Day 953: At the Grand

I've returned from an exhausting but extremely fulfilling trip to the West Coast for a visit to Disneyland and the D23 Expo, and while I hurt all over, have developed a cold, and am more tired than I think I've been in a while, I had a wonderful time! And now that I'm back, it's time to get things back in order here at home, meaning the blog, social media and the slew of videos and pictures I have to go through and get in order before moving in next week! But first let's focus on the resting part of the vacation, a chance to stay at not just one, but two of the Disneyland Resort Hotels!

We spent most of our trip staying at Disney's Grand Californian, which for those of you who are more Disney World oriented like I am, picture Wilderness Lodge mixed with the Grand Floridian. It's the biggest and most spectacular of the hotels at the Disneyland Resort, situated directly next to Disney California Adventure Park, even offering a secondary entrance just for resort guests!

We just had a standard room, but we managed to snag one of the closest ones on the ground floor, so no elevator needed for the majority of our trip. The beds were super nice, and while we were on the ground floor, if you walked out onto our padio you could see DCA from there, which was pretty awesome. 

As you can kind of see, it's set up largely the same way Wilderness Lodge is at Walt Disney World. It definitely has that same rustic woods type of feel, and it's certainly very homey. The lobby in itself is spectacular, filled with natural light, a large stone fireplace, and features my favorite part, a live piano player for a significant portion of the day. 

But my favorite part of staying at the Grand was the ability to go up a few floors and over a bit to an outdoor padio upstairs that overlooked Disney California Adventure. It was the perfect spot to watch World of Color on the nights we weren't in the parks, meaning I saw the show at least 5 or 6 times throughout my stay. You could see pretty much the whole part from up there, despite the fact that it wasn't super high up, and definitely made for a nice addition! 

Then, near the end of the trip, we switched over to the Paradise Pier Hotel for a park view room, which meant a little extra space and an amazing view of California Adventure. We stayed in a park view room when we went four years ago and I fell in love with watching the attractions and World of Color throughout our stay. 

Of course, that park view room meant more World of Color, which I will go into in further detail in a later post, but it just has to be mentioned while we're discussing the rooms. We've yet to stay at the Disneyland hotel, but something tells me that will be changing the next time we head to Disneyland, as I'm pretty sure my brother really wants to stay there. The only question is whether or not I'll be able to give up my park views to stay there, because let's be honest, I really love my park views and ability to watch World of Color every night if I want. 

And that's the rundown on where we were able to stay while at Disneyland. In all honesty, the Disneyland Resort hotels are amazing and definitely worth the cost if you really use them to their full potential, even if it means getting up for 7 A.M. park opening everyday for Extra Magic Hour. After all, you just can't beat that bird's eye view of the park! 

Have a magical day!