Which Hotel at Disneyland

[MelDane]

Some help from Disneyland veterans please. We are close to finalizing our first trip to Disneyland after many trips to Disney World over this upcoming Halloween time. We are debating if we should stay at the Disneyland Hotel or the Grand California Hotel. We are looking at doing 6 nights for this visit that so that would mean that we would be spending a good amount of time at the hotel as well as in the parks so we want to make sure the hotel has great things to offer like pool areas and places to eat as well as other activities. For those of you who have done Disneyland before what would you recommend?

 

[ADisneyFamilyof5]

GCH is hands down our favorite hotel. You cannot beat the location, the atmosphere is amazing and we found the pool area much more relaxing than DLH.

Honestly you can't go wrong staying at DLH, it's great. My only negatives were the pool area was always hectic (I attribute it to the amount of waterslides) and the elevators take FOREVER. Plus if you are visting when it's 95 degrees out, the walk back seems to get real long.

As for restaurants, I would not base my hotel choice off that. All DLR hotels are a 5-10 min walk from each other so you can easily get to whatever you feel like eating.

 

[Ndusmama]

GC: beautiful hotel, close walk (as in elevator ride down) to entrance to DCA, the snack take out restaurant actually has some decent food, the spas in my experience tend to be more adults and less kids play time. Cons: water slide not so fun. Walk to room if you get a dtd view is HORRIBLE! Same with some courtyard views, gift shop is small, rooms close to main lobby can get loud.

Dlh. LOVE the fireworks in the headboards and the song. Water slides (yes plural) are fun for even us adults. Gift shops (again plural) are nice and cast members are always the friendliest people anywhere at Dl plus they have a lot of items. Steakhouse 55 for breakfast or dinner! Cons: longest walk to either park, coffee shop only has coffee and stale pastries (last two times I tried), parents let kids in spas/jacuzzis like they are a pool and don't worry about underdeveloped hearts.


Personally I love the hidden mickeys in the grand but the headboards and views at DLh are why I tend to pick DLH

 

[Ndusmama]

Oh dlh hotel is closer to earl of sandwich.

 

[ParkHopper1]

GCH is my go to choice and I love it, but the answer to your questions is...it depends.

All depends on what is a priority to you in a hotel room for your stay, size of your party and ages, as well as if budget plays a major role.

All three of the resort hotels are short walking distance apart unlike WDW so you will have access to all of the resort restaurants and stores. T

he GCH is the closest and is like you never leave the park. The negative for some is that the rooms are the smallest of the three hotels, but the bathroom layout is great with separate shower/toilet room then a dual sink outside the bathroom. Some say the rooms are "dark", but I love the coziness. As someone who stays in hotel rooms several nights a week for work, the GCH is one of the most relaxing rooms I have been in.

At DLR, rooms are bigger and pools are larger...I usually say of you have kids and pool is a priority, DLH hands down. Much more Disney themed all around.

PPH has the best theme park views and largest of the rooms, but is is off of DTD a bit and the pool is very "meh".

So in a nutshell, my take:

More adult oriented trip or small family and proximity to parks is important: GCH
More kid oriented trip and pool is important: DLH
More budget conscious trip, room size is important but do not care about pool: PPH

 

[Nevada Jen]

I totally agree with the pp. Having stayed at all three multiple times, that is a really accurate answer. Paradise pier concierge works best for my family. Most the time that is cheaper than a regular dlh room. Gch doesn't work at all. The rooms arE so small we can't even fit a single air bed. And we totally don't care about pools.

 

[MelDane]

Thank you all for you thoughts. Some additional information, this would be a family focus trip. We just got back from a WDW trip in March where we stayed at AKL for the first time (first time staying in a deluxe hotel) and my 6DD loves the pool time and the special activities that they had going on so we are looking for something along those lines for our stay at DL

 

[Ndusmama]

Thank you all for you thoughts. Some additional information, this would be a family focus trip. We just got back from a WDW trip in March where we stayed at AKL for the first time (first time staying in a deluxe hotel) and my 6DD loves the pool time and the special activities that they had going on so we are looking for something along those lines for our stay at DL

6 year old will love the dlh. My five year old gets upset of we go anywhere else. She likes the water slides and the headboard. But like all of us have said it is what your group size and a get are. Gch is great for adults but pool is okay. All the hotels are close enough you really could walk to another one to check out the for choices. No pool hopping though. To give an idea walking from PPH to frontier tower of dlh is like walking from the boat drop off to bag check at MK.

 

[ktlm]

We are WDW vets who have been going to DLR every summer for the last 6 years. We love the DLH. It is different from the WDW resorts and we really enjoy staying somewhere that is not practically a carbon copy of places we stay at WDW. To us, the GCH, while wonderful, is just a scaled down version of WL (which is similar to the feel of the AKL lodge minus the animals and with a smaller pool). We love WL and have stayed there several times, but we want something different at DLR, not just something that feels like a smaller version of a place we have stayed at WDW. DLH has so many Disney touches-- it just feels Disney (a little less since the front lobby remodel inside and out that removed some of the beautiful Disney touches and left it more cookie cutter regular standard hotel looking- but for someone who has never been, you won't miss what is no longer there!) As far as the pools, for kids the DLH is probably better. DLH has a great gift shop inside. We have always run into Goofy in the lobby at least once on every trip. As far as restaurants, DLH has some good options (and Goofy's Kitchen if you are looking for a buffet character meal), but at DLR any of the hotels are basically at DTD, so you have all the DTD restaurant options too. Plus, the resorts are so close together, you could easily walk to another one to eat. Allears.net has all the restaurant and menu listings for DLR just like it does for WDW. I don't recall the daily resort activities being as extensive as you find at the WDW resorts, but I do recall there being some. I know they do have movie nights out on the lawn like you find at WDW- although I don't know that they are every night like at WDW. The one thing that GCH has is that if you are getting a theme park view room it can't be beat-- by theme park room, it means that you look out the window onto the walking path inside California Adventure below you. You also have the benefit of the gate directly into California Adventure, but you don't want to use that gate at opening in the mornings because the lines are longer and distance wise it puts you behind the crowds going to the main attractions at rope drop. I have never been inside Paradise Pier, but our friends stayed there and they said being used to WDW resorts, it really just did not have that Disney feel to them. It felt more like a plain hotel than a Disney resort.

If your 6 year old is remotely still into Princesses or Cinderella, she will love the musical light up headboards at DLH!