I just got back from a weekend stay at Paradise Pier Hotel and wanted to let people know that they're no longer allowing people to cut through the Grand Californian to cut off some of the walk to the parks. You need to walk to the Disneyland Hotel and enter Downtown Disney near the AMC theater.

It may have something to do with their new security checkpoints (though that's just my assumption). There are quite a few bag check tables and metal detectors near the theater where there's just one set up at the Grand Californian gate into Downtown Disney. I image they're trying to cut down on the number of people that are going through that one checkpoint.

On that note, moving the security to the Downtown Disney area, as opposed to just at the parks, seems to have cut the waits quite a bit - at least coming in from the Disneyland Hotel side. We were there the weekend before Christmas (which was crazy busy) and never had more than two or three people in front of us at the bag check. I think having the people coming in from the Mickey and Friends parking structure getting scanned seperately from people walking in from the hotels really reduced the traffic jam that I've been stuck in when the checkpoint was closer to the parks. I never came in via the Harbor Blvd. side, though, so I can't say how that was affected by the change.