On Wednesday morning, September 23, the new wing of the Grand Californian Resort and Spa opened, just a little over two years after Disney announced the expansion of the resort.

Speaking at the Grand Opening ceremony were Disneyland Resort President Ed Grier, Disney Vacation Club President Jim Lewis and Anaheim City Manager Tom Wood. The ceremony was held at the new Mariposa Pool area.

The ceremony ended with the ribbon-cutting. Mickey Mouse brought out the over-sized scissors and Ed Grier and company cut the ribbon.

“Mariposa” means “butterfly” in Spanish, and as the ceremony concluded, Cast Members on the balconies of the new wing started waving colorful flags, many of them shaped like butterflies.

After the ceremony, there were tours of the expansion.

Contained within the new wing are the Villas at the Grand Californian, the first Disney Vacation Club (DVC) offering in California. There are 50 Vacation Club Villas – 48 two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom Grand Villas. It is Disney’s smallest Vacation Club resort to date.

Our tour began in one of the Grand Villas – the one that overlooks Disney’s California Adventure (the other has a view of the Mariposa Pool). We’ll have lots more photos of the Grand Villa on the web site soon, but here are a few for now.

Dining room and part of entry way

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

TV in the mirror of the Master Bath

The Grand Villas are two-story – upstairs is a pool table
and sitting area

View from the two-story picture window

As you can see, this Grand Villa will have a stunning view of the new World of Color show – the music will be piped in to the Grand Villa.

Next we went upstairs to the Paradise View Terrace. I had been up here during my hard hat tour of the Villas last March – it looks a little more impressive now. 🙂 According to the sign the capacity of this area is 48 people. There are restrooms at the back of the terrace.

We also toured a studio villa and a one-bedroom villa, but those really aren’t any different from the models, and you can see pictures of them on our Villas at the Grand Californian Room Photos page.

In addition to the DVC units, there are also 203 additional hotel rooms. Though most of the emphasis has been on DVC, in fact most of the new wing contains standard hotel rooms. Here’s one of the hotel rooms, which has two queen-size beds.

Behind the building there is a new patio area, with two gas barbecues for guests who wish to cook and dine al fresco during their stay.

On the bottom floor of the new wing is a new arcade room: Grizzly Game Arcade. Next door to that is Pinocchio’s Workshop, the evening childcare facility. This will be its new and expanded location. Once it opens, it will accommodate about twice as many children as the current facility. There’s also a laundry room on the bottom floor.

White Water Snacks has been slightly remodeled to add a few grocery items. VERY few – the selection is really quite limited, and in fact overall it appears to me that there are fewer items for sale than there used to be. I saw frozen pizzas, individual boxes of cereal, bread, peanut butter, some basic condiments, eggs, lunchmeat, cheese and butter, and not much else.

We’ll be trying out the new Villas at the Grand Californian on Friday night, so I’ll have more of a review after we really experience it for ourselves.

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