Disney Reopens 6 Motels Bordering Park : Renovation: The motor inns, part of the Travelodge chain, don’t advertise their link to the entertainment giant.

Back in the early 1960s, earnest young couples or small companies scraped together enough dollars to build little motels on the edge of Disneyland and gave them colorful names like the Cosmic Age or the Musketeer.

Now six of those motels that were bought by the Walt Disney Co. are gradually being reopened with corporate-style monikers that sound enough alike that travelers may be double-checking their reservations.

The motels are reopening as part of the Travelodge chain, and most guests probably will never realize that they are actually owned by the Walt Disney Co.

Although Disney has poured thousands of dollars into renovating five of the six small motor inns in Anaheim that it purchased last year, Disney officials say the company is keeping its name out of sight.

The entertainment giant has turned operation of the motels over to a company called VB Management, which is supervising their reopening as Travelodges.

The improvements are intended to make the motels more habitable for a few years while the company decides whether to tear them down to make way for the proposed Disneyland Resort, a new world’s fair-style theme park and three huge hotels.

Ownership of the motels was quietly switched to Disney during the past year. Two motels--the 98-room Galaxy Motor Inn and the 156-room Cosmic Age Lodge on Harbor Boulevard--were both in good enough shape that they were never closed, said Kerry Hunnewell, vice president of the Disney Development Co. in Burbank.

The Cosmic Age and Galaxy motels, located side by side near Disneyland’s main entrance, will be combined into a single motel to be called the Travelodge Maingate.

The 56-room Lamplighter Motel on West Street reopened last month as the Travelodge Westgate. The Princess Motel, on Katella Avenue, is scheduled to reopen Oct. 21 as the Travelodge Cornerstone. And the former Musketeer Motel, on Katella across from the Anaheim Convention Center, will reopen this week as the Travelodge Conventionside.

The small, rundown Dunes Motel on West Street probably will not reopen because the cost of renovation exceeded the projected return on the investment, Hunnewell added.

“We don’t know how long they are going to be open because we may or may not do this project,” he said. The Disney Co. has said it will build a $3-billion resort project in either Anaheim or Long Beach.

The motel renovations included new paint, bedding and furniture in some rooms, as well as maintenance and repair work, Hunnewell said.