A question we get A LOT about Disneyland is, “Where do you stay?” We’ve stayed at a variety of hotels:

The Anaheim Howard Johnson:  A decent place within authentic walking distance from the park.  Has a GREAT kid’s pool, but the rooms are just fine with plain old non-pillow topped mattresses.

The Candy Cane Inn:Nice rooms, on the smallish side.  If you’re into the complimentary breakfast, it was decent, and they have a bus that takes you to and from the park without charge.

The Carousel:One of our worst.  Gross rooms, dirty carpet, unhelpful staff.  totally run down and ancient feeling.

The Quality Inn:This was the worst.  We call this hotel ‘Beirut’.  We stayed one night then arranged for other accommodations.  Dirty, small bed, ancient mattress, TV from 1980.  Gave us the heebie jeebies.

The Annabella:  Decent, clean and in walking distance of the park.  Comfy beds…

Castle Inn & Suites:  Pretty on the outside, absolutely NOTHING exceptional about the rooms.  NOTHING.

And the Hyatt

We love the Hyatt.  This visit was our third time returning to the Hyatt.  It is a lovely place.

The Hyatt has my kinds of beds.  The beds that are soft, squishy,  and comfy with pillow topped mattresses and duvets.  They even supply bonus pillows to curl around and the rooms are CLEAN.

They have a saltwater pool, which, incidentally, is where Gigi learned to swim.  You can jump, play, catch jumping children or sit poolside in the comfy lounge chairs provided.  Then dip in for a sec to cool off.  Then lounge, then repeat, then…  Well, you get the idea.  The pool maxes out at four feet, so both of our kids were able to be pretty independent.  Well, as independent as a foot or two away from the toddler allows anyhow!


One of our favorite Hyatt features is the ‘Awaken Package’ which allows the room guests to eat breakfast at the hotel for pretty reasonable.  Disneyland requires a lot of energy so each morning we load the kids full of eggs, oatmeal, fruit and whatever else they wanted.  If we hit it right, we could make it to dinnerish time on granola bars and snacks.  Then we’d eat at Subway (conveniently located across the street from the Hyatt).  We ate decent food and we ate for reasonable costs.  AND we didn’t have to worry so much about being vegetarians at Disneyland, always a challenge.

One of our most very favorite things about the Hyatt is that they provide a bus that goes to and from the park every half hour FOR NO EXTRA CHARGE.  It is so nice to have this amenity.  You stay further away from Disneyland, but the Hyatt is conveniently located across from a Target, Bucca di Beppo, Red Robin and more, so you are not stuck eating Disneyland food all the time, and if you need to buy shampoo or sunscreen, you can get it for a reasonable price.

*We suggest you get on the Hyatt’s e-mail list.  They send out deals a few times a year.  We’ve stayed at this hotel for as low as 79.00 a night as a result of their e-mail sales.

**We’ve found that, regardless of which hotel you go through, their own management (phone or e-mail reservations) gives better deals, for the most part, over using Expedia or other travel sites.

***No, we are not getting any compensation for our review, but we sincerely get this question ALL OF THE TIME.  Hopefully this helps.


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