Pleasure Island sounds like a place where clothing is optional, doesn’t it? At least it would if you weren’t a Disney fan who already knew what it was. For this reason, the idea of Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World always sounded incongruous to outsiders.
Conversely, Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village sounds like a happy retirement community where retirees invite their grandchildren to spend the holidays. Therein lies the logic that Disney execs used in trying to unearth new ways to improve their bottom line. They wanted to maximize their revenue potential during the early 1970s, the trying period that came soon after Walt Disney’s demise. The best way to do that was to build an entirely new development, one that they could market to every adult on the planet. This entertainment district was a transparent attempt to expand the target audience for Walt Disney World.
Did the plan work? The answer depends on who you ask. The truth of the matter is that the portion of Walt Disney World that we now know as Disney Springs wasn’t even part of the core plan for Walt Disney’s city of tomorrow. It was a previously planned shopping center outside the experimental community. The historical records for Lake Buena Vista suggest that it was to stand as the highlight of a complimentary town close to EPCOT but not for residents of the utopia. It was always intended as a showcase for something better, even before the Florida Project evolved into something different. Let’s take this opportunity to learn the history of Disney Springs or, as people knew it in 1975, Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village.
Walt Disney, land baron
Image: Disney
While studying the available land in the greater Orlando area, Walt Disney noted that one of the overseers of the Florida Project had crossed out an area of land. The project manager had spent tons of money determining the viability of potential land acquisitions in the region. He’d discovered that this particular parcel of land would require lots of jumping through hoops to acquire. In other words, it would involve a time delay.
You may recall from the Florida Project story that time was of the essence to Disney since they were employing subterfuge to purchase the swampland. Ostensibly, the acreage had zero redeeming qualities. It should have had limited property value. If Walt Disney wanted the land, however, its value was the equivalent of Boardwalk and Park Place. The employees in charge of finding acreage for him to buy crossed off anything that would require a lot of time and effort. They needed people willing to sign on the dotted line immediately in exchange for some quick cash. Had they known it was Disney money, the prices would have skyrocketed.
All of this is germane to the Disney Springs discussion due to an odd bit of trivia. When Uncle Walt looked at a map of Central Florida, he noticed the very region that legal counsel Bob Foster had crossed out. Where Foster saw a subdivision of ownership interests and a protracted set of negotiations, Disney saw convenience and maybe a few dollar signs. The troublesome parcel of land resided near the interchange of Highway 535 and Interstate 4. It was an easily accessible spot, a priority to Disney, a man who learned to prioritize logistics after a few miscalculations at Disneyland.
Foster would later lament that Disney’s obsession with that piece of land delayed the entire Florida Project by a full year. It was an instance where everyone involved made the correct assessment. The overseers and legal counsel correctly evaluated the complexity of the land acquisition. They were right to state that it might be worth the aggravation. Meanwhile, Disney proved prescient in recognizing that the convenience of the locale would lead to heavy traffic over time. We know this because we’ve all spent time at what was first known as…
Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village aka Disney Springs Alpha
Image: Disney
When elderly Floridians discuss the development of the Walt Disney World campus, they’re inclined to highlight the constructions of Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center. The former theme park gate fundamentally changed the perception of the state while the latter, well, some lamentations exist about what was promised versus what was delivered.
What doesn’t get mentioned enough is the construction project that happened in the middle of the two events. Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, and EPCOT Center followed more than a decade later in 1982. Disney Imagineers weren’t sitting on their hands during this gap in history. In 1975, the company introduced Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village. It seemed like a rather innocent shopping center at the time, and there was no reason for customers to appreciate the bittersweet nature of its existence. This strip of stores and restaurants was the culmination of an idea that Uncle Walt had carried with him more than a decade before. The land he’d once seen on a map of Central Florida had finally become the shopping area/breadwinner that he’d forecasted. But the journey to reach this point was lengthy and meandering.
Serving a new community
Image: Disney
Independent of how or why guests visited the Walt Disney World campus, they’d still share the same needs. Those included food, shopping, and recreation. While strategists spun their wheels trying to find a palpable version of EPCOT, they could do SOMETHING with part of the land. Critically, this entertainment section of the Disney land could build an evergreen revenue stream for the company, one they sorely needed in the early 1970s.
At first, Disney employees weren’t trying to sell merchandise to theme park tourists. The new establishment had a different target audience. Disney strategists recognized that the quickest way to infiltrate the community and become trusted new neighbors was by providing services to the locals. Of course, Disney planned to ship “the locals” into Florida rather than sell to the ones already there.
Overseers plotted the Lake Buena Vista community as a place where Disney fans and employees would live, assuming that they’d move to EPCOT to enjoy the utopia. They’d presumably spend all their money on Disney goods and services while living there, and they’d have to work for the company in some field to remain. That was one of Uncle Walt’s stated policies about the new community. The Buena Vista Shopping Village was an insidious way for the company to “pay” its residents with salaries that they’d quickly reinvest in the local economy, all of which was controlled by Disney.
Image: Disney
This strategy fell by the wayside as the reality of Walt Disney’s absence became to hit home. His utopia would never come to fruition, and Disney employees wouldn’t reinvest their salaries on Disney goods and services. Wait a second. That part kind of came true. Anyway, the point is that the plans for this region of land were decidedly corporate.
The change came when Disney modified the target audience. At the start of 1972, they settled on the idea of selling one- and two-bedroom villa homes to other corporations. Internally, Disney described their new community as the Lake Buena Vista Club, a themed community sharing the intimacy of Disneyland, only in a much larger overall region, Walt Disney World. The overseers felt that demand for Walt Disney World would cause a new kind of land rush. Workers outside of Disney would want to visit so much that clever corporations could incentivize them. The best employees during a given quarter/year would earn the right to stay at a villa on the Walt Disney World campus.
The premise was misleading. The path from the villas to the fun part of the area, Magic Kingdom, was many years away from becoming convenient. Nobody living there would feel close to the park even though they technically were. Still, Disney’s marketing team went above and beyond in selling this real estate development. They described it as “the good life,” promising world-class golf, dining excursions so elitist that wine captains handled the pairings, and the greatest social scene this side of Vegas.
The whole thing was over the top, but the underlying premise was simple. Before Disney could build EPCOT, they had to, you know, build a city. The running joke about Lake Buena Vista was that it was the experimental prototype of EPCOT. However, in a way, the members of the Lake Buena Vista Club were actually the forerunners to the Disney Vacation Club.
Prized pets, baked goods, and the Captain’s Tower
Image: Disney
Equating the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village of the 1970s to the Disney Springs of today is like comparing a silent movie from 1908 to Inception. We’ve come a long way, baby. That doesn’t diminish the achievement of the initial iteration of the premise, though.
From the beginning, this shopping complex showed entrepreneurial promise. Impeccably positioned near State Road 535, the development fittingly rested on Preview Boulevard (near the legendary Preview Center) just beside Lake Buena Vista, a watery parcel of land that Disney owned.
In fact, Disney had such power over the Florida government thanks to the Reedy Creek Improvement District that they could determine the location of the water. The autonomy they received in the agreement was so wide-ranging that they had the ability to name and divide the acreage as they saw fit. Disney actually carved up some of Bay Lake and some previously unincorporated land to build Buena Vista Lake, the name reflecting the street address of The Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California.
Once corporate execs understood who was going to live in the fledgling community and visit the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village, they knew how to build it. Their consumers weren’t the corporate power brokers Disney had anticipated. Instead, they were theme park tourists like you and me, only the 1970s equivalent, guests who were also interested in a second home. It was a “town” of itinerant visitors, meaning that this entertainment district would always feature guests flush with money. Everyone loosens their wallet while traveling. Strategists could do the math from there.
During its opening in March of 1975, the new shopping village featured upscale entertainment options. Their design was to sell the idea of Walt Disney World as the good life, a patrician escape from society. Some of the earliest plans actually referred to the main throughway as Royale Circle, with one of the original ideas honored by loyal Disney execs. The Empress Lilly, named after Walt Disney’s wife, showed on the blueprints as an elegant paddleboat. It would offer the finest cuisine in the village.
Image: Disney
This particular concept has stood the test of time. You know it now as Paddlefish Restaurant although its more recognizable recent name was Fulton’s Crab House. When you eat here, you are dining precisely where Walt Disney intended when he drew up the plans for the Walt Disney World shopping district. That’s reason enough to book an Advance Dinner Reservation, right?
Other offerings on day one at Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village included an upscale home décor store named Bath Parlour, an early imitator of Williams and Sonoma known as Gourmet Pantry, and a party supply store with the glorious name of 2 R’s Read’n & Rite’n. The village also offered a showplace known as Captain’s Tower. It was a seasonal promotions office and a great place to take kids to give them a bird’s eye view of the area. Perhaps the most Disney-fied store at the shopping district was It’s a Small World After All, a venue that sold…you guessed it, children’s clothing. Forgive them their puns. It was the 1970s, my friends.
The other luxury store at the village was the most telling. Named Posh Pets, it catered to wealthy clientele in need of a new furry family friend. They also offered grooming and other luxury pet caretaking onsite. It was telling because Disney was fostering the perception that their visitors at Lake Buena Vista would develop an entire lifestyle there, up to and including pet ownership. Disney did everything they could to make guests feel like they were home, albeit at a huge price markup. Let’s be clear that anybody who bought man’s best friend here paid a stiff fee for Fido. That was the recurring theme of the first iteration of Disney Springs. History truly does repeat itself.
The geometry of greed
Image: Disney
Expansion over the years is where the village went wrong. Starting in 1977, campus planners increased the business offerings in hodgepodge fashion. They also changed the name to Walt Disney World Village to reinforce its appeal to consumers. Expansion was inevitable at this point. No reason or rhyme existed in adding more stores, though. It was simply a matter of earning more revenue. That caused problems, the most pressing of which involved the basic design of the place.
At its genesis, the village accentuated the Vacation Kingdom theme of Walt Disney World in its entirety. An entire community surrounded a man-made lake at the center of town. The only expected vehicles were WEDway Peoplemovers, which explains why generations of Disney Springs visitors have lamented the parking situation. It was a conscious choice on the original blueprints. Somebody from the late 1960s deserves a punch in the face for that.
Anyway, part of this village-wide philosophy involved “commercial naturalism,” a concept that has long since fallen by the wayside. At the time, it was a belief that everything should look organic and lived in. Shrubs, trees, and other vegetation seamlessly integrated with the shops and restaurants. Aged brick lined the walls, occasionally interrupted by rustic iron gates and stained-glass windows and lanterns. All these features were breathtaking to behold on day one.
The patterns were also shockingly easy to disrupt.
A single reckless addition could ruin the illusion of theming that Imagineers had planned so meticulously. After the first year of its existence, the village entered into a battle of art versus commerce and, as usual, art got its butt kicked. The region haphazardly introduced new businesses into the village, accidentally ruining its timeless symmetry in the process. In its constant fight for revenue, Disney lost the theme of one of its most beautiful creations, the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village.
Downtown competition
Image: Disney
As Disney fell by the wayside, an unlikely threat emerged. And they were largely responsible for it. When Walt Disney purchased his land and announced the Florida Project, Orlando had a population of 250,000. That number had more than tripled as the end of the 1980s approached. The city would surpass one million residents in the early 1990s. A lot of the appeal was living in a thriving metropolitan region that was home to Walt Disney World.
As the population increased, other entrepreneurs noted the growing opportunities in the city. Church Street Station was arguably the most famous. It was a series of nightclubs hosted in the unlikely setting of a train station. Guests would literally cross the tracks as they passed the nights away, barhopping in an impressively enterprising setting. For a single cover charge, they’d have free reign of every night club there. And Disney viewed basically every dollar spent at Church Street Station as money taken from their ledger sheet. It was their idea, so they were furious to watch somebody else monetize the greater Orlando community by employing their strategy. Better.
Over time, strategists appreciated that one of the reasons Church Street Station succeeded at the village’s expense was its target audience. Disney had explicitly chosen to emphasize a luxury lifestyle. They wanted to sell to the wealthiest clientele, a rejoinder that sounds familiar to this day. Church Street Station was the populist response, a welcoming environment that would happily take money from people of all income levels. Disney had unintentionally priced out some of their potential customers.
Appreciating the problem, corporate executives finally embarked on a new strategy as the 1990s approached. They decided to reboot the village as a vacation destination with a thriving nightlife. Out was the proverbial Grey Poupon. The new spot was all about mustard instead. And that was the genesis of Pleasure Island, the locale that we now know as The Landing at Disney Springs. In the years leading up to the current iteration of the village, however, Pleasure Island was very much its own thing, and a weird little thing at that.
I swear that I am not making up this name
Does the name Merriweather Adam Pleasure mean anything to you? Hopefully, the answer is no because even Disney superfans struggle with this one. Mr. Pleasure (or MAP, if we use his initials) is the fictional founder of Pleasure Island. Disney created this character in order to tie a theme the new version of the entertainment district. They no longer fixated on aesthetics at the expense of actual story, which was in reality a step back, something they wouldn’t recognize for too long.
While the village had a style all its own, Pleasure’s new “island” emphasized shopping with a bit of back story. And the weird back story was that in 1911, MAP bought himself a new plaything. It was an island. Bored during downtime from one of his many adventures as a member of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.), the itinerant explorer put down roots in his new home. And, like a good megalomaniac, he named it after himself. This tidbit was critical to the development of Pleasure Island since its signature restaurant was The Adventurers Club.
This nightclub was singularly unique in the history of Disney, and it’s so revered by some that it’s worthy of a standalone discussion at some point. Somehow a hybrid of Jungle Cruise narration, improvisational comedy, Audio-Animatronics, and Rick’s Place in Casablanca, The Adventurers Club was the place to go for a great time at Pleasure Island from 1989 until Disney closed its doors in 2008. During the final few days of its existence, fans flocked to it similar to how attendance spiked at The Osborne Family Spectacle of Lights in 2016. They even held a couple of memorial tribute shows in the years after S.E.A. shuttered The Adventurers Club.
The theme of the nightclub tied into the overall theme of Pleasure Island, and that theme was fun. Of course, Imagineers thought it was Mr. Pleasure, who viewed the site as a place to relish in his “lifelong interest in the exotic, the experimental, and the unexplainable.” When the would-be entrepreneur arrived on the island, he potted to become rich by manufacturing sails. Only one problem existed. Sailing was a dying industry as the Wright Brothers had recently developed the power of flight. Pleasure should have gone bankrupt, but World War I saved him. Military navies needed sails, so a stupid idea became an insanely profitable one. Merriweather had cause for merriment.
The reason why new ownership was in place when The Adventurers Club opened was due to (hilarious) tragedy. Pleasure, the “Grand Funmeister” made the incorrect decision to explore Antarctica, a journey from which he never returned. His bumbling sons drove his estate into bankruptcy, and they lost Pleasure Island in 1955 when (the real) Hurricane Connie wiped out the (fictional) community, which is a dangerous theming for a Florida resort…but I digress.
With no money and a destroyed community, the sons of Pleasure (how is that not a band name?) gave up on their exotic real estate inheritance. It devolved from a hotbed of decadence to the proverbial deserted island until archeologists discovered the abandoned lands in 1987. Like any good archeologist would, they chose to build a shopping and entertainment district as a monument to the weirdness of Merriweather Adam Pleasure.
Simple pleasures
Disney theming is always the gold standard, but their decisions with Pleasure Island were universally daring. They wanted to add a sense of whimsy to the experience of visiting Walt Disney World. The former site of the village became a new kind of entertainment district, one that prioritized parallels between the fictional themes and the very real stores.
Disney even elevated the proceedings with a nightly fireworks show. They called it a celebration of New Year’s Eve, which somehow occurred every single night. If true, that would mean that Pleasure Island was open for about 5,500 years. Alas, it only felt that way to employees.
Innumerable former Pleasure Island employees are nodding their heads at this comment, but the festivities had their intended effect. Many theme park tourists grew passionate about the entertainment district. And people loved The Adventurers Club, arguably the most fun environment in the history of Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village/Pleasure/Island/Downtown Disney/Disney Springs.
The rest of the Merriweather Adam Pleasure theming wasn’t quite so overt. Sure, anyone reading all the plaques and signs could add up the clues, but what Disney really wanted from their shopping center was money. They decided that the best way to get it was to tie everything together via story tales. Unfortunately, history repeated itself as Pleasure Island expanded and changed. No shopping area will stay the same over 20 years, of course, but any alteration to a themed area causes ripple effects.
A few people knew the history of Videopolis East, Fireworks Factory, and Merriweather’s Market. When Pleasure Island swapped them out for 8Tracks, Motion, and Raglan Road Irish Pub, something was lost. Fireworks Factory was supposed to relay the ridiculous tale of MAP using a cigar to blow up a building (accidentally, of course). What that has to do with Irish cuisine is a mystery only Disney understands.
Videopolis East was perhaps the most egregious instance of adapting too much and caring too little about theming. In 1989, it started as a New Wave dance club, making it at least five years too late. Then, it switched to Cage, which was vaguely alternative with a bit of grunge thrown in. At least Disney had the timeline right there, adding it in 1990. Then, they switched 8Trax in 1994; it was themed as a Studio 54-ish dance club, with a blend of 1970s and 1980s music. With the benefit of hindsight, that would have been the perfect fit in *1989*. With three different themes in only five years, the place always struggled with a reputation as a cynical nightclub where Disney pandered to whatever they thought crowds wanted at the time.
Each time Disney changed something, Merriweather Adam Pleasure died a little bit more. Of course, it’s not that tragic since he never existed in the first place and also was kind of stupid to boot. A phantom moron as the primary theme of Pleasure Island speaks volumes about the flaws with the concept. Still, everyone who hung out at Pleasure Island generally had a great time. They were still at Walt Disney World, after all. And the company expressed satisfaction with the entertainment complex as long as guests continued to attend.
The change happened in the early 2000s. And it wasn’t Disney’s fault. The American economy took a turn and then the global economy grew sluggish, too. The prevailing opinion about Pleasure Island was that it was inferior to Universal CityWalk Orlando, an entertainment district a decade newer and with better anchor restaurants. Universal employed a different kind of theming, building anchor establishments for popular franchises like Margaritaville, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and Hard Rock Café. Despite the overwhelming charisma of Merriweather Adam Pleasure, many tourists stuck with the brands they knew rather than a flamboyant playboy adventurer.
Rebooting the reboot of the reboot (or something like that)
Image: Disney
By the time the housing market collapsed and the global economy dipped precipitously, Pleasure Island was doomed to a spot in the more frustrating annals of Disney history. Everyone agreed that the shopping center sold well and was a profoundly forward-thinking idea by Walt Disney. The execution of the shopping center was simply lacking. The erratic nature of updates to the village caused it to lose thematic integrity. It became gangly and unattractive over time. Then, Pleasure Island mixed the basics of restaurants and shopping with the outrageously eccentric and weird. Disney recognized that they have fans of each aspect of the experience, but finding a person who enjoyed all three was rare. And the cost of upkeep on the Pleasure Island nightlife caused problems, as did having a lot of drunks on the Walt Disney World campus.
With the economy in freefall and Pleasure Island perceived as failing, Disney rebooted again. Almost incomprehensibly, they again prioritized theming. The story of the planned evolution of Pleasure Island into Hyperion Wharf is a tale for another day. Suffice to say that it was a placeholder for what came next. And that too was something with a theme. To Disney’s credit, however, they finally learned from past mistakes.
The current theme of the region once known as Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village is…water. Technically, it is springs. Landscapers tasked with finding a more solidifying tie for the various areas of the former Downtown Disney sold their bosses on an obvious solution. The entire community was originally built with a natural centerpiece: a body of water that the original Imagineers carved out of land from Walt Disney’s beloved Florida Project. By embracing the heritage of the land, they could augment and honor the legacy of their founder. Sometimes, the clearest solution is also the best one.
Disney Springs is the culmination of more than 40 years of attempts at perfecting the primary entertainment complex at Walt Disney World. Fittingly, The Walt Disney Company re-introduced their seminal entertainment industry in 1965, 50 years after Walt Disney himself looked at a map and said, “I don’t care how long it takes. We have to buy that land.” As always, he was right…and far ahead of his time with his strategy.
