Disneyland Hotel Vs Non-Disneyland Hotel

[dcr_1999]

Good afternoon all,

Hubby and I are off to Las Vegas and then onto Disneyland California for his 40th birthday in January.

We have a hotel booked which is literally a 2 minute walk from Disneyland, now here is my dilemma.

Is it worth staying on Disney property given the extra costs involved (currently it stands at an extra £137 plus taxes and $75 to park the car for our three day trip there).

We've always said we'd love to stay on property, but it's a tough one to justify the extra cost.

What are the benefits of staying on property?

Have any of you been in the same sort of situation?

Thanks for any help and advice you can give.

Thanks

Dougie

[KarenG]

Hi where have you booked to stay and what Disneyland hotel are you considering changing to? The price difference you are quoting is very small compared to what I’ve experienced previously.

I have stayed onsite at Disneyland once and offsite three times.

One of the on-site hotels is actually further from the parks than some offsite ones.

The hotels we have stayed at offsite have been £100s per night cheaper than onsite. All were walking distance to the parks. You can still get early entry with multi day passes.

So the benefit from my perspective of on-site is quite small (compared to WDW) so if the costs are very different it’s an easy choice.

[dcr_1999]

We're currently staying at the Best Western Plus Park Place Inn - Mini Suites (which from Google maps is right across from Disney) and the Disney hotel I'm looking at is Paradise Pier Hotel.

I've double checked (and excluding taxes and car parking fee at Disney) the difference is £137, but not sure if £198 (including the price difference and car parking in £) is worth it.

[shack69]

Best western is closer to the entrance then Paradise Pier. The best western is also a good neigbor hotel so you get some benefits from that. 'worth' is subjective , but i don't see any benefit to swapping. You literally come out of the BW at the crosswalk and in less then 200m your at either the entrance to DL or Cali.

[sky13]

I had a similar dilemma last year between on-site and off-site and in the end opted for a split stay between the Fairfield Inn and the Grand Californian Hotel (which were two very, very, different experiences!).

Benefits of staying on-site at DL California include:
- EMH at DCA or DL every day. DCA EMH is exclusive to on-site guests. DL EMH is shared with off-site guests who have access to Magic Morning (for one day of a 3 day or longer ticket).
- Some activities are limited to on-site guests, like the early morning power walk in DCA.
- I think you can get package delivery back to the on-site hotels but never tried it out.

There isn't a huge benefit to staying on-site except for the proximity... and arguably BWPPI is closer to the parks than the Paradise Pier. I've not stayed at either, but walked around the on-site hotels last year including the Paradise Pier and it felt like a regular hotel without a huge Disney feel. (The GCH and to a lesser extent the DLH both have far better theming, but you can still walk around the hotels even if not staying there.)

For my personal case last year with my GCH stay (which I booked with an offer so got a decent discount) - I'm still not sure if it was entirely worth the cost to stay there. However, I really enjoyed the stay, the room was newly refurbished and very comfortable, the whole atmosphere was fabulous (especially as it was Christmas season, so there was the gingerbread house, carol singers and Santa Claus in the lobby), and we are still talking about how amazing the hotel stay was a year later. It was a huge contrast to the Fairfield Inn which was really just a place to sleep. I'd gone back and forth for ages about whether to book the GCH and I'm glad I did in the end.

(But keep in mind that the 3 on-site hotels are rather different, so my experience with the GCH is likely to have been different if I'd stayed at the Paradise Pier...)

[Libby]

We stayed at Paradise Pier in August. It had nice Disney touches without being over the top. We really enjoyed our stay there.

It was a few minutes walk to the parks but close to the monorail when going into Disneyland Park. Resort guests have early park entry every day at one of the parks, package service to hotel desk and at Paradise Pier we had a viewing area for the fireworks with the music played. There were also character breakfasts but we chose not to book this.

I just like being in the "Disney bubble" but only you know what it is worth to you.