs. But you can't bring downstairs food upstairs to the continental breakfast or vice versa. I understand their reasoning, but it's still a little weird if everyone in your party isn't on the same page. As long as you're all willing to settle for the free continental or are willing to go to the restaurant together and either have the free pancakes (drinks not included) or pay for breakfast (order off the menu or have the buffet), you should be fine.
For us, it really was less than 10 minutes to the entrance to the parks, and that's with a stroller. We had no problem going back to the hotel for an afternoon break then returning to the park at night. For the savings over the on-site hotels, I'd stay here again in a heartbeat.