Disney's Grand Californian Hotel

I have stayed here a few times. And others should know. It’s only appeal is it’s connected to downtown Disney. Staff are great…but that’s it! Rooms are very dated even on the club level. Room service takes an hour. Club level Veranda Room for breakfast has no hot food except for bagels. Even a holiday inn does better than that. Security check to get into Downtown and into park from the hotel has a massive line in the mornings. It should be three times the size. Breakfast downstairs takes reservations only for the most part. They are not setup at all for the amount of people that come here. It’s that’s not a new situation.

The hotel staff were very accommodating. We asked for a microwave and they brought us one before we had even finished unpacking. Additionally, they went above and beyond to decorate our room during turn down because they knew that it was our daughter’s 6th birthday. Really fantastic effort. Park was super convenient for California adventure and also to Disney downtown and Disneyland. Pay attention to which days you get early admission as it’s different for each park. Only downside is the cost. Restaurants onsite, specifically the character breakfast was extremely overpriced. Breakfast for our family of 4 was over $250.

Ok so the elephant in the room here is the cost, we almost sold one of our kids organs to exchange AUD on a low rate to USD to pay for the 5 enjoyable nights here. Staff were wonderful, customer service was top notch and the magic was all there. All hotel staff were very kind to our kids that traded their pins, even the security guards were in on the action. We were here during Starwars week so it appears to have commanded a higher rate. We opted for the Downtown view room which was nice to watch the action but as others have mentioned it can be noisy, but the kids enjoyed it and would run out to the balcony to have a look. Early entry was the icing and we used those early entries to our full advantage, the park is essentially foot steps away from the hotel. Proximity of the hotel was also convenient for mid day breaks and sleeps for our younger family members. For those Australian's that have never visited, the security checks to go into the park can be more intrusive than what we experience at our domestic airports back home, its next level but i get it because of the constitution. I recommend a character meet breakfast, youll need to pay extra for it and dont expect your kids to finish their actual breakfast with all of Disney's greatest swinging by your table.

The hotel is very nice and extremely convenient when entering the parks, especially DCA. I would say that for the money the rooms should be better cared for. Our couch was frayed, the bathroom door sticks and the toilet rocks. There is live music every night which would be nice if it wasn’t so loud that you can’t hold a conversation with your dining partner and the music can be heard in the upper level rooms with the balcony doors closed. It’s actually really unpleasant. I’m not sure if I would spend the money to stay here again.

We’ve stayed at the Grand Californian many times but this was the first time that when we entered the room, our last name wasn’t on the tv screen. My daughter just turned 1 years old and we also purchased an in room celebration to make her birthday a special one and a small detail of the last name not on the screen is bothersome especially if your spending almost a thousand dollars per night. I talked to 3 different people to try and get the situation resolved and all 3 people told me a different story which was extremely frustrating. I was told it was a “computer glitch” to the WiFi needs to be reset in the room to we can reset it remotely without coming to the room and the issue never got resolved after being there for 5 days. May not be a big deal to some people but when you pay a premium price, I definitely want everything that I paid for.