When Walt Disney World opened in 1971, it featured one theme park and three hotels. Over the years, it was expanded quite a bit from the original count, and today, WDW totals four theme parks, two water parks, an outdoor shopping promenade, four golf courses, multiple recreation facilities, a planned community, and of course, many, many hotels (27, to be exact). One of my favorites is the Grand Floridian Hotel, a Victorian style premiere resort that opened in 1988 to great fanfare. The success of this hotel encouraged Disney to replicate the aesthetic elsewhere, and when the Imagineers were designing Disneyland Paris, they ended up incorporating this theme into a hotel that served as the front door into the actual park.
The resulting Disneyland Hotel is the first hotel to directly abut and offer room views into a Disney park, and though today, there are other hotels that do the same (the Grand Californian at Disney California Adventure and the Mira Costa Hotel at Tokyo DisneySea), Paris' is the only resort to provide a glimpse into a Magic Kingdom park.
I imagine that view's got to be pretty magical. I've said before that Disneyland Paris is the most beautiful Magic Kingdom park of all, so to have an angle of the castle, or of Discoveryland, or of Big Thunder Mountain would definitely be quite the dream. Alas, I can only gaze up at the beautiful facade and imagine. One day, perhaps. One day...
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| The afternoon sun shines on the parkside face of the Disneyland Paris Hotel. |
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| The facade is absolutely gorgeous, just like the other Disney Victorian style properties. |
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