Disney's Grand Californian --- this time a huge disappointment About This Page:

[AGentlRose]

This was our fifth and last stay at the Grand Californian. Yes, location is very much a plus, but that is where the "grandness" stops. Service at this hotel has definitely gone down since our first stay here last September. I must say that our check in with Kevin at the Front Desk was a pleasure. He was so accommodating and found us a room near an elevator as I requested. And the bellman who delivered our luggage, Luis, was also very pleasant. I thought "wow, our vacation was off to a great start. " Unfortunately, this was where the great ended.

We had our thermostat set low because we like it comfortably cool. Woke up at 3 AM feeling so warm. As soon as I got out of bed and stepped on the floor, the A/C went on, which led me to believe that the A/C is set off by a motion detector. I didn't say anything about it until my husband complained about it later that morning. We left for the parks at 9 AM, returned after 1:30 PM and the room was not cleaned. Sorry, I can understand if the hotel was at full occupancy, but it was relatively empty. I picked up the phone to call the front desk about both issues and of all things -- the phone is dead. That was the final straw. I went down to the front desk and asked to be able to leave the following morning without a penalty. I'm not sleeping another night in a room where we can't climate control ourselves, which we have to return to for a midday break and it hasn't been cleaned and doesn't have a working phone. I told the front desk person about these issues, told him that I am a retired Disney (Florida) cast member, who once worked hotel operations and that these things were not acceptable. He brought out his manager, who offered to have someone immediately clean the room and have the engineer look at the A/C, or change our room for us. (they couldn't stand the thought of losing two days' revenue because of my early departure). We decided to change rooms, so as we were getting our stuff together to move ourselves to another room on the same floor, the engineer shows up and tells us that our next door neighbors were also complaining about their A/C the night before. Luckily the rooms were about 8 doors down the hall, and we packed and moved our own luggage, however, the beds in this room were very uncomfortably soft, I ended up with a backache. It is very hard for me to understand because this is Disney, and having worked for Disney (Florida), we always attempted to exceed guest expectations. The same is not true for California. Yes, the front desk manager offered to buy us dinner, which I declined. I explained to her that I worked hotel operations and came across so many guests who looked to complain in order to get something for free, this is not what I am looking for, that I just want to be comfortable and have the A/C work right. Both the front desk manager and the engineer both swore to high heaven that the guest controls the thermostat. Yes, the guest controls the numbers on the thermostat, but temperature is controlled by the hotel whether by motion detection, as I've experienced in Hawaii and Costa Mesa, or by hotel monitoring. Both methods were explained to me by hotel management in other hotels. I didn't appreciate the dishonesty of Disney's Grand Californian and that is the reason for my low ratings. And this is their flagship hotel of the Disneyland Resort. For the first time in my life, I couldn't wait to leave this hotel. Another cut back was the turndown service. Since there are no longer bedspreads on the beds --- just down comforters ( in May in Southern California which made no sense) and a decorative tapestry across the foot of the bed, the housekeeper would just fix the pillows, turn on a light, close the drapes and leave a menu for room service breakfast -- no more chocolates!
As for Disneyland itself, it was a disappointing trip. We were there for 3 days and although I do understand the normal maintenance refurbishment of rides is necessary, I don't understand breakdowns every single day of rides that were NOT scheduled to be down. In our case, Space Mountain was down for a time, each day that we were there. Maybe it is time to close the entire park, fix what needs fixing and open to be the grandeur that Disneyland was.
Since this was probably going to be our last visit to Disneyland because we plan on moving back to Florida, I really wanted this vacation to be special --- it was totally the opposite. If you want to choose a Disney property in California to stay at, I would choose one of the newly refurbished rooms at the Disneyland Hotel. I've always had good experiences at the Disneyland Hotel.