Grand Californian Is Disney’s First Hotel on Theme Park Grounds
South County has its Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and,soon,St. Regis resorts, but when Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel opens on the grounds of California Adventure in January, it will set a new standard for resort hotels in North County. Some industry insiders believe those standards will help drive up room rates in the Anaheim market, where both rates and occupancy have lagged other areas of the county for the past couple of years, during the $4 billion-plus remake of the city and surrounding areas. “Clearly it will be a unique and special hotel, and its ability to command a rate commensurate with that should be good,” said Jim Burba, a hospitality veteran who is now worldwide director of advisory services with the Newport Beach office of Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo.
“It will affect the business that comes to the market and help push rates up overall. I don’t know why it wouldn’t,” Burba said.
At between $235-$275 per night, the Grand Californian will still be about 15% less than the Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton, but more than double the recent average rate in the Anaheim market of about $110. Industry analysts, however, believe hotel rates are still on a healthy growth curve for the next year or two and hoteliers are looking forward to an uptick in their business to make up for a couple of difficult years during construction that seemed at times to encompass the entire city.
But though hoteliers throughout the area are likely to benefit from the expected higher rates, those rates won’t be automatic for everyone. “The Grand Californian will help increase the average daily rate of central Orange County, as a higher-rated product,” said Don Wise, president and CEO of Wise Hotel Investments in Corona del Mar. “But it could be a mathematical anomaly. The reality is that one property could be higher, but all may not rise with the tide,” he said. Indeed, Alan Reay, president of Costa Mesa-based Atlas Hospitality Group, called the Grand Californian a “completely different animal.” Reay said the effect the Grand Californian will have on the local hotel market is less than those of the new theme park itself and other area improvements. “(Those things) will have a bigger impact on average daily rate and occupancy,” Reay said.
While the Grand Californian, a 750-room, $186 million hotel on the grounds of Disney’s California Adventure, will encompass special features designed for the family market, Disneyland Director of Resort Sales and Services Donna Sue Davis said the hotel is going after corporate and incentive groups for its 20,000 square feet of meeting space. She said the addition of the Grand Californian to the Disneyland Resort provides a “one-stop shop” for meeting planners, with larger association and corporate groups filling the Disneyland Hotel and smaller groups the Disneyland Pacific (soon to be Paradise Pier) Hotel. The Grand Californian adds an element attractive to incentive groups as well as corporate meetings. Each property is sold individually, but the three can also be packaged as a self-contained resort. Davis said bookings have been “very positive” and some groups are already on the books for 2002 and 2003. “We have a very good base for the next three or four years,” she said. Among groups that have already booked events next January,the first month the hotel will be open,are the Orange County Tourism Council, the AAA Advisory Council and the Jewish National Fund. The National Association of Music Merchants,which will make its return to the Anaheim Convention Center in 2001 after a brief hiatus during construction,will be among the first to use a portion of the guest rooms at the hotel. The Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau will hold its annual meeting and installation dinner there in December, prior to the public opening. (Some convention space has been booked for holiday events, but no sleeping rooms will come on line until January.) The hotel promises to be a showcase for Anaheim and for Southern California. Aiming to capture the spirit of early California through the Craftsman-style architecture and the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts period design, the hotel will be the first Disney property to be inside the boundaries of a theme park. Artistic elements are intended to recreate the exploration of California’s coastlines, with its Monterey pines and redwood forests, and will feature such touches as works from the Plein Air school of painters. The hope is to create the feel of a remote forest hunting lodge in the midst of an amusement park,an ambitious challenge. For meeting planners, the Grand Californian appears to be the Fantasyland of hotel meeting facilities. Davis helped design the features of this area, drawing on years of experience with meeting planners to address things that often appear on their wish lists. “The perception of Anaheim is lots of kids running around,” said Barbara Sloate, president of Whirl Around Tours in Irvine. “Things like the Grand Californian will help change that.”
The hotel will have a separate entrance for conventioneers, enabling them to check in to the hotel and meeting simultaneously at one of two four-station registration areas. A meeting planner’s office and dedicated storeroom are nearby and at the planner’s disposal for the duration of an event. There are public phone booths to assure privacy. The elegant 12,000-square-foot Sequoia ballroom has 22-foot ceilings and one-of-a-kind chandeliers and is divisible into eight areas. Double sound walls and separate service corridors help reduce noise and ensure privacy. Seven breakout rooms have their own outdoor patios, and there is a central courtyard that is also available for private functions. A separate 1,300-square-foot board room has its own pre-function area, phone booths, restrooms and storage area, as well as full audio-visual services that were first tested at a National Association of Music Merchants convention. A buffet area is at the back of the room. Meeting attendees can exit directly from the convention area of the hotel to Downtown Disney in the vicinity of Ariba! Ariba! and the House of Blues and all hotel guests will have their own entry into California Adventure. The hotel will also offer meeting planners a Disneyland Resort Express program through which a convention service manager will be aissnged to each event to assist with planning details.
Guests will also have access to the Eureka Springs health club that includes two spas, Stairmasters, cross trainers, steam and dry sauna rooms, two massage rooms and built-in TV.
Guest rooms, too, will have features that address the wish-lists of frequent travelers. In-room safes, for instance, are big enough to hold a laptop and luggage will fit under the beds, allowing more free space in the room. There is a writing desk with a dual-line speakerphone that includes computer and fax dataports. Minibars and coffee makers have become almost de rigeuer at resort hotels, and this one is no exception. But here you can enjoy your morning coffee clad in robes provided by the hotel, too. All but six rooms have balconies,something not typically found in the Anaheim market,and all overlook either the park or hotel courtyards. For families, some rooms will have bunk beds,a feature that is popular with guests at Disney World,and trundle beds that slide under a regular bed during the day are provided for younger travelers. Still, 60% of the rooms will have two queen-size beds. All rooms have double sinks and shelves in the bathroom for additional storage of personal items. Closets are lighted and all rooms have irons and ironing boards. But for meeting planners who want to give top-level executives the royal treatment, the concierge levels containing the hotel’s suites provide the ideal environment for executive meetings and receptions as well as a setting that easily lends itself to bringing the family along to enjoy a mini-vacation while one or more family members are hard at work.
There are two presidential suites: El Capitan and Mount Whitney; and two vice-presidential suites: Arcadia and Arroyo. While the VP suites have patios, kitchens and fireplaces, the presidential suites have enough features that guests could arguably never venture out. Each of these suites include a dining room, office, kitchen, den, living room and bedrooms. There are high ceilings, patio and indoor-outdoor fireplaces. The Mount Whitney suite has his-and-hers bathrooms and a private entry to the master bedroom so family members can come and go without disturbing any business that might be in progress in the main suite area. Extra bedrooms can be added on to the suite. The concierge levels (the fifth and sixth floors) have their own lounge and a private terrace that can accommodate up to 40 people for a small reception. From the teak-furnitured terrace, guests can watch fireworks at Disneyland while enjoying food and beverage provided by a dedicated staff for the concierge levels. Arts and crafts elements will be evident in every facet of the hotel,from the muted earth tone color schemes to flowered carpeting, leaf patterns on the walls and images of trees in the wallpaper. The “great hearth” of the atrium-style lobby will face California Adventure, looking out at such focal points as Grizzly Peak, almost sure to become as much a landmark of California Adventure as the Matterhorn is at Disneyland. At a smaller, kid-size hearth, storytellers will present tales of early California each evening, while adults can relax at the Hearthstone Lounge, a lobby bar that doubles as a coffee lounge early in the day and offers chess and other board games for guests who wish to linger a while longer. The hotel will have two main restaurants: the 290-seat Storytellers Caf & #233; and the 200-seat Napa Rose. Storytellers Caf & #233;, the family dining restaurant, tries to convey the power of storytelling as an art through seven six-foot murals depicting scenes from famous California stories like the jumping frogs of Calaveras County. An all-tile mural above the kitchen will feature a girl reading in a woodsy setting to set the tone for the caf & #233;. The second restaurant, the Napa Rose, will be the hotel’s signature restaurant, featuring an array of California-style dishes. At least 30 California wines will be regularly featured and there’s a 600-bottle wine room where diners can select their own dinner wine. The restaurant will also have an outdoor barbecue area and patio with 43 trellises and an herb garden. The restaurant’s kitchen will be visible to indoor diners, creating a sort of theater of dining. Grizzly Peak will again dominate the outdoor landscape from the dining room. A private dining area can be reserved for groups up to 24 people. Another restaurant, White Water Snacks, will be located poolside and offer coffee and bakery in the morning and deli-style selections as well as pizza, burgers, chicken and hot dogs throughout the remainder of the day. Full bar service will also be available there. n
