Hilton Anaheim
Stole some pictures from the website for you guys on this one.
Stayed at the Hilton Anaheim July 29-31. We chose a standard king room. The Hilton members rate for our days was $124/night, which I thought was very reasonable for a hotel of its caliber within walking distance of DL.
Available Rooms:
1. Standard rooms- 2 queens or 1 king.
2. Theme Park View
3. Lanai Deck
4. Pool View
5. There are also a number of suites available, but I didn't look too hard into these options.
Rates:
It varies a lot by date for both cash and points redemption. Our standard room was $124 a night for the Honors rate. It looks like the theme park views start in approximately the $150/night range. The point valuations are all over the place. I looked at a week's spread of points redemptions for the theme park view and it was between 22,000 and 50,000. I saw one night of pool view as high as 85,000. I think you really just have to play around with the dates to see what your best value would be. I ended up with a triple points promotion as a Hilton biz cardholder, in addition to the 12x Hilton points I earned with my credit card, which made this a great value for me.
Location:
- Approximately one mile from DL. I have no way to screenshot right now, but I think
@Lain has a good map on the Dischurners Reddit. It's located on the back side of CA Adventure, so south of the park. DH and I are two able-bodied adults and made this walk 8 times roundtrip over three days. We left the park one night at 6:00, went back to our room and napped for a few, then got back up at 8:30 and walked back to the park. It's not as close as the other hotels, but I also think it runs a little cheaper on the cash rate.
- Our Uber ride took about 35 minutes from LAX and was $60.
- There is ART bus transportation from the hotel to the park, but we didn't utilize it.
Amenities:
- While it doesn't say free Wi-Fi is available to all on the website, there was a note in our room saying that Wi-Fi was available to all guests free of charge. I didn't have to put in a code or anything to get on it.
- A nice pool, apparently, though I didn't use it.
- Car rental desk.
- Can buy Disney tickets in the lobby.
- Starbucks in the lobby.
- This was a REALLY big hotel, so chances are if you need something, they will find some way to get it to you.
Photos:
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(This room is exactly what our room looked like)
Pros:
- Reasonably close to park
- Reasonable cash rates
- Beautifully decorated lobby and rooms looked very nice
Cons:
- A little far from the park if you're not a reasonably fit adult up for a good walk to and from the park
- Point valuations can either be really good, or ridiculously bad with no rhyme or reason
Personal Review:
Our stay here was... fine. There were some really great aspects. I checked in on the Hilton App 48 hours out and was able to select my room. I wanted a high floor and was able to select the 14th floor. When I was going through the rooms, I noticed that one appeared to face DL. I wasn't sure this was accurate as there was no upgrade cost and I had only selected a standard room, but from all angles it certainly looked like we would be able to see the park.
When we arrived, we got in the check-in line for Hilton Honors members. Pro tip: this line actually moves slower than the standard check-in line. While waiting, I heard the front desk clerk tell the people in front of us that there were no theme park upgrades available. When I checked in and dropped off my bags, I just asked to keep the same room I selected and was told that was fine. I was given two complimentary bottles of water and was also given this note describing what I would receive as a Gold member:
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I wish I had read this note before the front desk clerk gave me his spiel. Unfortunately, he made it sound like I could get 1000 points OR a breakfast, AND we would get the free drink and pastry for both of us at Starbucks. I selected the 1000 points, but had I known it was an "or" option between the three, I actually would've chosen the Starbucks because I already knew that's where we would be getting breakfast. But oh well, you live and you learn.
We then went to the park and came back that evening. My digital key said it wasn't activated on my app so we had to stop by the front desk again. They activated it immediately and we went up to our room to discover that it was in fact a theme park view!
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I mean, that's a theme park view to me! I don't know how else you would describe it, and I think the only other rooms could call theme park would be the rooms you can see there on the end of the T shape coming out, which I believe were suites based on the hotel map. So I was certainly pleased that we got this view without paying anything extra!
When we came into our room, we noticed that it was pretty warm and humid. I figured it was because of the big windows in the room, even though the blackout curtains were closed. DH turned the AC down to 66 in an effort to get it to cool down in there.
Unfortunately, the room didn't cool down... for our entire stay. The AC ran nonstop all night and (presumably) all day. I sent a message to the front desk on the app the second day to let them know that it was very humid in our room and didn't appear to be cooling down. They said they would send up an engineer. When we got back to the room around 10:30 that night, we had a post-it note on the thermostat that said "We checked the AC!" Except it wasn't any cooler and the AC was still running nonstop. DH started turning the thermostat up to see what the temperature actually was. It finally turned off at 77 degrees...
Other than this, our room was very comfortable. Bed was nice, view was nice, bathroom was nice.
My only other completely first world problem is with the Starbucks in the lobby. We went there our second morning and bypassed the very long line to get int he Hilton Gold line, which there was no one standing in. We stood there for probably a solid minute before somebody finally looked at us and said "have you been helped?" I ordered a venti iced mocha since I was exhausted and really needed some caffeine. Unfortunately, I didn't take a sip of my drink until I had left the hotel and started walking to DL. That's when I discovered that there was absolutely no coffee in it at all. So, basically I paid $6 for an iced chocolate milk. I wasn't super thrilled about that and ended up throwing most of it away because I wanted caffeine and not really just a giant chocolate milk. I did get an email afterwards asking me to rate my Starbucks experience there in order to receive an additional 10 Starbucks stars. I reviewed it accordingly, but there was no option to add any comments. I'll see if I get any follow up contact about it.
I've also sent Hilton an e-mail about the issues with our AC and included the review of the Starbucks as well. I received an email this morning saying that my email had been forwarded to the hotel and to expect them to follow up with me.
So, there you have it. My first Hilton experience. Not stellar, but not too shabby either. Honestly, if it wasn't for the AC issues then I would be willing to give this hotel pretty high marks. But when you're hot and sweaty after being in the parks all day, it's not that enjoyable to come back to a suspiciously humid room!