Disneyland Hotel (California)
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Disneyland park |
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Disneyland Hotel |
The Disneyland Hotel is a hotel in Anaheim, California, notable as the first hotel to officialy bear the Disney name. It has been in operation since 1955, although it was not owned by The Walt Disney Company until 1988. When Walt Disney constructed Disneyland in 1955, the costs to build the park exceeded $17 million, and Disney did not have the money to build and operate a hotel. Walt Disney negotiated a deal with Jack Wrather to build and operate the hotel. The contract gave Wrather the rights to use the Disneyland Hotel name on any hotel in the state of California until 2054.
The hotel was designed by the firm of Pereira & Luckman, and originally featured a then-futuristic marketplace known as Monorail Plaza, which was demolished in the late 1990s to make way for Downtown Disney.
When Michael Eisner became Chairman & CEO of Walt Disney Productions in 1984, he desperately wanted to get out of the agreement with Wrather and bring the Disneyland Hotel under the Walt Disney Company's umbrella. However, every time Wrather was approached by Disney he said that he was happy with the contract. Finally after Jack Wrather died, The Walt Disney Company bought the entire Wrather Corporation. By buying out the Wrather Corporation, Disney owned not only the Disneyland Hotel, but the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach as well as the rights to The Lone Ranger. Disney sold the latter assets over time.
The hotel is comprised of three guest room towers: Marina, Sierra, and Bonita. Other buildings in the sprawling hotel complex house restaurants, stores, offices, recreational facilities, and convention/banquet facilities. The Downtown Disney Monorail Station, which takes guests to Tomorrowland inside Disneyland Park, and an exclusive entrance to Disney's California Adventure for guests staying at Disneyland Resort hotels are a short walk away. The hotel uses Mickey Mouse theming in many interior furnishings and details.
Contents |
[edit] Hotel Facilities
[edit] Restaurants
- Goofy's Kitchen
- Steakhouse 55 (formerly Granville's Steak House)
- Hook's Pointe
- Captain's Galley
- Croc's Bits 'n' Bites
[edit] Bars
- The Lost Bar
- The Wine Cellar
- The Coffee House
- The Lounge at Granville's
[edit] Stores
- Disney's Fantasia Shop
- Marina Lobby Shop, aka Marina Sundries (not signed)
- Euro Gifts and Collectibles (leased by Arribas Bros.)
[edit] Trivia
- When the Sierra Tower was first constructed, the off-center placement of an exterior elevator shaft facing West Street (now Disneyland Drive) created space constraints which required the neon sign mounted atop this side of the building to read "Hotel Disneyland." The tower was expanded several years later and the sign was changed to correctly read "Disneyland Hotel." The sign was removed when Monorail Plaza was demolished and replaced with a mural featuring shooting stars.
- The remaining "Disneyland Hotel" neon signs atop the Marina and Bonita Towers were removed in December 2005. Neon signs, which had been cited as blightful in the area surrounding Disneyland during the resort area's early years, were eventually outlawed in the Anaheim Resort District. Ironically, this outlawed Disney's own neon signs topping the hotel towers. The signs were replaced with smaller signs atop the Marina and Sierra Towers, which are not easily seen from outside Disneyland Resort property.
- Signs from several of the stores and restaurants demolished with Monorail Plaza were retained and are on display in the hotel's employee cafeteria. Included is a large "End of an Era" posterboard signed by visitors and employees of the venerable Monorail Cafe during its last months of operation.
- The Disneyland Hotel was one of the first hotels in the region to offer accommodations for four persons per room.
- One location at the hotel is named after Jack Wrather's wife: Bonita Tower (her first name). Steakhouse 55 used to be Granville's Steak House (after Wrather's wife's maiden name).
