Pixar Place Hotel
Pixar Place Hotel is a hotel at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, themed to the films and artwork of Pixar Animation Studios. It occupies a 15-storey tower on Disneyland Drive, opposite Disney California Adventure, and is the third of the resort's three Disney-owned hotels, alongside the Disneyland Hotel and Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa. Unusually among Disney hotels, the building was not constructed by Disney: it opened in 1984 under Japanese ownership and passed through several names and owners before its reinvention as a Pixar property in 2024.
History
The building opened in 1984 as the Emerald of Anaheim, operated by Japan's Tokyu Group, in time for the Los Angeles Olympic Games held that summer. In 1989, following a merger of hotel brands, it became the Pan Pacific Hotel Anaheim. The property stood just west of the Disneyland parking lot at a moment when Disney was considering, then abandoning, large-scale expansion plans for Anaheim, including the proposed WestCOT project.
In December 1995 Disney bought the hotel from the Tokyu Group for a reported 36 million dollars and renamed it the Disneyland Pacific Hotel. As the Disneyland Resort expansion of 1998 to 2001 took shape, the hotel was rebranded again, becoming Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel on December 15, 2000, taking its name and a California boardwalk theme from the Paradise Pier land of the new Disney California Adventure park. Lobby and function spaces were renovated in the mid-2000s, but the building's basic structure and room layouts remained those of the 1984 original.
The hotel closed with the rest of the resort in 2020 and reopened in 2021 with reduced facilities. In April 2022 Disney announced that the property would be converted into a hotel devoted to Pixar, the first fully Pixar-themed hotel in the United States. Work proceeded while the hotel remained partly open, and the completed Pixar Place Hotel was formally opened on January 30, 2024.
Design and theming
The reimagining treats the hotel as a showcase for the process of Pixar filmmaking rather than simply as a setting for its characters. The lobby displays concept art, sketches and models from Pixar productions at different stages of development, arranged to suggest an artist's studio. A mobile of Pixar characters hangs in the atrium, and the Luxo Jr. lamp and Pixar ball, the studio's emblems, appear at the entrance. Joe Gardner, the musician protagonist of Soul, performs live jazz at a piano in the lobby on certain days, and Bing Bong from Inside Out meets guests in the hotel, his only regular character appearance at a Disney resort.
Guest rooms, of which the hotel has about 481, use a restrained palette with artwork derived from films including Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Coco and The Incredibles. Corridors and public areas incorporate colour studies and character sketches produced during the making of the films.
Dining and recreation
The hotel's principal restaurant is Great Maple, a branch of a San Diego-based restaurant group, which opened in November 2023 shortly before the hotel's formal relaunch and serves modern American food throughout the day. A smaller cafe and market, Sketch Pad Cafe, takes its name from the art theme, and the Small Bytes counter serves the pool deck.
The rooftop recreation deck on the third floor includes the Pixel Pool, a children's play area with a waterslide themed to the Finding Nemo character Crush, the Nemo's Cove splash area, a fire pit area with Pixar-themed short films shown outdoors, and views over Disney California Adventure that are used for watching that park's fireworks. The hotel also contains meeting and banquet space carried over from its earlier incarnations.
Access
Guests can reach Disney California Adventure by crossing Disneyland Drive to the park's main entrance or, via a dedicated walkway and gate opposite the hotel, to an entrance near the Paradise Gardens Park area used by resort hotel guests. Downtown Disney and Disneyland Park are within walking distance to the north.