Art of the Craft Tour at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa

Did you know that Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa hosts a complimentary tour for any interested guest of the Disneyland hotels? It is called the Art of the Craft Tour and it focuses on both the history of the Arts and Crafts movement and the history and details of the hotel. This tour lasts approximately one hour and currently runs on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 1 o’clock pm. I recommend this tour for anyone who is interested in Disneyland history, architecture, or the Arts and Crafts movement. I had no idea so much of the hotel was hand-crafted. I have a new appreciation for the beauty of the Grand Californian and for how much work and detail went into the building of the hotel. Every detail and piece of artwork that I draw attention to in this post was hand-made.

The tour begins near the reception area and the tour guide first goes over the history of the Arts and Crafts movement. This movement began in Europe in the late 1800s when artisans and craftsmen began to take back their work from the Industrial Revaluation. Machines were replacing their jobs, leaving out the beautiful details that came with the craftsmen’s work. This movement continued its way over to California, and many of the styles and designs from this time period went into the building of the Grand Californian. A common design around California was the bungalow style home and the hotel was built to be a giant bungalow home. A main aspect of a bungalow home is that it is built to reflect the surrounding garden. Since the hotel is a giant bungalow, the surrounding garden also had to be scaled up, so the hotel reflects a forest.

The lead architect of the Grand Californian was Peter Dominick. Peter Dominick also designed Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge and Disney’s Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World. There are many similarities between these three resorts and my favourite aspect that they share is the grand, welcoming lobby. One main idea behind the Arts and Crafts movement was that whoever designed it also builds it. This idea went into the building of the hotel because 30 individuals and companies were commissioned to design and build different elements of the hotel. So things like pool gates, paintings, cabinets, flooring, etc were all designed and hand-made by different artisans and craftsmen.

The tour then moves to the registration area. The registration area was designed after the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco. This is evident in the large, curved log beams. Along the bottom of the front desks are terracotta tiled works of dancing bears. These bears represent each season and one of them has a great Hidden Mickey! On top of the desk are lamps that feature different critters that are native to California including: salamanders, quail, butterflies, and snails. Each animal has their own name and were named by the children of the craftsmen. Behind the registration desks are three gorgeous tapestries (“This is a castle, isn’t it?”) of a forest, the hotel itself, and a garden. These tapestries again represent the idea that a bungalow home reflects a garden, or in the case of the large hotel, a forest!

 

Next stop is in the lobby. The lobby of the Grand Californian is one of the most elegant and peaceful spots in the entire Disneyland Resort. The lobby is set up like a giant living room that is reflecting a clearing in the forest. A main focal point is the fireplace inside the fireplace. The entire floor is covered in a beautiful hand-woven rug which has mosaic tilework around the edge. The pattern is of poppies and the transition between the rug and the tile work is seamless. The poppy was chosen because it is the state flower of California and all of the poppies are closed up. This is because poppies only open in the daytime when the sun is out. Around the lobby are four cabinets. Each cabinet is completely different except for in dimensions. They were designed by four different craftsmen who each put their own person touches in their work. Up above the lobby are exposed beams, both a signature look from the Arts and Crafts movement and to represent the branches of trees in the forest.

Next on the tour is the Hearthstone Lounge. The lounge was designed after an early 1900s men’s game room, popular in large bungalow homes. Since women were not allowed in these game rooms, Disney made sure to make a point of inviting women into the Hearthstone Lounge. Every painting around the lounge is of a woman. There is also a carving of a woman painting a peacock above the bar. The peacock represents how the beautiful colourings of the bird were often used as inspiration for artisans. The stain glass doors below the carving are even done in peacock colours. The woodwork throughout the entire lounge was done using a single redwood tree. The redwood had fallen naturally and was auctioned off to Disney, who used the tree sparingly. The chandeliers are almost exact copies of the ones in The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley. The chandeliers in the church had cut outs that looked very similar to Hidden Mickeys, so Imagineers made sure to include these but make them actual Hidden Mickeys.

The tour then moved outside to the pool area. Both gardens and forests have ponds so that is what the pool area is designed to look like. Inspiration was taken from The Gamble House in Pasadena. This beautiful bungalow style home was built in 1908 and has a gorgeous backyard pond. The Gamble House exterior was used as Doc Brown’s home in Back to the Future. The Grand Californian has three beautiful metal gates designed and built by artisan Tim Burrows. The Blue Moon Gate separates the hotel from Downtown Disney and the other two gates are located in the pool area. The tour first stopped at the Arbor Gate. This gate is covered in hand-hammered insects that were made with incredible detail. There is even a snail trail! The next gate is the Sun Gate. On top of the gate is a sun that once lined up perfectly with the Sun Wheel when Disney’s California Adventure first opened. Now the trees have grown too tall to line up with Mickey’s Fun Wheel/Pixar Pal-a-Round. There is a mosaic sundial on the poolside of the gate that features poppies. These poppies are in full bloom because they are outside in the sun. The sundial does actually work as we tested it out on the tour.

The next portion of the tour took us inside the hotel’s restaurants. I have dined at Storytellers Café before with Chip ‘n’ Dale but I had no idea how charming this restaurant actually is. This restaurant represents the library that was found in many bungalow homes. The design of Storytellers Café takes its inspiration from classic stories that take place in California. There are seven paintings around the restaurant, each representing a different story:

• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
• The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
• Tale of the Ahwahnee from the Miwok tribe
• The Californians by Gertrude Atherton
• The Cruise of the Dazzler by Jack London
• The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Along some of the walls of the restaurant are a series of metal work depicting the story of the California gold rush. In the centre of the restaurant is a beautiful piece of tile work which shows a boy reading a book. This piece was inspired by a similar tile work found in a library in Wilmington. That piece also had a generic castle and fairy but Disney’s version has Sleeping Beauty Castle and Tinker Bell. Around the entire restaurant are epigrams. One of the epigrams also serves as a dedication to the designer of both Storytellers Café and Napa Rose, Marty Dorf.

Napa Rose is the Grand Californian’s signature restaurant. The name Napa was chosen because the food was inspired by the Napa Valley wine country and Rose was chosen because the décor was inspired by artisan Charles Rennie Mackintosh who used roses in a lot of his work. He was an important figure in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement.  Another classic style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh was elongated furniture and architectural styles. This is evident throughout Napa Rose in the high backed chairs and long metal rails in the windows. All of the rails were hand-hammered. Napa Rose even has a signature rose which is placed on every table for guests to enjoy. These roses are special because they do not have a scent in order to not interfere with the delicious smells of the food.

The next stop on the tour was the Brisa Courtyard, also known as the Wedding Courtyard. This courtyard is on the north side of the hotel and so the walls are painted a very light green colour. This colour represents moss since moss tends to grow on the north side of trees.

After the Brisa Courtyard, our tour went back inside the hotel and into the conference centre section. We went into the California Boardroom, which has a smaller entrance room and then opens up into the main room. The main boardroom has arched ceilings which allows for good acoustics. This was designed after architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park home’s playroom. He was an architect during the Arts and Crafts movement in Oak Park, Illinois and he wanted to build the perfect playroom for his children. Included in the design was a space in the wall for a piano to take advantage of the good acoustics. This playroom also had a small and dark hallway that led into the large and open playroom, similar to the small entrance room leading into the large boardroom. This style of putting opposites right beside one another was common in Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. The faux stain glass windows in the boardroom were placed very high. This was another signature of Frank Lloyd Wright who liked windows high up to allow natural light in, but still gave the home some privacy. There is also the rumour that he hated Victorian architecture so much that he placed windows up high in his own home so he would not have to look at his neighbour’s Victorian homes.

The tour then arrived at the entrance of the hotel. The last piece of beautiful artwork to learn about was the front stain glass doors. The doors were also inspired by the Gamble House, which opens with large stain glass doors. The design of the stain glass was to show what the forest would look like if the giant bungalow home was not there. The scene shows Grizzly Peak surrounded by forest.

And that was the end of the tour! It was extremely interesting and I loved learning about the history of such a gorgeous hotel. Have you taken the Art of the Craft Tour or any other tour at the Disneyland Resort? Let me know what you thought about the tour in the comments.