Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa is a hotel located at the

Disneyland Resort The Disneyland Resort is an entertainment resort in Anaheim, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Disney Experiences, Experiences division and is home to two theme parks (Disneyland and Dis ...

Anaheim, California Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, part of the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orang ...

. The hotel was constructed as part of a major expansion of the Disneyland Resort in 2001. It was constructed and operated by

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

. The hotel was designed in the

American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. ...

style of

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

. It also features a

Disney Vacation Club The Disney Vacation Club (DVC) is a vacation timeshare program owned and operated by Disney Vacation Development, Inc., a subsidiary of Disney Signature Experiences, a division of Disney Experiences, a segment of The Walt Disney Company. It allow ...

wing that opened on September 23, 2009. The hotel has a private entrance to

Disney California Adventure Disney California Adventure is a theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It is owned and operated by the Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. The park is themed after Disney's interpretation of California ...

Park. In 2017, Disney remodeled the rooms, along with the lobby.

Description

The hotel was designed by architect Peter Dominick of 4240 Architecture Inc. (formerly part of Urban Design Group Inc.). It has 948 rooms, in addition to 44 suites and 71 villas. Craftsman style buildings often use

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

themes, which was Peter Dominick's inspiration for the hotel's forest theme. The reception hall is based on the interior of the Swedenborgian Church in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, increased in scale to accommodate the large reception desk. The central lobby has a large fireplace and arching beams overhead, and is furnished with chairs and sofas arranged around small coffee tables. Many of the items found throughout the hotel have been crafted by modern practitioners of the

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

style, and some early

Roycroft Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895, in the village of East Aurora, New York, near Buffalo. Part ...

items are on display in the lobby. Some of the hotel's rooms are tributes to various Craftsman-era architects and designers such as

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...

Charles Rennie MacKintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh (7 June 1868 – 10 December 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macd ...

, and the

Gladding, McBean Gladding, McBean is a ceramics company located in Lincoln, California. It is one of the oldest companies in California, a pioneer in ceramics technology, and a company which has "contributed immeasurably" to the state's industrialization. During ...

Company. Its name is based on

Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa is a Victorian themed hotel and spa located at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The property opened on June 28, 1988, as the ''Grand Floridian Beach Resort''. The name changed to ''Disney's Grand ...

, its sister resort and

Walt Disney World The Walt Disney World Resort is an destination resort, entertainment resort complex located about southwest of Orlando, Florida, United States. Opened on October 1, 1971, the resort is operated by Disney Experiences, a division of the Wa ...

's flagship resort hotel.

History

The hotel opened on January 2, 2001, as a part of the parks expansion for

. On September 18, 2007, the Disneyland Resort announced an expansion of Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa that would increase accommodations by more than 30 percent and include the first

villas in Anaheim. The expansion on the hotel's south side added more than 200 hotel rooms and 50 two-bedroom equivalent vacation villas and marked the West Coast debut of Disney Vacation Club, Disney's vacation ownership program. During this expansion and renovation, a swimming pool was added as well as a 300 space underground parking garage. Peter Dominick designed the ambitious expansion to complement the existing hotel. The project was completed in September 2009. With the completion of this major expansion, Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa became the fourth-largest hotel in Orange County.

The Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel

The

villas, added as part of the hotel's expansion, include kitchens, living and dining areas and other home-like amenities. The guest rooms feature the same decor as the hotel rooms in the original structure and continue the Californian Craftsman motif.

Napa Rose

Napa Rose is a restaurant in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa that opened in 2001 as part of

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

's expansion of its Anaheim property from one theme park (

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...

) into a multi-park

resort A resort (North American English) is a self-contained commercial establishment that aims to provide most of a vacationer's needs. This includes food, drink, swimming, accommodation, sports, entertainment and shopping, on the premises. A hotel ...

complex. It specializes in

California cuisine California cuisine is a food movement that originated in Northern California. The cuisine focuses on dishes that are driven by local and sustainable ingredients with an attention to seasonality and an emphasis on the bounty of the region. Th ...

and has a

Napa Valley Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in Napa County, California. The area was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on February 27, 1981, after a 1978 petition submitted by the Napa Valley Vin ...

wine theme. The restaurant's design is inspired by

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau ( ; ; ), Jugendstil and Sezessionstil in German, is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and ...

designer

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh (7 June 1868 – 10 December 1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macd ...

. Napa Rose's head chef, Andrew Sutton, formerly of the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek's restaurant in Dallas, was hired from

Auberge du Soleil Auberge du Soleil (meaning "Sun inn" in French) is a restaurant and resort in Rutherford, California, operated by Auberge Resorts Auberge Resorts Collection is a hospitality group headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Auberge is a portfolio of ...

in Napa Valley, and former general manager and

sommelier A ''sommelier'' ( , , ), ''chef de vin'' or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing. The role of the ''s ...

Michael Jordan was hired from the Patina Restaurant Group. Disney hired Sutton and Jordan in order to raise the credibility of its food and wine program. The restaurant has won multiple awards from different organizations, such as the Wine Spectator, Zagat, The Southern California Restaurant Writers and the Orange County Business Journal.

Craftsman Bar & Grill

Craftsman Bar & Grill, formerly known as White Water Snacks, is the refurbished quick service restaurant located in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa. Initially opened in 2001 with the hotel, it re-opened in 2019 under this new name with an expanded pool deck and revised menu.

Incident

At about 3:00 am on December 28, 2005, a

Christmas tree A Christmas tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen pinophyta, conifer, such as a spruce, pine or fir, associated with the celebration of Christmas. It may also consist of an artificial tree of similar appearance. The custom was deve ...

in the main lobby caught fire after electric maintenance workers replaced lights on the tree. All 2,300 guests at the hotel were evacuated within four minutes. The fire was contained by the hotel's sprinkler system and by the

Anaheim Anaheim ( ) is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, part of the Greater Los Angeles area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 346,824, making it the most populous city in Orange County, the tenth-most ...

Fire Department A fire department (North American English) or fire brigade (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), also known as a fire company, fire authority, fire district, fire and rescue, or fire service in some areas, is an organi ...

. Two guests were treated for minor injuries, one of which was a severe headache. Guests were returned to their rooms by 7:00 am.

Gallery

File:GrandCalifMain wb.jpg, View of hotel from Disney California Adventure File:P2130133GrandCalifSide wb.jpg, Arts & Crafts architecture of the hotel File:Storyteller's Cafe.jpg, Storytellers Cafe entrance File:RoomViewCaliforniaAdventure.JPG, A view of the three pools and Disney California Adventure in 2006

References

Books

* Winter, Robert; Vertikoff, Alexander (2004). ''Craftsman Style'', pp 227–233. New York:

Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Abrams, formerly Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (HNA), is an American publisher of art and illustrated books, children's books, and stationery. The enterprise is a subsidiary of the French publisher Média-Participations. Run by president and CEO Mary ...

External links

*
Disneyland Resort – Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, Design Inspirations from the Architect
{{DEFAULTSORT:Disney's Grand Californian Hotel And Spa Hotels in Disneyland Resort Restaurants in Orange County, California Buildings and structures in Anaheim, California Tourist attractions in Anaheim, California Arts and Crafts architecture in California American Craftsman architecture in California Hotel buildings completed in 2001 Hotels established in 2001 Disney California Adventure