Hotels Proliferate for Disney World Vacationers

The house the “Mouse” built here has multiplied faster than Roger Rabbits.

There is a hotel building boom these days at Walt Disney World. Orlando is one of the few places in the country where there is a hotel-building boom.

But when you’re the No. 1 tourist attraction in the United States, it figures.

Where 20 years ago vacationers had the choice of two hotels on Disney property, usually booked months in advance, there are now 18 options--high-rises, beach clubs, condos and even a campground--in this Floridian oasis of fantasy.

Two centerpiece resorts, Walt Disney World Swan and Walt Disney World Dolphin, opened last year. Two more debuts are scheduled, one in June and one in 1992, which will add 3,000 rooms at the theme park. In addition, six resort projects are on the drawing boards for the “Disney Decade,” as the corporation has dubbed the ‘90s, although their timing will depend on demand.

Demand, however, is a worry that rarely comes up in Orlando.

As most veteran visitors know, there is no shortage of diversions in the area: Development has taken off in a region where Mickey, Donald and their pals and the NASA Space Center once were the only games in (or slightly out of) town. Breakfast was at the Waffle House, and dinner was at the International House of Pancakes.

Although it is up against increased competition--most notably from Universal Studio’s $600-million theme park that opened last summer a few miles down the road--the Disney organization is betting many guests who stay on Disney property will want to spend most of their time and money on Disney property.

The current plan for Disney World’s expanded lodgings would bring smiles to the late impresario himself. It was no secret that Walt Disney was enraged when, just a few years after Disneyland opened in 1955, a slew of hotels opened around the perimeter of the 80-acre park in Anaheim.

Before Disney died in 1966, his dream was to create a self-contained, closely controlled vacation land full of imagination. And Epcot Center, now a Disney World-annexed theme park, was conceived as the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.” Most people have long forgotten what Epcot originally stood for, including, it seems, the Disney folks.

The dream machine has since been taken over by board chairman Michael Eisner, who six years ago established the Disney Development Co. to concentrate on developing convention space to fill Disney properties in the off-season.

Eisner’s ambitions have since swelled. Last year, to celebrate the dawning of the Disney Decade, he announced an agenda for a batch of new theme parks, including a second in Southern California, in the Anaheim area or Long Beach, plus new attractions, improvements, renovations and hotels. Lots of hotels. If completed on schedule, the resort projects will, by the end of 1992, bring to the Disney World property a total of 17,000 hotel rooms and 700,000 square feet of convention space.

The spurt of building at Disney World--and plans for other theme hotels near the soon-to-be-completed Euro Disneyland just outside of Paris--is not just to give guests a place to lay their heads.

We’re not talking modular Motel 6s or Red Roof Inns. Each of the new hotels has a setting and a theme, part of what Eisner, who likes to be in close touch with building styles, calls “entertainment architecture.”

Since the opening of the Swan and the Dolphin, architecture critics have written reams of copy describing their bold patterns, open spaces and Art Deco-ish embellishments. One writer cooed about the “architectural zip-a-dee-doo-dads “ installed by designer Michael Graves at the Swan.

The dual high-rises break with several Disney hotel traditions, not the least of which are the 47-foot swans on top of the 12-story Swan hotel. The birds are visible from within the amusement parks, breaking the long-held Disney canon that reality should not intrude on fantasy land.

Contracts also have been struck with New York City architect Robert A. M. Stern, who designed the new New England-style Yacht and Beach Club Resorts near Disney’s Epcot Center and who is working at the Euro Disneyland site, and well-known Southwestern architect Antoine Predock of Albuquerque, N.M., who is formulating plans for a Mediterranean-themed resort to be built near Disney World in 1992.

Except that it owns the land, Disney has had no financial interest in the Dolphin or the Swan, which were built by its managing partner, Tishman Realty. The arrangement is similar at the Village Resorts’ Hotel Plaza, where hotel chains built seven facilities on leased land, paying a flat rent plus a percentage based on occupancy rates.

It is an arrangement that pleases both landlord and renters, says Dan Darrow of Disney. He would not disclose any figures but noted that the hotels, which were invited to build on Disney property when Disney World’s potential was an unknown (the first four were built in the early ‘70s), “are very happy to pay the rent.”

What follows is a hotel rundown of what is available now on Disney World property in Orlando and what’s to come. For booking information, call (800) 642-5391 or (407) WDISNEY.

MAGIC KINGDOM RESORTS:

Right by the Magic Kingdom, on property around the Seven Seas Lagoon, Disney World’s first hotels, Contemporary and Polynesian, opened two decades ago. Later, they were joined by the Disney Inn and Disney’s Grand Floridian Beach Resort.

The 15-story Contemporary was the place to stay when it opened: The monorail runs straight through the lobby, and it has two pools and three restaurants. It is slated for renovations and a 44,000-square-foot grand ballroom by fall.

The newest hotel in this part of the kingdom, the 900-room Grand Floridian, debuted in 1988. It’s a semi-Victorian building styled with palms, ferns, pseudo antiques and wicker chairs.

The Polynesian, designed around a South Pacific island motif, has 855 rooms plus easy access to the monorail. The Disney Inn, small by Disney standards with only 284 rooms, is slightly off the beaten path, wedged between the Palm and Magnolia golf courses.

Daily room rates at the Contemporary begin at $190, at the Polynesian, $200; at the Grand Floridian, $225, and at the Disney Inn, $185. (Rates at Disney World hotels may vary by season and usually are for two double beds.)

Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground, with 800 campsites and 400 air-conditioned, furnished trailers, has a woodsy setting, a pool and tennis courts. Sites have electrical outlets, water and sewer hookups. Reservations needed.

EPCOT RESORTS:

Disney’s Yacht and Beach Club Resorts take you back to another time, to the ambience of a late 1800s New England seaside resort. The two hotels, newest on the shores of Stormalong Bay, are a short walk or tram ride from the new International gateway entrance to Epcot. They are built around a man-made lagoon embellished with water slides on a “shipwreck,” and a sand-bottom snorkeling pool stocked with freshwater fish. Rates start at $210 a night.

The Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin hotels opened last year on a waterway west of Epcot, have a decidedly ritzy feel and an ambience that’s reflected in the rates. Together they have 250,000 square feet of convention space and about 2,300 rooms. The Swan is operated by Westin Hotels & Resorts, the Dolphin by the Sheraton group.

The hotels have separate pools, health clubs, tennis courts (eight each), restaurants and shops. And personalities. And they are fairly stunning. Prices start at about $210.

Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort is low cost by comparison (rates range from $84 to $99.) A 2,112-room complex, it is a short walk from Epcot. The “beach” actually is a series of five “village” clusters made up of 64-room buildings. Each village has a pool and laundry facilities. There are six snack bars, but this is not the place to stay if dining is a priority.

VILLAGE RESORTS:

In this area, Disney’s Village Resort offers one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments with kitchen facilities (the only kitchenettes available in Disney World) near the busy Marketplace shopping area and Pleasure Island, Disney’s sanitized nightclub and movie complex. Rates for these villas range from $175 to about $335 a night.

In Hotel Plaza in the city of Lake Buena Vista, seven “official” Disney World hotels--3,500 rooms in all--are operated by separate franchises: Travelodge Hotel, Guest Quarters Suite Resort, Grosvenor Resort, Hotel Royal Plaza, Hilton, Howard Johnson’s Resort Hotel and Buena Vista Palace. Each has its own rates, ranging from $75 (Travelodge) to $135 (Hilton) a night.