We were soooo tired from getting up early and going to bed late that we went up to the room (which they'd shown us on a map when we checked in) and tried the door with our key card starting at about 4:28pm. When it still wouldn't open at 4:34pm, I wandered the halls til I found a bellhop and asked her for help.
Magically, at 4:37pm, our key worked and we got into our opulent park-view roomDisney officially calls it a Standard Superior Room (Park Grand View) (5th-6th Floors). It was practically a suite, with a little hall, a huge main room, a giant shower/tub room, the vanity area, and a separate toilet room.
The bathroom had a soaking tub and a hand held/stationary showerno need for a curtain cuz the whole room acted as a shower!
Soon-to-be-stolen toiletries
Another year's supply of slippers!
I don't think you're s'posed to take these
This was the absolute coolest amenity in the room, and when we got one at all three Disney hotels, we began to wonder if maybe fruit is a delicacy or in short supply in Japan
?
There was even a finger bowl!
I sorta feel like we did our Disney hotels backward by starting with the newest. Before, I'd always thought Mira Costa would be my favorite, and then the Disneyland Hotel, and then the Ambassador. But after actually staying in all three, the order got kinda mixed up. Because it's older, Mira Costa's rooms turned out not to be as large or as nice as Tokyo Disneyland's. On the other hand, the Ambassador's rooms turned out to be much nicer than I'd expected, probably because I had this preconceived notion that the Ambassador was going to be weakly themed and generic like the Paradise Pier or Disneyland Hotel in California. More on that later
back to the Disneyland Hotel!
I was really impressed! I am not a huge fan of Victorian décor, but it's very tasteful and understated at the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel. And the guest amenities more closely mirror those at the American Disney hotelslike the little sundries shop where you could get refrigerated meals and snacks, and the guest laundry room. Neither Mira Costa nor the Ambassador had these. The laundry turned out to be the biggest deal because I had been banking on washing all our clothes halfway through our trip. Unfortunately, I didn't find out that none of the other hotels had a laundry room until we'd checked into Mira Costa (be glad you didn't have to sit next to us at any time in the following weeks!).
The only thing that disappointed me about the hotel was the "Park Grand View." We'd booked so last-minute that it was the only room type left, except for actual suites. Now if I'd bothered to look at a map of the resort beforehand, I would have seen that the hotel does not sit over the entrance to Disneyland like it does in Paris and is all the way behind the monorail station. But I didn't, so I was expecting the Park Grand View to be some fantastic view down Main Street (OK, again, forgetting that there is a ROOF over Main Street!... I was kinda distracted in the weeks leading up to the trip!).
Instead, we saw this:
With zoom:
OK, admittedly, it's not like our Dumpster-view room at Wilderness Lodge. But given the choice, there is no WAY I would ever again pay hundreds of extra dollars a night just to see a monorail station and some roofs with a tiny castle in the background. And this is coming from someone who considers the phrase "The hotel is just for sleeping between park-hopping" to be sacrilegeI am all for nice amenities and nice views! At MiraCosta, I would splurge for the park view. Here, I would save my pennies and take whatever is cheapestyou're still in the nicest hotel at the resort!
So what was the first thing we did when we got to the largest room we'd ever see in Japan? Take a nap! This is what it looked like when we woke up:
