Somehow, we doubt these guests will be heading back to Disneyland’s hotels anytime soon.
The DVC tower at Disneyland Hotel
Walt Disney World is well-known for its vast array of on-property hotels. However, its west coast counterpart, the Disneyland Resort, doesn’t have nearly the same renown amounts many Disney fans, despite being home to the very first official Disney-themed hotel.
While we’re generally fans of Disneyland’s hotels – the aforementioned original Disneyland Hotel, the Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, and the Pixar Place Hotel – the same can’t be said for everyone. In fact, we’ve come across several instances of negative experiences at some of the “Happiest Place on Earth’s” accommodations.
First up, an anonymous reviewer left a bit of a scathing take with our friends over at AllEars. According to this guest, “If you remove the emotion and just look at the facility, the Disneyland Hotel is mediocre at best.” They continued that “There are much nicer/more modern hotels close by for much less money. While the grounds are very nice the hotel itself is dated and in need of replacement.” While this doesn’t detail a specific incident, it does given an overall negative impression of the hotel.
Disneyland Hotel
Moving on, a TripAdvisor reviewer going by amimtravel left an account of a disturbing alleged June 2025 incident at the Disneyland Hotel as part of a negative review. They wrote, “Do yourself a favor and stay somewhere else. This hotel has gone downhill in (the) last years. We are a family of four with young kids. We just stayed there, and had a stranger open the door to our room, on two different occasions (7:30 AM and 3:00 PM, while we were in the room. When we reported it, the hotel said it was security, but no one knocked, nor identified themselves as security. My husband tried to go after the person and they disappeared down the stairs. We believe it was an outside contractor as the hotel had a pipe burst, and unfortunately were given a room in the area that is being restored from the water leak. There are contractors everywhere. The halls have no A/c, it feels like a sauna walking through the halls. The elevators are out of service as well. You have to walk to other end of hotel to use the elevator. When we called to report the security breach, we were given to Jasmine, and she said they would look into who kept entering the room but we never heard back. We did not feel safe during our stay. This issue was serious and management kept dismissing it.”
They wrapped their review with, “Overall, The staff is not friendly, everyone seems burned out. The pool area was dirty and gross. The room itself is old, and dated. During check out no one asked how are stay was. This hotel is missing the Disney touch. The only friendly person at the hotel was the man that brought our room service. He was great!”
Disneyland Hotel
Another TripAdvisor reviewer, Kathleen S., recounted a much less disturbing but still vacation-damaging story during a Spring 2025 stay. According to their review, a “loud live band in Downtown Disney will ruin your sleep.” They claim that during their stay, live bands played late at night, past 10:00 PM. They called the layout, “Really bad design and they did not think about hotel guests at all.”
Downtown Disney
Moving over to the Grand Californian, LucilleSoho had a negative experience regarding renovations at the Resort & Spa. According to their TripAdvisor review, “Our recent stay at the Grand Californian (March 21st–24th) was deeply disappointing due to unexpected renovations and a lack of transparency. Upon arrival, we found that the only pool with a slide was closed—something our children had been looking forward to, but we weren’t informed beforehand. Dining was equally frustrating: Hearthstone Lounge had no children’s menu due to kitchen renovations, and Craftsman Bar’s stove was broken, leaving only a poke bowl and chips and salsa as meal options. At one point, we had to resort to ordering Domino’s—hardly what you expect from a luxury Disney resort. Even room service was severely limited, offering only cold breakfast items and a microwaved cup of oatmeal. To top it off, a glass of wine at Hearthstone Lounge was served in a plastic cup due to a glassware shortage. Disney is known for its high standards, but this experience did not reflect that. Had we been informed in advance, we could have planned accordingly, rather than paying a premium price for a subpar experience. Future guests deserve better transparency about ongoing renovations.”
Grand California Hotel
The third hotel at the Disneyland Resort, Pixar Place, was not spared from reviews of negative experiences. Just Us wrote on TripAdvisor: “Do not stay at this Disney property! The elevators do not work – they use a call system that doesn’t work and normal operations are a nightmare but in addition two of the four elevators were out of service. You can’t take the stairs because they lock the doors going up. This causes a giant queue and an incredible waste of time on your vacation.”
Pixar Place Hotel
As always, these are a selection of negative experiences shared by guests and don’t reflect the experiences of all of those who’ve stayed at the Disneyland Resort’s hotels in recent months. Stay tuned to DFB for more on guest experiences across Disney properties.
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I’ve never had a bad experience at the Grand Californian. However, I did have one at the Disneyland Hotel.
My husband and I checked in on a HOT day in March for our anniversary. We were assigned to a nice, quiet room on the top floor of the Frontierland tower. It was abysmally hot in the room, and we thought it was just because the A/C had been shut off in the unoccupied room. We turned it on to run, and went to spend the day in the park. When we came back after dark, it was just as miserably hot in the room as it was when we arrived. We called the front desk, and they said they’d send a maintenance guy up to check it out.
Said maintenance guy comes up a few minutes later, looks at the thermostat (which was reading 84 at the time!), fiddles with it, and tells us that “everything seems to be working correctly.” I asked him if 84 degrees is the usual “working correctly” temperature in the room. So he proceeds to fiddle with it a bit, and a slight trickle of cool air starts to come out of the vent. He presumes that his job is done, and (being after midnight by this point) leaves.
Husband and I take cold showers and try to cool off before bed (nice anniversary, huh?). We go to bed and try to get some sleep. At 3am, I awaken in a pool of my own sweat, and again call down to the front desk (the room had cooled off to 83 by then!). We told them we needed them to find us another room immediately, and that we would be down at the lobby desk with our bags in 10 minutes.
We get down to the desk, explain the situation, and the extremely friendly and apologetic CM assigns us another room. That room is nice and cool by the time we get there. I think we turned the thermostat down to 60 degrees and immediately crashed, sleeping through the rest of the night and most of the following morning (we missed rope drop, but no big deal).
I think the CM lit a fire under someone, because we got IMPECCABLE service the entire rest of our stay, and were even given some extra perks, both in our room and in the parks. So, ultimately, everything worked out, but that was the last time we ever stayed in the Disneyland Hotel.
I have a problem with the guest stating that the Grand had problems “due to unexpected renovations and a lack of transparency.” Disney always posts on the website when there is construction. Disney can’t contact every guest and say “hey, we have construction going on, just a heads up”