United States · California
Anaheim
The town Disneyland built, with a citrus-warehouse downtown and Orange County's beaches half an hour away.
Anaheim is the Orange County city that Disneyland built: a purpose-made resort district of hotels, shuttle loops and pedestrian walkways wrapped around the most visited theme parks on the West Coast. Away from the gates it is an older working city with German wine-colony roots and a citrus-packing downtown reworked into food halls and walkable blocks, plus a west-side strip that holds the densest run of Arab-American bakeries, grills and cafes in the country. Big-league baseball and hockey play within a few blocks of each other on the east side, and the county's beaches are half an hour down the freeway.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-7
Why you'll love Anaheim
Disneyland the original American theme-park resort, still the benchmark for how a park is designed, staffed and detailed down to the paving
Walk-everything logistics a resort district engineered so hotels, shuttles, food and the park gates sit within a few minutes of each other, which is rare in car-shaped Southern California
The other Anaheim brick citrus warehouses turned food halls downtown, and a west-side avenue of halal bakeries, shawarma grills and Levantine sweet shops that locals drive across the county for
Base for Orange County surf beaches, coastal art towns, two big-league arenas and a rail hub for Los Angeles and San Diego, all inside about an hour
Best time to visit
all year
19-28° days
33.835° N, 117.912° W
UTC-7 · America/Los Angeles
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Weather & when to go to Anaheim
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best all year
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Anaheim
No bad weather season - this is mild, dry Southern California and every month of the year works outdoors. What to plan around is the crowd calendar: summer school holidays and the year-end weeks pack the parks and the hotel strip, and a large convention can fill the city's rooms without warning.
Top things to do in Anaheim
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Disneyland Park - Walt Disney's original 1955 park
adventure 👍 PopularThe park every other theme park copied, and the only one Walt Disney saw finished: Main Street USA running up to Sleeping Beauty Castle, with Fantasyland, Adventureland, Frontierland, New Orleans Square and Tomorrowland spoking off the hub. The old rides are the point as much as the new ones - Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, the Matterhorn bobsleds and the Jungle Cruise all sit within a few minutes' walk of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.
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Disney California Adventure - Cars Land, Pixar Pier and Avengers Campus
adventure 👍 PopularThe second park, facing the first across a shared esplanade, and the one built around California itself. Radiator Springs Racers in Cars Land is its signature ride, with the Incredicoaster on the boardwalk-style pier, the drop tower reworked as a Guardians of the Galaxy story, and a hang-glider simulator that flies you over the state.
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Anaheim Packing House - a 1919 citrus warehouse turned food hall
food ⭐ Highly recommendedThe best building in the city and the anchor of the Packing District: a restored Spanish Colonial packing plant where oranges were once graded and crated, now two galleried floors of independent food stalls, bars and a courtyard, with live music and a Sunday farmers market outside. A former car showroom and a small brewery sit across the lawn.
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Little Arabia on Brookhurst Street - the country's Arab-American main street
food ⭐ Highly recommendedA west-side stretch of Brookhurst officially recognised as Little Arabia, and the largest concentration of Arab-owned businesses in the United States: Lebanese and Syrian grills, Egyptian bakeries, Yemeni coffee houses, halal butchers, hookah lounges and sweet shops selling knafeh by the tray. Come hungry and go at night, when it is busiest.
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Angel Stadium - baseball under the Big A
👍 PopularThe Angels have played here since 1966, under the giant halo-topped A that gives the ballpark its nickname, with rock formations and geysers behind the outfield fence. A weeknight game is one of the easiest, least Disney-shaped evenings in the city, and the stadium sits beside the rail station.
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Honda Center - Anaheim Ducks hockey
The city's indoor arena, home of the NHL's Ducks since the franchise began in 1993 and Stanley Cup winners in 2007. Outside the hockey calendar it is Orange County's main venue for touring arena concerts, and it is a short walk from the ballpark and the train station.
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Downtown Disney District - the promenade between the parks
shoppingAn open-air run of restaurants, bars and shops linking the two park gates to the resort hotels, open without a park ticket. It is where people eat on arrival day and on the evening they fly out, and the one part of the resort you can wander into on a whim.
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Center Street Promenade - downtown Anaheim's walkable block
foodA short pedestrian street a few blocks north of the Packing House, with coffee roasters, taprooms, taquerias and small shops in old storefronts. Combined with the Packing District it makes a genuinely pleasant half-day on foot in a city that is otherwise built for driving.
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Oak Canyon Nature Center - canyon trails in Anaheim Hills
nature wildlifeA wooded canyon on the city's eastern edge with a few kilometres of easy trails through oak and sycamore, a small interpretive centre and enough birdlife to feel a long way from the freeways. The neighbouring regional parks pick up longer, more exposed ridge walking.
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Anaheim Convention Center - the West Coast's largest exhibition hall
The arched 1960s hall opposite the resort has grown into the biggest convention venue on the West Coast, and it shapes the city more than visitors expect: when a major show is running, the hotel strip, the restaurants and the shuttles all fill with lanyards.
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Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center - the city's own museum
culture artsA small downtown museum pairing travelling exhibitions with a permanent look at Anaheim's own story, from the German wine colony through the citrus decades to the theme-park city. The historic Carnegie library building next door is part of the complex.
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Pearson Park - the old city park and its outdoor amphitheatre
culture artsAnaheim's oldest park, a shaded downtown block of lawns, a lagoon and a 1920s open-air amphitheatre that still hosts summer performances. It is the closest thing the city centre has to a village green, and it is a short walk from the promenade.
Best areas to stay in Anaheim
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Anaheim Resort District
Park-first families $$Purpose-built hotel strip around the parks
Explore hotels in Anaheim Resort District →
Downtown Anaheim and the Packing District
Food & local life $$Brick warehouses, food halls, walkable blocks
Explore hotels in Downtown Anaheim and the Packing District →
Platinum Triangle
Rail & game nights $$New apartment towers by the stadiums
Explore hotels in Platinum Triangle →
Anaheim Hills
Quiet & car-based $$$Quiet hillside suburbs and canyon trails
Explore hotels in Anaheim Hills →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Anaheim
Getting to & around Anaheim
Getting there
Fly into John Wayne Airport in Orange County and drive or shuttle about half an hour, or arrive by train at ARTIC beside the stadium
Flight
John Wayne Airport, Orange County (SNA)
About 20 km southeast of the resort. Shared shuttle vans, rideshare and taxis run the freeway route in roughly 20-30 min outside peak traffic, and every major hire-car desk is on site. LAX is the bigger long-haul gateway about 55 km northwest, typically 45-90 min by road depending on when you land; Long Beach and Ontario are the other two options and both are under an hour.
Train
ARTIC
Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink commuter trains both call at the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, a big arched terminal beside Angel Stadium. Los Angeles Union Station is under an hour, San Diego roughly two
Coach
ARTIC
Long-distance and airport coaches use the same terminal, which puts intercity buses, commuter rail and the local shuttle network under one roof
Drive
Interstate 5, the Santa Ana Freeway, runs straight through the city with the 57, 91 and 55 all close by. Los Angeles is about 45 min without traffic and comfortably double that with it; San Diego is about 2 hr south
Getting around
Resort shuttle (ART)
Anaheim Resort Transportation runs colour-coded shuttle loops between the resort-area hotels, the park gates and the convention centre, which is how most visitors without a car move around
TBC
Walking
The resort district and the downtown Packing District are each walkable in themselves; the gap between them is not, and neither is anything on the west side
Free
OC Bus
Orange County's public buses run the big avenues - Harbor, Katella, Brookhurst - and out to the beach cities. Slower than driving, but the only transit that reaches west Anaheim and the coast
TBC
Car
The default here. Worth having for the beaches, the canyons and anything beyond the resort; the parks have large parking structures with their own trams to the gates
TBC
Taxi and rideshare
Plentiful at all hours, with marked pickup zones at the parks, the convention centre and the stadiums, though surge conditions after a game or a park closing are real
TBC
Day trips from Anaheim
Knott's Berry Farm, Buena Park
Full dayHistoric theme park
The older, more Californian theme park next door, grown out of a roadside berry stand and fried-chicken restaurant into a park of wooden and steel coasters around a genuine Ghost Town of relocated frontier buildings. Boysenberry everything, and a water park alongside in the warm months.
Getting there
car | bus
About 15 min by car, or a bus ride west
Huntington Beach
Half daySurf city pier
The closest proper beach: a long pier with a dependable wave either side of it, a wide strand with fire rings, a beachfront bike path running for miles and a surf museum in a town that trades hard on the name Surf City.
Getting there
car | bus
About 30 min by car, or an hour by bus
Newport Beach and Balboa Island
Full dayHarbour & beach town
A big yacht harbour with a peninsula of beaches on the ocean side, an old-fashioned fun zone with a Ferris wheel, and a tiny three-car ferry crossing to Balboa Island, where the loop walk past the cottages and the frozen-banana stands is the whole point.
Getting there
car | bus
About 30 min by car
Laguna Beach
Full dayCoves & art town
The prettiest stretch of the Orange County coast: a chain of small coves and tidepools under bluffs, a village of galleries with a century-old art-colony pedigree, and coastal trails climbing into the hills behind town.
Getting there
car
About 45 min by car down the coast
Los Angeles
Full dayThe big city
Close enough to do properly on the train: Union Station puts you in downtown for the museums, Olvera Street and the concert hall, with the metro onward to Hollywood or Santa Monica. Driving is only worth it if you are chasing several neighbourhoods in one day.
Getting there
train | car
Under an hour by train from ARTIC, or 45-90 min by car
Mission San Juan Capistrano
Half daySpanish mission
One of the oldest and best-preserved of the California missions, with adobe rooms, garden courtyards and the ruins of a great stone church felled by an earthquake in 1812. Famous for the swallows that return to nest in it, and the depot is a short walk from the gate.
Getting there
car | train
About 40 min by car, or a direct train
A little history of Anaheim
Anaheim was founded in 1857 by German immigrants from San Francisco who pooled their money to buy a slab of the Santa Ana River floodplain and plant it with vines. The name is that origin in one word: Ana for the river, heim for home. The wine colony did well for a generation until a vine disease destroyed the vineyards in the mid-1880s, and the settlers replanted with Valencia oranges, which became the crop that defined the town. Packing houses went up beside the railway line, and the citrus economy carried Anaheim through to the middle of the next century.
Then Walt Disney bought a block of orange groves in the flat farmland south of downtown, and the park that opened there in 1955 changed the town's trade permanently. Hotels, motels and later a convention centre filled the land around it, professional baseball and hockey arrived on the east side, a second park and a shopping promenade doubled the resort in 2001, and the old citrus warehouses downtown were eventually restored as places to eat rather than demolished. The city today is Orange County's largest, and its two halves - resort and working city - still sit side by side.
German settlers from San Francisco found a wine-growing colony on the Santa Ana River and name it Anaheim
Anaheim incorporates, the first city in what would become Orange County
A vine disease wipes out the vineyards; Valencia orange groves and packing houses take their place
Disneyland opens on former orange groves, the first theme park of its kind anywhere
Anaheim Stadium opens and Major League Baseball's Angels move down from Los Angeles
The Anaheim Convention Center opens across from the resort
The arena now called Honda Center opens and the Ducks play their first NHL season
Disney California Adventure and the Downtown Disney promenade open beside the original park
The 1919 Packing House reopens as a food hall, and ARTIC opens as the city's rail and coach hub
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+1
Mobile network & SIM card
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FAQs about Anaheim
▸ When is the best time to visit Anaheim?
There is no bad month. Southern California's climate holds mild and mostly dry all year, so the decision is about crowds rather than weather: spring and autumn outside the school holidays give you the same warm days with shorter queues. Summer is hot and dry inland here, winter is mild with the occasional wet spell, and late spring mornings can start under a grey marine layer that burns off by midday.
▸ How many days do you need in Anaheim?
Two days covers one day in each park with an evening downtown. Three or four is the comfortable version, letting you repeat a favourite park, sleep in once, and get out to a beach or Little Arabia rather than spending every waking hour behind a turnstile.
▸ Do you need a car in Anaheim?
Not if you are staying in the resort district and only doing the parks - hotels, gates and the convention centre are walkable or on the resort shuttle loops. You want a car the moment you head for the beaches, the canyons or the mission towns, because county buses are slow and the good coast is spread out.
▸ Is Anaheim worth visiting if you are not going to the theme parks?
As a destination in its own right, only just; as a base, absolutely. The Packing District and the downtown promenade make a good evening, Little Arabia is a genuinely distinctive eating strip, and the ballpark and the arena cover most of the year between them. Everything else worth seeing is a short drive away.
▸ Is Anaheim a good base for the rest of Southern California?
It is one of the better ones. The rail hub beside the stadium puts downtown Los Angeles under an hour away and San Diego about two, the beaches are half an hour west, and the freeway network fans out in every direction. Room rates also tend to sit below equivalent beachfront or central Los Angeles options.
▸ Should you stay inside the resort or downtown?
Inside the resort if the parks are the trip and you have children who will need an afternoon break; the ability to walk back to the room is worth a lot. Downtown or the Packing District if you want the city to feel like somewhere rather than a hotel corridor, and you are happy with a short ride to the gates each morning.
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