Disney to build 2,000-room hotel dubbed Disneys Art of Animation Resort
Walt Disney World is about to begin building its first new hotel in seven years, a 2,000-room resort that will open in 2012.
Disneys Art of Animation Resort will feature 1,120 suites with room for as many as six people each and another 864 traditional hotel rooms, with a design theme based on four of the companys most popular animated movies.
The complex will be priced as a value hotel, at the low end of Disney Worlds scale, similar to Disneys Pop Century and All-Star resorts, where standard rates begin at $82 a night.
The announcement is one of the strongest signals yet from Disney that it thinks a sustained recovery is under way from the long travel slump brought on by the global recession. Disney executives, who have been weighing construction of a family-suites hotel for several years, finally approved the project in January.
But in deciding to add another lower-priced hotel, Disney also appears to be betting that travelers will continue the frugal spending habits many adopted during the downturn...
...The Art of Animation Resort will be built on a 65-acre plot across a lake from Disneys Pop Century Resort. The location will allow Disney to use a pair of long-neglected, unfinished buildings that Disney originally constructed as a second phase of Pop Century but which it abandoned amid the 2001 recession...
...Plans for the new resort show 10 wings of rooms and a separate building housing the check-in lobby and restaurants. The hotel wings will be separated into four distinct groups, each with a theme from a different animated movie: The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Finding Nemo and Cars...
...Each section will have separate courtyards anchored by icons from the movies such as a 35-foot-tall King Triton presiding over the Mermaid section and the entire resort will use bright-color palettes evocative of the lush scenery of animated movies. Hotel designers say they have been soliciting input from artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios on everything from building elevations to which scenes to depict at the swimming pools...
...Disney declined to say how much it will spend to build the hotel. It expects to break ground this summer and open it in phases throughout 2012...
...Disney said the project will generate approximately 800 construction jobs...