We are planning our first Disneyland trip for next summer. Can anyone recommend a hotel that has a separate sleeping area (with a door) for children and a shuttle? I know there a several within walking distance, but we will have small children in strollers and prefer to just hop on a shuttle. I’ve read that the Toy Story lot might be convenient for this because of the easier security. Or maybe the ART Shuttle? I’m a bit lost. Disneyland Hotels are way out of budget. Reviews seem mixed on almost anything that is budget friendly.
So far considering
Alpine Inn, Hyatt Place, Courtyard at Convention Center, Dessert Palms, Hyatt Regency Orange County, Camelot,Castle Inn
I have never stayed in any of those hotels, but if you are close to the Toy Story lot, you can walk there and take the shuttle directly to the main gate. Technically the shuttles are operated by Anaheim Rapid Transit, which may be where the confusion is. There are other ART bus routes in the area as well.
Just a pitch for Courtyard Theme Park Entrance - there are a few 2 bedroom suites with four bunk beds in one room and a king in the other. The kids’ room is actually not separated by a door from the living room / kitchen, but the king bedroom is.
ART shuttles are public buses that all circle around to the Disneyland bus lot just off Harbor. There are hotels all over that will have a bus stop that will take you straight there.
I’ve only stayed at hotels right by the entrance, but I can say with certainty that Best Western Anaheim Inn, Anaheim Desert Inn and Grand Legacy all have multi-room suites. BW Anaheim Inn’s suites are a main room with a separate bedroom on the side with a door. Grand Legacy’s 3 room suite is the main door going into a living area, and full hotel rooms on each side, complete with bathroom per side. Anaheim Desert Inn’s Parlor Suite A is the main door leading into a small room with a pull-out couch and a door past that to the main room with two queen beds and the bathroom.
I have an upcoming reservation at Camelot that is also a multi-room suite. Tropicana has those, as well.
For the Toy Story Lot shuttles, you will need to fold the stroller and that means wrangling kids & bags and a stroller onto the bus. For our group that’s a lot more work than rolling to the hotel room the whole way, so we far prefer to walk. And the places along Harbor across from the pedestrian walkway to Disneyland are so easy to get into.
I’m not sure if the ART shuttle has you fold the stroller or not, but we once stayed at a Marriott way down the way on Harbor that had a private shuttle with a couple of the other hotels next to it and they made us fold the stroller for that one too. Just my .02 on that.
On your list the only 2 that I’ve personally stayed at are Castle Inn and Camelot Inn.
Camelot has been a long while though & has undergone a refurbishment since then so the rooms are different now. But we always loved their location, especially that from some of the (towards the back of the hotel & higher floor) rooms you can see the Matterhorn outside the window. My kids loved that the few times it worked out that way.
Castle Inn was a great suite with a lot of space in the 2 separate spaces. We had so much room to spread out. The decor/feel is definitely castle kitschy-older but well maintained. It is a further walk to the entrance than the hotels directly near the pedestrian entrance and you have to back track about the same length to ride the Toy Story Lot shuttle, so it doesn’t make any sense to shuttle in.
And I had a co-worker who used to stay at the Alpine Inn because of the great price, and she said it was fine. We’ve never tried it because like the Castle Inn the walk is longer and walking to the shuttle doesn’t save you any steps (because you’re backtracking to the shuttle). The Desert Palms would also fit this category since it’s next door. I haven’t ever heard anything bad about them, and I do know they are one the closest hotel with indoor corridors (everything else closer has outdoor/motel corridors).
If you want a shuttle and a suite then the hotels close to the Toy Story shuttle are going to be your best bet. On your list the ones that I would consider convenient to the Toy Story lot are Courtyard at Convention Center and Hyatt Place. One that’s not on your list (but probably not at all budget friendly) is the Residence Inn at the Anaheim Resort/Convention Center. Their room configurations were great and they have a full hot breakfast buffet that is good.
Another one that I can recommend is the TownePlace Suites Anaheim Maingate Near Angel Stadium. We had cousins from the east coast who are used to WDW want a suite situation at a good price and had zero qualms with using a shuttle. In this case it was the ART shuttle but they found it to be easy (but they also had access to us a stop-gap to drive them in our van the few times they didn’t want to wait for the shuttle). But I think it was only 2x at night over the 4 days we were with them.
Will you be driving from your hotel to the Toy Story lot? If you’re planning to walk to the lot, I think you’ll walk more than if you stayed across the street. I’ve used the Toy Story lot many times and the bus drop off is deep into the parking lot. Once you walk out of the lot, if your hotel is not right there, you’ll still have quite a walk at the end of the night.
That being said, the security there is a breeze in the morning and you can still do a decent RD as long as you’re there when they open.
The Anaheim Desert Inn and Suites has two bedrooms at low cost, but they’re not exactly “nice”. Clean and serviceable, but very dated and I don’t think the mattresses/pillows are very comfy. However, I have stayed there multiple times and the ease of walking across the street can’t be beat. (From there or any of the hotels right there in proximity.)
I’ve stayed at Castle and felt the rooms were on par with Desert Inn and Desert Inn is soooooo close.
So, it sounds like most recommendations are to stay across the street. I’ll regroup and take a look. I was able to find some good package deals on Get Away Today that might make it feasible. It felt like the 2 bedrooms that were close were very expensive in comparison (of course) or not great quality. I couldn’t really justify it. So, I am really comparing walking from 15-20 away to taking a shuttle. Our strollers are very travel friendly/compact so, not a big deal to us to fold and hop on. We are used to WDW transportation. But, it’s certainly not the same as just walking the whole way and not bothering with it.
I wondered if anything was really close enough to choose this over an ART stop right outside of the hotel. But, I thought the security might make it worth it. Thank you for that detail.
Back to the drawing board. Thank you, I’ll look into all of your suggestions.
What I have found is that either you stay cheap far away and drive or stay close and walk. Staying a medium distance and using the shuttle is kind of the worst of both worlds. Some people may prefer it, but at this point I just spend extra to be close by.
We will have a car. And only two of our 6 days are at Disneyland, the others are at Legoland and USH. Are there recommended hotels or areas nearby that you all recommend? We need a room with space. But, the ones with good ratings nearby are out of budget.
That’s a wide spread of locations in SoCal. LA is a 40 min drive from Anaheim/DLR without traffic. Legoland is about an hour without traffic. Either of those drives get to be 2 (or more) hours if you catch the rush hour traffic in the right direction. And all areas are pretty pricy (Carsbad, LA and DLR).
But the good news is because since you’re spread out and looking for one home base, there should be some decent options and drive into everything each day.
If you’re wanting to keep closer-ish to DLR, check around the baseball stadium and in Orange or Santa Ana. Jeff’s Air BnB suggestion is a great one too. There’s a lot of both Air BnB’s or VRBO options in Santa Ana and Orange.
There is a Townplace Marriot that has suite configurations right across from the ballpark that our East Coast cousins picked for their stay on a DLR trip and were very happy with it and their 2 deciding factors were price and a suite. They brought grandma to help with the 2 young kids and wanted a door with a bedroom too. They did have a Marriott discount available to them though so they were looking for specifically a Marriott.
I wouldn’t go more south than that though as you’ll be even farther range from LA . But if you wanted to be closer to LA, you can look for areas with easy access to either Highway 60 or 91 or the 1-10 as those will be the main corridors to get between LA & DLR (and to get to Carlsbad for Legoland too). But I wouldn’t go any further north than the 1-10 and definitely not within LA as that will be near impossible to find something with great reviews in a good area that has a more budget friendly price.
Thanks everyone. I think we have settled on a hotel in Irvine by the airport. We’ll drive in to the Toy Story Lot and we’ll do USH on Sunday to help avoid traffic. But, just in case anyone comes to this post looking for information later, I wanted to note that we found the Doubletree Buena Park and Knotts Hotel both have shuttles to DLR. They are scheduled. But I’ve read that they are fairly flexible if you need to adjust. We would have needed to do connecting rooms for the space we want and needed carseats for the shuttle van. So, those weren’t our first choice. Although, Get Away Today had a great hotel only deal for the Doubletree.
Even though we stayed south of the park, we parked in Mickey Minnie Lot.
The exact address of where we rented was 12532 Gloria Street
Garden Grove, CA 92843 and it was like 15 minutes. Honestly, it was very easy. We rope dropped no problem. It was a small three bedroom house, but it held the 9 of us and was clean. We usually rent houses on vacation bc we need so many rooms.
Honestly there are pros and cons to each, so I’d recommend you park in the one that is closest to where you are, or whichever one strikes your fancy. I like doing one day of each when we’re driving in just for fun.
