Across the globe, Disney Parks are destinations that draw millions upon millions of visitors each year. And from the moment dirt was shifted in the construction of Disneyland, Walt knew that visitors to his park would need somewhere to stay after a long day in the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.
That’s why – for each “Disneyland” around the globe, there’s a complementary Disneyland Hotel. Different styles, stories, designs, and prices may make them unique, but these spectacular deluxe hotels are literally meant to be the hospitable equivalent of the resorts they headline; headquarters for adventurers; icons of style, elegance, and relaxation; the highlights of hospitality.
Have you had the chance to stay in any of these “Disneyland Hotels” from around the globe? Which style of hotel is the most appealing to you? Let us know in the comments below…
1. Disneyland Hotel
Photo courtesy Orange County Archives
Resort: Disneyland Resort (Anaheim, California)
Opened: 1955
History: Believe it or not, when Disneyland opened in 1955, Anaheim was a remote village of orange groves an hour’s drive from the bustling Los Angeles. Walt recognized immediately that hotel capacity was needed near his new park, but with his accounts drained by Disneyland, he knew he’d need to find financing elsewhere. Initially, he approached his personal friend and entertainment personality Art Linkletter, who declined (but later humorously walked the property, mumbling with each step, “And that’s another million I missed out on… and that’s another million… and that’s another…”)
Image: Disney
Instead, Disney negotiated the deal with Jack Wrather, oil tycoon and hotelier, who agreed to construct and own the Disneyland Hotel, with five 2-story motel buildings with rooms that cost just $15 a night. In 1961, Disneyland’s still-new Monorail was expanded from encircling Tomorrowland to providing transportation to and from Wrather’s hotel across the street. In the 1960s and ‘70s, three new hotel towers – the Sierra (built first, pictured above), Marina, and Bonita – were constructed, becoming the hotel’s focal point.
In 1984, when Michael Eisner became the CEO of Disney, he tried to purchase the Disneyland Hotel from Jack Wrather, but – just as he’d done to Walt – Wrather refused to sell. Shortly after Wrather died, Disney purchased the entire Wrather Corporation to gain control of the hotel. That means that the Disneyland Hotel wasn’t even owned by Disney until 1988.
The Monorail station that was once part of the hotel is still there! It hasn’t moved… but the hotel has. By the New Millennium, the original parts of the hotel were demolished to make way for the Downtown Disney District – part of the property’s expansion into the Disneyland Resort alongside the Disaster File: Disney’s California Adventure – leaving only the three main hotel towers and Downtown Disney as a walkthrough connection to the Esplanade between the parks. The Hotel’s monorail station became the Downtown Disney station.
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In 2007, the Marina, Sierra, and Bonita towers were renamed the Magic, Dreams, and Wonder towers. But even that didn’t last long. Beginning in 2010, a radical renovation of the hotel transformed the towers into the Adventure, Frontier, and Fantasy towers, each reminiscent of one of Disneyland’s opening day lands. Rooms feature concept art, textures, photographs, and patterns that connect the hotel to the park.
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A floor-to-ceiling reinvention of the hotel’s pool followed, introducing the spectacular Monorail-themed E-Ticket Pool and the addition of the fan favorite Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar.
A lot about the Disneyland Hotel will change when the Resort’s fourth hotel – yet unnamed – opens in 2020 absorbing some of Downtown Disney, blocking the Disneyland Hotel’s views, and absorbing the monorail station as its own! The gradual retreat of the Disneyland Hotel offered enough room to squeeze a new, modern resort into Disneyland’s tiny footprint, creating a new Eastern Gateway anchored by a 6,500 space parking deck…
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Though it has almost nothing in common with the hotel of the same name that opened over sixty years ago, the Disneyland Hotel is still a fan favorite. Of the three hotels at the Disneyland Resort, the Disneyland Hotel comes in second on the deluxe-meter after the Grand Californian, but with prices starting at $360 a night, it’s still a deluxe hotel by any measure.
2. Contemporary Resort
Image: Disney
Resort: Walt Disney World Resort (Orlando, Florida)
Opened: 1971
Disney World, of course, doesn’t have a “Disneyland Hotel” in name, or even a Magic Kingdom Resort of its own. The Grand Floridian is a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning resort that’s Disney World’s flagship, but it didn’t open along the Seven Seas Lagoon until 1988. The Grand Floridian may be a more classic choice for the resort’s “signature” hotel with its historic, wooden Victorian beachfront style derived from California’s Hotel del Coronado and meant as a companion to Main Street, U.S.A… But the fact of the matter is, we’ll see quite a few Disneyland Hotels that look like the Grand Floridian on this list, so for Walt Disney World, we’ll go with a more unusual choice in which hotel is the Florida resort’s “signature” hotel.
By time Walt Disney World opened in 1971, Walt Disney Productions had enough money to open their own hotel. In fact, Walt Disney World opened with two. Disney’s Contemporary Resort and Polynesian Village Resort both opened alongside the Magic Kingdom, each positioned around the perimeter of the Seven Seas Lagoon. Each of those resorts is also located along the resort’s world famous Monorail loop, providing deluxe shuttle service to the most-visited theme park on Earth.
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We’ll name the Contemporary Resort as the “Disneyland Hotel” equivalent at Walt Disney World. Why? Not only is the iconic A-frame hotel an engineering marvel and a signature element of any Monorail ride to the park (given that the Monorail glides through its familiar interior), it’s also a sort of hallmark of what exactly Walt Disney World was meant to be – a brave, purpose-built “Vacation Kingdom of the World” unlike anything built before.
Image: Disney
A complement to the park’s aviation-era Tomorrowland, the Contemporary also contains some of the Resort’s best restaurants… and a pretty spectacular Mary Blair mural.
Image: Disney
Fittingly modern and… well… contemporary for audiences of the ‘70s, the sleek, stylish Contemporary remains a retro-cool gateway to the Magic Kingdom, and is a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning hotel itself. A night in the simplicity of the Contemporary typically starts at about $500. Most interestingly, though, unlike the rest of the hotels on this list that work so hard to harken back to historic times, the Contemporary always looks forward, with modern, sleek, simple rooms that feel cutting edge.
3. Disneyland Hotel (Paris)
Image: Disney
Resort: Disneyland Paris (Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Opened: 1992
Disney’s designers were determined to do things very, very differently with their first European resort. From the start, the French media had launched an all-out public assault on the very idea of a “EuroDisneyland” – seemingly an overt invasion of American consumerism and commercialism destined to soil the City of Lights. Smartly, Imagineers headed off the hatred by trying to recast Disneyland (admittedly, a concept completely rooted in Americana) through a more romantic, story-centered European lens.
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One change was the inclusion of the Disneyland Hotel – an opulent, turn-of-the-century hotel in the style of the Hotel del Coronado – acting as the gateway to the park. Like the Louvre or the Palace of Versailles, Imagineers suggested that this spectacular approach would feel much more grand and familiar to Europeans while also acting as climate control in the fickle, rainy, and even snowy weather of the French countryside. True to their intentions to turn any American references into something more grand and storied, the hotel is meant to evoke the Victorian railroad era, packed with elegance and glamor, painted in a soft pink that stands out against dreary gray skies.
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Besides acting as the park’s main entrance, the Disneyland Hotel in Paris is also the first Disney hotel to be located inside of one of the company’s theme parks (a concept later employed with Disneyland’s Grand Californian and Tokyo Disney’s Hotel Miracosta), earning it some of the most spectacular views of any hotel in Disney’s portfolio and an exclusive entrance all its own.
4. Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel
Image: Disney
Resort: Hong Kong Disneyland (Lantau Island, Hong Kong)
Opened: 2005
Of all the Californian Victorian beach resort “Disneyland Hotels,” Hong Kong’s might get the most right, if only because it’s actually located on Hong Kong’s Discovery Bay. Nestled on the shores of the South China Sea, this palatial hotel features an elaborate hedge maze in the shape of Mickey Mouse with unbelievable seaside accents that evoke a rich, expensive European setting… an exotic world for the resort’s more regional demographic.
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The tiny Hong Kong Disneyland is in a constant state of growth, which leaves the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel as the smallest of the resort’s three (having only 400 guest rooms). Still, you might be surprised that prices at the elegant anchor hotel can dip as low as $150 per night at the resort…
5. Tokyo Disneyland Hotel
Image: Disney / OLC
Resort: Tokyo Disney Resort (Tokyo, Japan)
Opened: 2008
Tokyo Disney Resort is certainly unique. For one thing, it’s the only Disney resort on Earth to be neither owned nor operated by the Walt Disney Company. Instead, it’s owned and operated by the Japanese-based Oriental Land Company who runs the resort somewhat like a franchisee, paying licensing and fees to Disney. It’s also unique in that the entire resort is built on a peninsula jutting out into Tokyo Bay containing “Official Hotels” like the Hilton Tokyo Bay and the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel.
In fact, though the resort opened in 1981, the first “Disney-branded” hotel was the Disney Ambassador Hotel in 2000. The next year, the iconic Hotel Miracosta opened as part of the spectacular Tokyo DisneySea.
Finally in 2008, the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel opened across from the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland. Like Disneyland Hotels in Paris and Hong Kong (and Walt Disney World’s Grand Floridian), the hotel is Victorian in design, but with opulent cobalt blue roofs and golden domes differentiating it from its sisters around the globe. Inside, the rooms are Western style, simple and quaint with patterns and colors meant to evoke World Bazaar across the way.
Image: Disney / OLC
A grand inner courtyard on the hotel’s park-facing side stands directly opposite the Tokyo Disneyland’s glass-enclosed entrance, creating a symmetry that makes it hard to believe that the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel hasn’t been there since day one. That means guests of the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel (paying $300 a night in standard rooms during value season) have a straight shot of entry into the second most well-attended theme park on Earth, and easy access to the Tokyo Disney Resort Line monorail that connects the resort’s two parks.
6. Shanghai Disneyland Hotel
Image: Disney
Resort: Shanghai Disneyland Resort (Shanghai, China)
Opened: 2016
Shanghai Disneyland changed everything. We examined the park’s groundbreaking new lands, new rides, and new classics in our In-Depth: Shanghai Disneyland walkthrough, but the takeaway is simple: the mainland Chinese park was literally designed to undo the traditions expected of Disneyland-style parks. It’s only fitting, then, that it’s namesake hotel does away with the expectations we’ve grown accustomed to of Disneyland Hotels as well. While most of the Disneyland Hotels on this list have been based in various elements of wooden Victorian beachfront resorts like Hotel del Coronado, the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel is designed in an architectural style that arose against the rigid, sharp Victorian era: art nouveau.
Image: Disney
The hotel is characterized by sweeping curves, organic metalwork, sweeping, rounded stairways, asymmetrical arches, and blown glass features. It’s all meant to be flowing, open, and natural, based on the beauty of nature. Greenery abounds, lamps are stained glass and supported by swirling, ornate, vine-like metal, and carpets are made of endless natural patterns. Located across the lagoon from Shanghai Disneyland itself, the hotel’s complimentary water taxis carry guests to the brand new park.
Image: Disney
Prices at the Shanghai Disneyland Hotel start just a little over $250 per night in US currency – a relative steal for the grand new hotel and the new kind of Disney Park it serves.
