Interesting Facts about the Villas at Disneyland Hotel

Every Disney Vacation Club resort has a history, some of which are more interesting than others. Surprisingly, even the newest properties in the program possess a rich tapestry of trivia, some of which you may not even know. Here are a few interesting facts about The Villas at Disneyland Hotel.

Do You Know How Old It Is?

People lie about their age every day. It’s a basic part of human behavior to pretend to be older or younger than you are. People in their 30s and 40s sometimes claim they’re in their 20s and 30s, while teenagers often say they’re 18 or 21 for…reasons. We’ve all done it at some point in our lives.

What’s rare is when someone genuinely doesn’t know their own age. While this does happen from time to time, there’s always a reason why. Then, we have the odd case of The Villas at Disneyland Hotel, whose age is entirely up for debate. 

Sure, we all know that the resort opened in September 2023, which ostensibly makes it two years old. However, we should factor in its name and backstory before we say that with confidence. 

After all, “Disneyland Hotel” is right there in the name, and that resort most assuredly didn’t open in 2023. As I’ve discussed on previous occasions, Jack Wrather opened the Disneyland Hotel in October 1955, about three months after Disneyland Park debuted.

Importantly, Walt Disney couldn’t afford to build the hotel, and his company wouldn’t manage to buy it until 1988. So, I could argue that The Villas at Disneyland Hotel claims three different birthdays. There’s the opening day of the original hotel, the day Disney finally owned it and thereby made a DVC entity possible, and then what I consider the real birthday. 

That’s September 28th, 2023. If someone tells you that it’s October 5th, 1955, or January 22nd, 1988, they have validity to their claims, though. Just to make the whole thing weirder, Disney also bought the infamous Spruce Goose on the same day. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, here’s a video that explains it:

This Resort Shouldn’t Exist 

I’m midway through my tenth year of writing for DVC Resale Market, and longtime readers lived through the drama of this subject. I covered it during our old monthly news updates, and it was such a ridiculous turn of events.

Basically, the Anaheim City Council turned heel on Disneyland. Politicians ran based on an anti-Disney platform, and the company regrettably didn’t lobby hard enough to prevent what happened. So, Anaheim officials bit the hand that fed them in by forcing the cancellation of a Disney project.

In 2016, the then-friendly City Council agreed to a $267 million tax credit for Disney. In exchange, DVC would have constructed a new skyrise resort in the Downtown Disney area. Alas, Disney executives changed their minds about where they wanted to construct the new hotel. Disney planned a building two blocks away from the previous location.

While that may sound trivial – because it is – much had changed when Disney circled back to update the plans. The City Council’s new members vetoed the move, forcing Disney to make a choice. It could build the hotel in the previous space, or it could cede the massive tax credit to put the hotel where it wanted. 

Disney chose neither, canceling the Downtown Disney hotel project entirely. The company also announced that it would no longer accept tax credits from Anaheim. So, that bridge was good and burned. 

In 2019, Disney moved forward with a new project, one significantly delayed by the pandemic. That construction in an entirely different location is The Villas at Disneyland Hotel. If the plans for the Downtown Disney DVC property hadn’t collapsed, we wouldn’t have this resort today. 

The Theming Varies Wildly 

Finally, we have a fact you may not have noticed. At most DVC properties, the theme is easy to deduce and consistent throughout the property. With The Villas at Disneyland Hotel, Disney went an entirely different way.

The rooms at this property celebrate an extensive part of the Disney character catalog. It’s a hodgepodge of your favorites, a kind of Disney All-Star team. When you stay here, you have a chance of picking a room themed to The Princess and the Frog or Sleeping Beauty. These are the standard options in Studios.

Should you prefer a Villa, you expand your choices even more. Disney has themed the rooms to characters from Bambi, Fantasia, Frozen, The Jungle Book, and Moana. So, you could stay at this hotel seven times and still find your room themed to a different film every visit!

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