2. Contemporary Resort

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Resort: Walt Disney World Resort (Orlando, Florida)
Opened: 1971

Disney World, of course, doesn’t have a “Disneyland Hotel” in name, or even a Magic Kingdom Resort of its own. The Grand Floridian is a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning resort that’s Disney World’s flagship, but it didn’t open along the Seven Seas Lagoon until 1988. The Grand Floridian may be a more classic choice for the resort’s “signature” hotel with its historic, wooden Victorian beachfront style derived from California's Hotel del Coronado and meant as a companion to Main Street, U.S.A... But the fact of the matter is, we'll see quite a few Disneyland Hotels that look like the Grand Floridian on this list, so for Walt Disney World, we’ll go with a more unusual choice in which hotel is the Florida resort's "signature" hotel.

By time Walt Disney World opened in 1971, Walt Disney Productions had enough money to open their own hotel. In fact, Walt Disney World opened with two. Disney’s Contemporary Resort and Polynesian Village Resort both opened alongside the Magic Kingdom, each positioned around the perimeter of the Seven Seas Lagoon. Each of those resorts is also located along the resort’s world famous Monorail loop, providing deluxe shuttle service to the most-visited theme park on Earth.

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We’ll name the Contemporary Resort as the “Disneyland Hotel” equivalent at Walt Disney World. Why? Not only is the iconic A-frame hotel an engineering marvel and a signature element of any Monorail ride to the park (given that the Monorail glides through its familiar interior), it’s also a sort of hallmark of what exactly Walt Disney World was meant to be – a brave, purpose-built “Vacation Kingdom of the World” unlike anything built before.

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A complement to the park's aviation-era Tomorrowland, the Contemporary also contains some of the Resort's best restaurants... and a pretty spectacular Mary Blair mural.

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Fittingly modern and… well... contemporary for audiences of the ‘70s, the sleek, stylish Contemporary remains a retro-cool gateway to the Magic Kingdom, and is a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning hotel itself. A night in the simplicity of the Contemporary typically starts at about $500. Most interestingly, though, unlike the rest of the hotels on this list that work so hard to harken back to historic times, the Contemporary always looks forward, with modern, sleek, simple rooms that feel cutting edge.

3. Disneyland Hotel (Paris)

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Resort: Disneyland Paris (Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Opened: 1992

Disney’s designers were determined to do things very, very differently with their first European resort. From the start, the French media had launched an all-out public assault on the very idea of a “EuroDisneyland” – seemingly an overt invasion of American consumerism and commercialism destined to soil the City of Lights. Smartly, Imagineers headed off the hatred by trying to recast Disneyland (admittedly, a concept completely rooted in Americana) through a more romantic, story-centered European lens.

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One change was the inclusion of the Disneyland Hotel – an opulent, turn-of-the-century hotel in the style of the Hotel del Coronado – acting as the gateway to the park. Like the Louvre or the Palace of Versailles, Imagineers suggested that this spectacular approach would feel much more grand and familiar to Europeans while also acting as climate control in the fickle, rainy, and even snowy weather of the French countryside. True to their intentions to turn any American references into something more grand and storied, the hotel is meant to evoke the Victorian railroad era, packed with elegance and glamor, painted in a soft pink that stands out against dreary gray skies.

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Besides acting as the park's main entrance, the Disneyland Hotel in Paris is also the first Disney hotel to be located inside of one of the company’s theme parks (a concept later employed with Disneyland’s Grand Californian and Tokyo Disney’s Hotel Miracosta), earning it some of the most spectacular views of any hotel in Disney’s portfolio and an exclusive entrance all its own.