The man with the vision for themed hotel rooms wasn’t Walt Disney. Sure, the founder of the theme park industry understood the potential for the concept, but he lacked the capital to build one alongside the other. Instead, he had to turn to one of his business acquaintances, who developed something revolutionary, and with Uncle Walt’s blessing.
Odds are good that you’ve stayed at one of the themed rooms across the various Disney parks, but have you ever wondered about their history? Here are five of the seminal moments in the development of Disney themed rooms.
Walt Disney and the oil baron
Image: Disney
His name was Jack Wrather, and he was an oil baron by trade. His time in the oil industry provided him with a great deal of wealth. It’s fair to say that Wrather had the equivalent of a billion dollars during his heyday. He used his riches to hobnob with celebrities from the fledgling movie industry. He eventually married a Hollywood starlet named Bonita Granville, and he befriended two of the most connected Republicans in the movie industry. One of them was Ronald Reagan, who owed his political career in no small part to the support of Wrather.
The other friend is more important to our story. It’s Walt Disney, who requested that his friend, Wrather, do something that the cartoonist could not. Disney was cash-strapped during the lead-up to the opening of Disneyland. He couldn’t afford to build an accompanying hotel, even though he expected a potential property to have a high occupancy rate no matter the nightly room cost. Uncle Walt knew that his park would create demand for hotel accommodations in the surrounding area.
Image: Disney
The wealthy old baron also saw the potential for such an endeavor. He worked in tandem with Uncle Walt to build the motor inn that we know as the Disneyland Hotel. Disney loved this property so much that he advertised it in the press release for Disneyland’s opening. It notes that among the 550 rooms are suites, which is the origin of themed room concept we know today.
Wrather wasn’t one to rest on his laurels. He too believed in the concept that Walt Disney called plussing. The Disneyland Hotel went through several updates during the thirty years prior to The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of it. During this period, Wrather emphasized the unique connection between the motor inn and the theme park beside it. He started adding little elements to make a stay at the Disneyland Hotel feel like an extension of a trip to Disneyland. In the process, he created the themed room. Guests felt like their rooms were a special part of the Happiest Place on Earth, and that’s why the hotel has maintained its status for more than 60 years.
It’s in the frakkin’ walls
Image: Disney
By the time the East Coast version of Disneyland opened to the public in 1971, park planners understood the value of themed rooms. They incorporated the premise into the fabric of their original hotels at Magic Kingdom. The Contemporary Resort Hotel is an engineering marvel that Disney didn’t even build in its entirety onsite. Instead, they constructed the legendary A-frame backbone of the structure. Then, they crafted all of the rooms at a different location. Cranes would then elevate the rooms to their designated location within the framework. This process was so laborious that Disney employees could only add 15 rooms per day to a 655-room resort.
The benefit of the glacial pace was that they could carefully strategize the best tactics for adding rooms that guests would feel compelled to stay in at least once. At The Contemporary, Disney kicked the theming up to 11 by building it in such a way that the monorail would pass right through the facility several times per hour. The strongest public association between Disney theme parks and technology was the monorail, so the placement of this rare transportation within the hotel itself has drawn onlookers for many decades now.
Image: Disney
Disney also valued something else from the learning experience with the Disneyland Hotel. In conversing with employees there about popular elements, they learned that a view of the theme park from the room enhanced the vacation sensation for guests. It didn’t even have to be a large view, as anything that made visitors feel like they were at the park was enough.
One of the reasons why Imagineers built the Contemporary 14 stories high was to provide a view of the nearby parts of Magic Kingdom. Adding such a hypnotic element to a resort extended the de facto boundaries of Magic Kingdom. Guests would pay more for suites on those higher floors simply to get the best view of the Most Magical Place on Earth.
45 years before Moana…
Image: Disney
While what we now know as Disney’s Contemporary Resort delivered the showiest theming with the monorail heading through the building, the other Walt Disney World hotel on day one also enjoyed that revolutionary kind of transportation. Its overall theming was more overt. Every inch of Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort embraced the South Seas theme, and the rooms felt like an island getaway rather than a theme park vacation. It was the perfect option for parents who wanted to spend a week at the beach but knew that their kids would bore quickly.
Over the years, Disney has updated the hotel to maximize its exotic feel. The most recent addition is the mega-expensive, ultra-luxurious bungalows. These rooms are uncannily similar to ones you’d find during a stay in Belize yet they’re only a walk down the beach to the hotel lobby away from a monorail ride. Disney brought the Polynesian Islands to the Walt Disney World complex, and the bungalows are the ultimate embodiment of this theme.
Bringing Floridian opulence to…Florida.
Image: Disney
In June of 1988, Archer’s favorite actor, Burt Reynolds, introduced the world to The Walt Disney Company’s masterpiece. The Florida native was the perfect person to christen what was then called The Grand Floridian Beach Resort. An exercise in elegance, this 900-room hotel cost the equivalent of $275 million, and the stated goal was to provide the patrician class with a place to stay at Walt Disney World.
At the time of its opening, the most expensive room onsite was the honeymoon suite, but Disney frequently upgraded and added suites to cater to the richest guests. 25 suites now populate the facility, and the most fitting of them is the Roy O. Disney Suite.
Image: Disney
The brother of Walt Disney famously had to move to Florida for a time to helm the completion of the Florida Project. He and several other Disney execs basically took over a competing hotel for a time before buying housing on the Disney campus. This commemoration of his achievements includes family portraits on one of the walls. Amusingly, it’s smaller than another themed room at the property, the Walt Disney Suite. No matter what Roy O. Disney meant to Walt Disney World, it’s his brother’s company, after all.
The theming at the various suites at the Grand Floridian all incorporate Victorian elements, which is true of every room at the property. They’re also decadent displays of excess that all theme park tourists should aspire to visit at some point.
Bigger is better
In the thirty years since the debut of the Grand Floridian, themed rooms have become not just standard but even expected at various Disney resorts. In fact, even value resorts like the Art of Animation have exclusively themed rooms. Guests love staying in a room that reminds them of Finding Nemo or The Lion King. So, Disney has built literally thousands of rooms that provide their loyal fans with this opportunity.
The ubiquity of themed rooms hasn’t stopped the company from selling expensive rooms to their wealthiest clientele, though. In addition to the bungalows above, rooms that cost in excess of $2,000 per night, Disney also featured themed suites at virtually every one of their deluxe properties. Fittingly, hotel designers circled back to the roots of themed rooms with some of their most impressive (and expensive) offerings.
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The Disneyland Hotel now offers Signature Suites, which are among the greatest themed rooms of all-time. The greatest of these is unquestionably the Mickey Mouse Penthouse, which is exactly what it sounds like. The room features one of the coolest tributes ever to the mouse who started it all. Still, I would argue that the best representations of theming are in the “cheaper” Signature Suites such as The Adventureland Suite. It offers such sublime accents that if any of them were placed in the line queue for Jungle Cruise, they’d feel right at home. The fact that you can sleep here is a dream come true for true Disney theme park fanatics.
Image: Disney
If you want to read more about breathtaking Disney suites like these while enjoying pictures of some of the most gorgeous themed rooms ever, click this link.
