NEWS! Disneyland Resort Hotels Plan New Room Designs and New Private Security Entrance

Disneyland Resort is home to three Disney-owned hotels – Disney's Grand Californian, the original Disneyland Hotel, and the Pixar Place Hotel. Disney continues to make changes and reimagine these properties.

Most recently the Paradise Pier Hotel has been rethemed to the Pixar Place Hotel and the brand new Villas at the Disneyland Hotel tower was added to the Disneyland Hotel. In addition to these changes, Disney is working hard to maintain the elevated quality of these properties which is befitting the Disney brand and the top-tier price points. Though these hotels will always have the special Disneyland feeling, they will continue to be pushed to deliver higher and higher qualities of service for the money as other hotels near Disneyland like the Westin and JW Marriott deliver new luxury experiences.

Over the past week I have stayed at both Disney's Grand Californian and the Disneyland Hotel. I also toured the Pixar Place Hotel. During my visit, I learned more about the current construction at the Pixar Place Hotel and heard about planned changes to the Disneyland Hotel and Disney's Grand Californian. I'll break it all down below.

Pixar Place Hotel Construction Continues

The Pixar Place Hotel common areas are all completely done and have been since the hotel officially opened at the end of January. That said, only one half of the hotel's rooms are completely transitioned to the new Pixar Place Hotel room setup. The rest of the hotel rooms are now closed off and under construction. This means that guests will see half of the hotel hallways closed off with construction entrance doors like these.

Even with that said, the remainder of the hotel hallways are completely finished and feel like a dramatic improvement over the previous Paradise Pier iteration.

Another aspect of the hotel that is still being completed is the food and beverage program. While the downstairs restaurants are open – I really enjoyed our dinner at Great Maple and will be back with a review soon – the pool bar, Small Bytes, is still “coming soon”.

We are excited about the changes made here as they do elevate the property. The Pixar Place Hotel is a nice offering for those super into the Pixar theme. For those who want to try out this hotel, it looks like you may have to pay face value for your room until the second half of the hotel is completed. Rooms at the Pixar Place Hotel were not included in the most recent wave of Disneyland Hotel discounts released.

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Disney's Grand Californian Hotel Refresh

Disney's Grand Californian continues to be my favorite hotel around the Disneyland Resort. If the nightly pricing were lower I would stay here every single time I was in town, but the fact that I don't get to makes my nights here even more special. During a recent trip with our travel partner, Get Away Today, I was hosted at Disney's Grand Californian and experienced one of the best rooms at the hotel. I had a room at the far end of the hotel looking down into Disney California Adventure and into the Esplanade with the Main Street Train Station and Space Mountain in the distance. I was greeted by the whistle sound of the Disneyland Railroad. Amazing!

This resort always impresses me with its comprehensive set of offerings and the relaxed vibe of the entire property. If there weren't the two theme parks with so much to enjoy just beyond it, I would sit by the pool here all day long.

Now, let's get into the news of this update. There are two different types of updates or refreshes that Disney hotels can go through – a soft goods refresh or a hard goods refresh. The soft goods refresh typically means replacements for all linens, interior items, and fabric goods and perhaps a fresh coat of paint and new flooring. The hard goods refresh means a complete gutting of everything in the room with a full redesign.

In 2017, Disney's Grand Californian Hotel went through a complete hard goods refurbishment where the rooms were gutted and the elevated luxury craftsman style that we see at the hotel today debuted.

At that time, the Disney Vacation Club villas at Disney's Grand Californian were not touched. Recently, the Disney Vacation Club team shared that the Villas at Disney's Grand Californian is going through a hard goods refurbishment. We anticipate that the villa changes will reflect the changes made to the standard Disney's Grand Californian hotel rooms and will add in some of the conveniences that Disney Vacation Club owners have come to expect.

We just heard from Dan Coleman, the General Manager of the Disneyland Hotel, that this project is still moving forward which is a good sign as some feared Disney's Grand Californian Vacation Club refurbishment would be pushed.

While the villas are going through a hard goods refurbishment, Coleman also shared that Disney's Grand Californian hotel rooms are now slated to go through a soft goods refurbishment. Disney's Grand Californian rooms will generally feel freshened up and like new. The refurbishments for rooms switch off between soft goods and hard goods on a cycle.

We were not given any further timeline for these changes but were told that they are actively being planned. That takes us to the Disneyland Hotel which we just learned has a couple of big changes coming up.

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Disneyland Hotel Room Refresh and New Private Entrance

The Disneyland Hotel continues to develop with the addition of the brand-new Disney Vacation Club tower. The standard rooms at this hotel bring lots of Disney magic with the whimsical light-up headboard featuring the Disneyland Castle with fireworks. In the words of my 85-year-old grandmother during our visit, it is a “darling” feature.

The new designs at the Disneyland Hotel have leaned into the mid-century modern design sense. You can see this in the new Disneyland Hotel Villas tower as well as the new Palm Breeze Bar restaurant. They have also carried this theme into different artwork throughout the resort. It also shines through with the changes to the colors of the monorail water slides in the just-reopened Monorail Pool. In many ways, this theming is a return to form as the original Disneyland Hotel was built during the heyday of the mid-century modern period.

Coleman also shared that this mid-century design will be brought even further into future design work at the hotel.

He shared that the rooms at the Disneyland Hotel are going to go through a hard goods refurbishment that will aim to take advantage of the large room size of the Disneyland Hotel rooms and pull that mid-century modern period design into the rooms. The rooms at the Disneyland Hotel are actually bigger than the rooms at Disney's Grand Californian. This refurbishment will likely also focus on bringing in advances that Disney has made in room design in recent years and new technology. He gave no timeline for this work.

While we are excited to hear that the resort will bring in new room designs, we hope that they maintain the whimsical magic feeling that they have today and don't lose their Disney magical feeling. Hopefully even keeping some version of the beloved Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Castle light-up headboard that's there now. You can go to many of the walking distance hotels near Disneyland on Harbor Boulevard for mid-century modern design. I hope that they maintain the Disney charm that this hotel has to continue to differentiate from any old Marriott Bonvoy property or the Howard Johnson.

After I brought up the closure of Steakhouse 55, he also said that eventually a new sit-down restaurant that isn't that same steakhouse offering would open at the hotel but that a new restaurant here is a long way off.

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We also learned that as the construction in Downtown Disney advances the Disneyland Hotel will soon have a private security checkpoint. The general Downtown Disney entrance that is currently across from the Disneyland Hotel Sorcerer Mickey hat will shift to the former location of the AMC Theater at the end of the new lawn area. This will bring guests into Downtown Disney at an angle perpendicular to the current crowd flow. The Disneyland Hotel entrance to Downtown Disney will remain in roughly the same spot with guests entering under the Sorcerer Mickey hat. Work will begin to shift these entrances in the next few months.

Both the Pixar Place Hotel and Disney's Grand Californian Hotel already have private entrances to Disney California Adventure. Now, the Disneyland Hotel will have this same perk. At other checkpoints, they don't ask for your hotel key. I wonder if they will ask for your hotel key to access this entrance and how this new entrance will coexist with the access road that runs between Downtown Disney and the Disneyland Hotel.

The new Downtown Disney security checkpoint will be under the awning beyond the green space behind this stage.

Generally, we are excited to see Disney continue to bring improvements to the hotels to keep the offerings fresh. As the resort expands with the approval of the DisneylandForward initiative, we could definitely see even more Disneyland Resort Hotels built. During the most recent times, I have spoken to Disneyland leadership the vibe has been one of anticipation and excitement for the future.

During part of my stay at Disneyland in the last week I was hosted for a media event. Though we sometimes get opportunities to cover events with Disney we are still constantly trying these offerings on our own to ensure we bring you the full experience. Regardless of our hosting, we always share our honest opinions.

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