Peachhead™ Approved Vacations: Homewood Suites - Anaheim - Disneyland/California Adventure

I decided to take my girls for a 3 day adventure to Anaheim after school let out. We stayed at the Hilton Homewood Suites in Garden Grove (about 1 mile from Disneyland). Homewood Suites by Hilton® Anaheim-Main Gate Area, 12005 Harbor Boulevard, Garden Grove, Tel: 1-714-740-1800 This is an area with many hotels and what was nice was there were a number of restaurants steps away from the hotel. Joe's Crab Shack, Outbacks, Red Robin to name a few. The hotel is all suites with full kitchens. After lunch we hung out at the pool. They have a nice large pool, a smaller kiddie pool (1 foot) and a jacuzzi. After the pool we went to the Anaheim Gardenwalk for dinner at Roy's (one of my favorite restaurants). After dinner we went shopping in the complex. They have a lot of great stores with very reasonable prices.

The homewood suites provide complimentary light dinners Monday through Thursday. Our first night dinner consisted of cheeseburgers and chips and a salad. They also provide beer and wine. In the mornings they have complimentary breakfast, complete with fresh waffles you make yourself, fruite, bagels, english muffin and toasts, and an assortment of other food and drinks.

The hotel provides wireless internet in the lobby and wired internet in the rooms (however, I kept having problems getting on the internet from my room but if I called tech support, they got it working). There is a shuttle that stops at all of the hotels in the area and takes you to Disneyland for a small fee if you don't want to take your car.

We had a great time at California Adventure today. Around 11:30 Jasmine started getting hungry so I called the Rainforest Cafe to see if we could get in for lunch. They had 12:30 availble so we went there (I did discover you can enter Downtown Disney through California Adventure so it saved us quite a bit of time and we reentered California Adventure the same way). I had never been to a Rainforest Cafe before and I was pleasantly surprised. The decor is very cool but more importantly, the food was really good. Amber thought it was the best hamburger she has ever had (and believe me she has had a lot of hamburgers) and I had an incredible Salmon dish on a cedar plank (with mashed potates and vegetables). It was very tasty. I loved it so much that I tried going back there for dinner the next night but they did not have any reservations available...lesson learned, make reservations in advance.

As for parking at Disneyland, we entered by driving down Harbor and turning on Disneyland Drive. This still put us in the Mickey and Friends parking lot but there was not the long line I usually encouter entering the structure right off the freeway.

We had a great time at Disneyland and California Adventure. I can't wait to go back. They have a summer special running for $99.00 where you can go 3 times within the 45 day period to both parks. If you purchase this and decide to upgrade to an annual pass, you can pay the difference and the annual pass will begin on the day you first used your $99 pass.

Hilton Homewood Suites - Anaheim - Main Gate Area

Linda Perry, June 2009 
Peachhead2@aol.com 
www.peachhead.net