From Shawn: Every two weeks Gregg Condon of Park Journey and I co-host the Disney Hacks podcast where we talk all about how to save time & money on Disney. It’s a lot of fun and if you love Disney you should consider subscribing. On this week’s show Gregg talks all about attending the opening of the new Avengers Campus and returning to Disneyland, but this post is about his hotel experience while at the Disneyland Resort. I’ll let Gregg take it from here.
Hilton Anaheim Review – The Good & Bad
Last weekend my wife and I traveled down to Anaheim for our long awaited return visit to Disneyland. We booked one of our favorite Convention Center area hotels, the Hilton Anaheim, and were eagerly awaiting our return visit not only to Disneyland, but to a comfy, recently renovated (in the past 5 or 6 years) hotel room. Sadly our Hilton Anaheim review isn’t a fully positive one, because this stay, our first stay here since March of 2018, would leave a bit of a bad taste in our mouth.
Hilton Anaheim The Good
Let’s start off with the good. Booking the Hilton Anaheim near the convention center was a breeze. Check-in via the Hilton Honors mobile app and picking our room (6228) was flawless. The digital key arrived before we even left our house and we didn’t have to stop at the front desk all weekend. Or we shouldn’t have had to.
The room was very clean. I love that hotels have started sticking “cleaned” stickers in the door jamb to indicate that nobody has been in the room since it was cleaned. I hope this sticks around in a post-Covid world. The bed was very comfortable and we both slept very well both nights.
Hilton Anaheim Room Quick Review
Now to the room itself. It was kind of a bizarre layout. I had chosen it on the map because it looked to be a nice corner room, with windows on two sides to give us somewhat of a view. It started off with a weird little hallway, and then a turn to the actual room. The room had so much wasted space. This could easily be remodeled into a suite of some kind, but it’s still stuck in what felt like the mid-90’s.
Speaking of remodeled rooms at this hotel, we know they’ve been doing that over the past few years as we stayed in one of the remodeled rooms on that visit in 2018. Ours was not. So if planning a visit here, make sure you’re getting one of the remodeled rooms because they are quite nice.
Some Hilton Anaheim Issues
Sadly, a weird looking room and lots of wasted space were not our only issues. The bathroom was easily the smallest bathroom I’ve ever seen in a hotel. I’ve seen Motel-6 bathrooms bigger than this. In addition, the shower did not work.
When we alerted hotel staff they offered to have somebody look at it, at 9:00pm at night. Which was great. But this was after I had gone out to grab dinner for my wife and I and we were about to turn in for the night. Due to Covid, we would have had to leave the room, so it wasn’t worth it. So we just held the shower button for each other as we both took very quick showers, in the decidedly drabby and tiny shower. Which also leaked all night and had some discoloration.
I had also brought with us some beers and water to keep cold for our second night in the hotel. Unfortunately it wasn’t until we returned back to our room after a long day at Disney California Adventure that we discovered the refrigerator did not work.
Lastly, a few times when trying to use the digital key in the elevator, my “Apple Pay” kept popping up. Which was obviously annoying, especially after the elevator door closed and I had nowhere to go other than where the Elevator wanted to take me. Good fun on Tower of Terror, not so much after a long day at a theme park. Although I will freely admit that may have been user error.
Hilton Anaheim Review – Bottom Line
Fortunately we had such a great weekend that the hotel issues didn’t put a damper on it at all, but I would be lying to say the stay was great. The hotel is now aware of the shower and hopefully it will be fixed for the next guest, however the dated room remains until they finish their renovations.
All that said, we really do love this hotel, the lobby is great, the staff has always been amazing, the remodeled rooms are nice and it’s an easy walk to the parks. This visit was just not what we’ve come to expect from a property like this. We’ve recommended this hotel to friends for years and sadly may have to think twice about it now.
Have you stayed at Anaheim Hilton recently? What was your stay like?
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I’ve stayed in one of those weird corner rooms! You’re spot on about the weird “hallway” and tiny bathroom. I remember the sliding door on the bathroom getting on my nerves!
We didn’t even have a sliding door on ours, so maybe that was a good thing.
Glad to know I wasn’t alone in thinking the hallways was weird.