‘-One of my favorite restaurants, Citricos in Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, is now open seven days a week. For many years the restaurant was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
-Rock and Roll Beach Club at Pleasure Island will be the first club to close this February. Many more of the long-standing clubs will also close soon to prepare for the addition of more shopping, dining, and maybe even a bowling alley.
Episode 25 of the WDW News Today podcast is now available for download. This week’s show is a 1-hour audio tribute to the Disney MGM Studios and features the greatest audio in the park’s history.
To subscribe to the WDW News Today podcast on Itunes, go to this link. If you do not have Itunes, visit podcast.wdwnewstoday.com to download our newer shows.
Walt Disney World is in the midst of building a $110 million, 15-story tower next to its iconic Contemporary Resort that likely will feature time shares — bringing the units closer to the Magic Kingdom than ever before. Disney will say little publicly about the fast-rising Contemporary addition. The new tower already stands five stories on 14 acres just to the north of the resort’s signature A-frame main building, which was just the second hotel at Disney World when it opened a few months after the park itself first welcomed guests Oct. 1, 1971. But there is ample evidence Disney plans to use the tower for time shares.
Building-permit applications filed with Reedy Creek Improvement District identify the owner of the property as a company called JMSRM Inc. State records show that is a fictitious name created in August 2006 by Celebration-based Disney Vacation Development, parent company of the Disney Vacation Club time-share arm. In a pair of letters, an environmental consultant hired by Disney calls it “a proposed Disney Vacation Club (DVC) Resort at the Contemporary hotel.” And in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Disney, which has built about 2,400 time-share units at eight resorts, revealed that it has about 680 more under construction at Disney World. Disney has only publicly acknowledged one ongoing time-share construction project in Orlando: Kidani Village, an extension of the partially completed Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas. That project is expected to have 340 units when finished in spring 2009 — leaving another 340 or so unaccounted for. Construction records for the Contemporary expansion call for 295 three-bedroom suites. Some could be sold as separate two- and one-bedroom units. Still, Disney will not talk about the Contemporary addition.
“We have plans to expand our Disney Vacation Club business both on Walt Disney World property and at other vacation destinations in the future. However, we don’t have anything formal to announce today,” Disney Vacation Club spokeswoman Rena Langley said. Reasons to stay mum: Analysts say Disney may have strategic reasons for holding back on a Contemporary time-share announcement. Disney, which has invested deeply in the time-share business in recent years, is still in the midst of peddling time shares in Animal Kingdom Villas and Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, both at Disney World. Announcing future time shares now in the Contemporary — which are likely to be hugely popular, given their prime location along the Magic Kingdom monorail and within walking distance of the park — could slow the current sales, said Robert LaFleur, a leisure-industry analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group. Disney time-share buyers, though they own a real-estate interest, do not purchase specific units in individual resorts; rather, they buy points that they can redeem for rooms in the company’s time-share resorts or elsewhere. But buyers must purchase those points from a “home” resort — there are a limited number of points available for each facility — and they are given priority at that particular resort when booking a stay.
“If you’re trying to pitch a sale at Saratoga Springs or trying to pitch a sale at the Animal Kingdom, and somebody’s aware that a year from now there’s going to be stuff available in the Contemporary . . . that would cannibalize your other sales, I would think,” LaFleur said. It is also possible that Disney could decide against marketing the Contemporary addition as time shares and use the building for more hotel rooms instead. Company executives said recently that Disney World hotels are averaging 90 percent occupancy, and the Contemporary commands some of the highest room rates of them all: A one-bedroom suite can run as high as $1,310 a night. “I know [Disney has] talked about a tower there for a long, long time,” even before the company’s interest in time shares, said Reedy Creek District Administrator Ray Maxwell.
The Contemporary addition is sure to be a lavish one. Records say the crescent-shaped tower will include a host of amenities, including a swimming pool and water-play area with an outdoor bar and a water slide; a spa; tennis courts; a barbecue pavilion; and a 499-person lounge on the 15th floor featuring a restaurant and bar. The new tower will be connected to the main building by a pedestrian bridge. The project price tag: $109.6 million with completion likely in 2009. According to development records, Disney broke ground on the expansion in January 2007. The construction, which began with the demolition of an older, three-story wing of hotel rooms, is expected to take about 32 months. That would put the completion date about September 2009.
The construction comes with Disney already in the midst of a major time-share building boom. Last fall, Disney announced that it will build an 800-room resort in Hawaii in which at least half of the rooms will be time shares and that it will add 50 two-bedroom villas to Disneyland’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa, which will be the first time shares at Disney’s original resort. Disney Vacation Club President Jim Lewis has also said that the unit is considering projects in Lake Tahoe and the Caribbean. The company currently has six time-share locations at Disney World and one each in Vero Beach and Hilton Head, S.C.
Time shares have blossomed across the hotel industry. Jeremy Glaser, an analyst with Morningstar, said they are especially lucrative for a company such as Disney because time shares lock in future trips to its theme parks. “They’re going to make money from your park admission and all of that ancillary money you’re going to spend every time you come to Orlando,” Glaser said. “They have an added bonus to get you to commit to taking vacations there for years.”
While I was at the Magic Kingdom last week, I noticed some cast members testing a new interactive park map using a Nintendo DS gaming console. I must admit I didn’t know much about the project, but our good friends over at Jim Hill Media have an excellent article about the project and how you can be amongst the first guests to try it out. For the full story, visit Jim Hill Media at this LINK.
A very reliable source has just informed me that Walt Disney World management has purchased the Parade of Dreams from the Disneyland Resort in California. The parade will make it’s final west coast performance in November 2008 and will debut at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in January 2009. While this is still not 100% confirmed at the moment, the announcement should come towards the end of 2008 and the Year of a Million Dreams celebration.
It has just been announced that both Journey Into Imagination with Figment and Imageworks at Epcot will be closed from January 28 to February 24. While some minor refurbishing will be done, there will also be testing of some new effects for a BIG planned refurbishment of the attraction in the coming year. Stay tuned to WDW News Today as more information becomes available on this in the coming weeks.
Here are some pictures of some notable happenings at Walt Disney World during my trip from December 31 to January 11:
Due to the stage in front of the Sorcerer’s Hat at DHS, High School Musical was performing in the Fantasmic entrance forecourt.
Playhouse Disney is closed until February as it prepares for an all new updated show.
The old Hunchback Theater at the Studios is being demolished for some future development.
Here is a look at the major refurbishment going on at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa:
The following pictures show the layout and new design the marble floors of the lobby will be showcasing:
Out with the old…
In with Disney’s Hollywood Studios!!!
Here is the final part of my photo report, sorry it has taken so long:
Splash Mountain is closed for some general refurbishment until February 17, 2008.
Tony’s Town Square Restaurant is closed until January 27 while its kitchen receives some upgrades.
City Hall on Main Street U.S.A. remains open during it’s exterior refurbishment.
Donald Duck has received his wish and has become a real boy.
I hope you enjoyed the photos!!!
If you visit Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort, you are sure to notice some major renovations going on. In the resort’s main building, a giant tarp spanning two floors has engulfed all of the hotel lobby. On the upper level, most of the floor tiles have been ripped up for the installation of new flooring. This refurbishment is only the first step in a lengthy refrbishment that will see every building of the resort upgraded. All of the resort’s changes should be complete by early 2009. I will have pictures available after I return from WDW this weekend.
The top portion of the Buzz Lightyear float in Tokyo Disneyland’s daytime parade, “Disney Dreams On Parade,” toppled to the ground yesterday. Tokyo Disneyland has cancelled all parades pending safety reviews. One wonders if this will have any ramifications for parades at WDW.
TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo Disneyland canceled its popular parades for the first time in its 25-year history Wednesday after a 660-pound steel pillar adorned with colorful planets tumbled from a Buzz Lightyear float.
The pillar on the float, part of its popular Disney Dreams On Parade, crashed to the ground Tuesday afternoon — just yards away from children lined up to watch the twice-daily extravaganza at the theme park.
There were screams but no injuries among visitors and the characters on the float, including Buzz, the hero from the 1995 Disney movie “Toy Story,” according to the park’s operator, Oriental Land Co.
But Disneyland is canceling its two daily parades while it carries out safety checks, the first time both events have been canceled since the park opened in 1983, according to Oriental Land spokesman Tsutomu Kato.
“We’d like to apologize for causing panic,” Kato said.
The accident came after visitors were evacuated after a small fire broke out on the roof of the Swiss Family Tree House attraction at Disneyland last week. Nobody was injured, and firefighters extinguished the flames an hour later.
The park is investigating both accidents but doesn’t yet know what caused them, according to Kato.
Disneyland, the first Disney park to be built outside of the United States, is one of two hugely popular theme parks Oriental Land operates just outside of Tokyo.
In 2007, 25.4 million people flocked to Disneyland and its sister attraction, Disneysea, both just outside the Japanese capital.
I just returned from a very long day at Walt Disney World, spending the entire day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, formerly the Disney MGM Studios. Not much has changed at the park, but some stuff has been updated:
-The sign over the park entrance and parking entrance is still in red lettering but now states the new name. The sign over the bag check area is still not in place.
-New park maps and times guides with the new name are available.
-Most cast members working in attractions still said the old name in their spiels, a big mistake for a big day.
-The limited edition pin that was originally postponed was released, just later in the day than expected.
-Some of the smaller signs in the park were removed and not replaced with the new name.
I’ll be sure to put up some pictures from today and the rest of my trip after I return home and I’ll also have a full trip report on our next episode of the WDW News Today Podcast.
