Photos of Disneyland's periphery

Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel

The standard look of this Howard Johnson's, the same as it was in postcards from the 1970s.

Howard Johnson's is a somewhat unremarkable hotel whose main virtue to me now is that it is one of the few places around Disneyland that looks almost the same as it did in the 1970s. Since the I-5 expanded around the 1990s, HJ lost a strip of its property along the I-5, so that now the freeway traffic noise is closer and louder than it used to be at the building that overlooks the I-5. Those upper hotel rooms have double doors to keep out the roar of the freeway below. The nice bottlebrush trees (Callistemon sp.) that lined HJ's parking lot in the 1970s were still there in 2003, but sadly were removed by 2006. HJ's magnolia trees, tall pine trees, and planter and fountain area are still virtually unchanged, however.

This section of Howard Johnson's is virtually unchanged since the 1970s.

Florist's Cyclamen (Cyclamen persicum) in the planter.

The same magnolia trees and same garden room architecture were here in the 1970s.

Shady magnolia trees line this garden walkway area.

Until around 2003-2006 there were bottlebrush trees from the 1970s along the outside of this white wall of the parking lot.

The registration building has somewhat interesting architecture outside, and somewhat interesting decor inside.

This sign is on the corner of Harbor and Manchester.

This orange lettering is on the side of Howard Johnson's that faces Harbor Boulevard.

I stayed at this hotel for the first time in 2002 and was delighted with the holdovers I remembered from the 1970s, but before 2006 the grounds would be modernized for the worse. The old bottlebrush trees that lined the parking lot, trees that I believe were there in the mid-1970s, were inexplicably removed and not replaced with any other plants. The large, illustrated, old map of proposed Disneyland that was on the left side of the registration desk was removed, as was the golden Mickey Mouse that is seen in several other Anaheim places (such as Castle Inn and the Anaheim Visitor Center). The quaint, white, gingerbread shuttle stop in front of the registration building was removed, too, which is even more odd. Maybe recent management believed that anything old cannot still be desirable, so now the hotel looks blander and more like every other modern bland hotel in the area.

The way it used to be... Howard Johnson's used to have its own shuttle bus that stopped in front of the registration lobby. Photo courtesy of Synthetrix [4-1-07]. Howard Johnson's [1978] 1380 S. Harbor Blvd. Anaheim, CA 92802 (714) 776-6120

Created: February 24, 2007
Updated: April 28, 2007