🏰 Anaheim Resort District

The Anaheim Resort District is the official designation of the city's tourism-and-entertainment core — the 2.2-square-mile district built around the Disneyland Resort and the Anaheim Convention Center. It's not a residential community in the traditional sense, but it is the most visited single district in Orange County and the economic engine of the entire region.

Disneyland Park (opened 1955) and Disney California Adventure (opened 2001) anchor the district, drawing roughly 25 million visitors per year combined. Downtown Disney — the open-air shopping and dining promenade between the parks and the Disney resort hotels — extends the foot-traffic experience for non-park visitors. The Disneyland Hotel, the Grand Californian, and the Pixar Place Hotel form the three Disney-operated lodging properties.

The Anaheim Convention Center — the largest convention center on the West Coast — hosts WonderCon, BlizzCon, NAMM, D23 Expo, and dozens of major industry conventions per year. The surrounding hotels (Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton, plus dozens of independents) provide one of the densest hotel concentrations in California.

Residentially, the Resort District itself contains very limited housing (mostly hotel-condos and a few legacy residential pockets), but immediately adjacent neighborhoods — the Anaheim Colony Historic District, Center Street, and parts of West Anaheim — provide walking-distance residential access. For many OC residents, the Resort District functions as the de facto regional entertainment hub.

The Anaheim Resort District is best understood as OC's tourism-and-convention anchor — a district whose impact extends across the entire region.