“Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you… But always dress for the hunt.”
Years ago, we began our Lost Legends series with a simple idea: to build a library of stories that encapsulate the most complete and accessible histories of these forgotten fan-favorites. By doing so, we hoped to save these stories for a new generation of emerging Disney Parks fans who simply might not understand what the big deal was about Journey into Imagination, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Maelstrom, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or any of the dozens of other Lost Legends entries in our In-Depth Collection Library.
As we’ve told these tales – exploring the way they intertwine and weave through time – we’ve asked you to share your thoughts and memories and stories. Today especially, we’ll need your help, because there may be no attraction on Earth that relied as heavily on community, storytelling, and camaraderie than that of The Adventurers Club, the mysterious and revered living theater venue in Downtown Disney’s Pleasure Island.
Image: Disney
Packed with special effects, Audio-Animatronics, songs, hidden wonders, ancient artifacts, and mysteries worth years of exploration, even in retrospect it’s hard to say exactly what this venerated and beloved attraction was. A nightclub? A walkthrough? A show? An exhibit? Hmm…
Join us in this in-depth look at the history of the beguiling Adventurers Club, what waited within, and where its ingredients have spread across the globe… As always, the story begins years before the Adventurers Club would ever open its doors… in this case, it’s rooted more than a century ago in a fairytale history that many Disney Parks fans don’t know…
Paradise found
Pleasure Island Histerical Society plaque. Image: Rob Yeo Design
According to “Disney legend,” it was 1911 when a Mississippi side-wheeler steamed through Lake Buena Vista in Central Florida, anchoring on the coast of a miniscule island overgrown with sawgrass and Florida wildflowers… population: “a couple of alligators and a family of herons.” Unbeknownst to them, their preserved island had been discovered by Merriweather Pleasure, a bon vivant turn-of-the-century seafaring explorer who’d set out for the unknown with his family in tow!
A collector of wonders, artifacts, relics, and art, Merriweather Pleasure was a renaissance man of most noble type; a thinker, dreamer, inventor, and wanderer whose landing in this otherwise remote Florida lagoon was no accident! A product of the great era of merchant sailing, Pleasure, his wife, and his three children had arrived with a dream, and christened their new home Pleasure Island. Here on this new island, he would establish Pleasure Canvas and Sailmaking, Ltd.
Image: Disney
At once, the overgrown lagoon isle became a flurry of construction and, by 1912, the endless expanse of Florida wilderness was dominated by a canvas fabrication plant and a sailmaking factory! A year later, a power plant began supplying the island with the electro-power of the new incandescent lightbulb, spurring a telegraph office and mail room. A brass foundry, upholstery shop, and social center began drawing the old money of the region with a lucrative yacht-refurbishment business, and before long Pleasure and his family were able to move out of their paddlewheeler and into a Bermuda-style mansion overlooking Lake Buena Vista, taking all of Merriweather’s decades of artifacts, artwork, and relics with them.
In 1920, the long-suffering Isabella Pleasure offered her husband an ultimatum: find a new home for his ever-expanding collection of international oddities or she would do it for him. Pleasure did what any man faced with choosing between his wife or his wonders would: he found a way to keep them both. In 1920, he opened a new library on the western shore of the island and transposed his priceless collections to its hallowed halls. The library quickly became a go-to social club for his globetrotting companions; a secret society hangout of seafaring explorers; a headquarters for the age-old Adventurers Club…
Image: Disney
Like all dreamers, Merriweather’s hopes eventually surpassed his means. His devoted quest to discover reusable energy – what he called “the power of the planet” – saw much of his sailmaking infrastructure transformed into laboratories for constructing unimaginable steam-powered flying machines, eventually leading to Pleasure’s unfortunate disappearance somewhere in the Arctic… When Hurricane Connie struck in 1955, it closed the rusted remains of Pleasure Island off from the rest of the world (and, coincidentally, created Typhoon Lagoon), and it seemed certain that all traces of Pleasure Island and its Adventurers Club would be lost forever… Until…
The Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village (1975)
Walt Disney World held its triumphant opening in 1971. Billed as “The Vacation Kingdom of the World,” executives and designers at Walt Disney Productions were certain that their new, master-planned resort would be a one-of-a-kind international destination. Sure, it had a theme park, resort hotels, and a week’s worth of leisure activities (including boating, camping, hiking, swimming, waterskiing, and more). But much more than a transient tourist attraction, they also planned for Walt Disney World to have neighborhoods… permanent residential communities!
Image: Disney
The first planned would be located in the property’s southeastern corner on the shores of Lake Buena Vista. This quaint, charming, quiet community would be a relaxing retreat. And best of all, it would have its own accompanying shopping center.
According to plans, residents of Lake Buena Vista would only need to hop aboard their own full-circuit Peoplemover (a practical application of the Lost Legend: The Peoplemover only prototyped at Disneyland) for a sleek, swift aerial ride to the nearby Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village. There, they could purchase sundries, snacks, and souvenirs at low-key shops, or catch a Monorail to sail further into the resort.
The problem is that, by the mid-’70s, Disney’s executives and designers were moving full-speed ahead toward their largest projects to date: the nearly simulantaneous openings of EPCOT Center and Tokyo Disneyland. Lake Buena Vista’s residential community was postponed, though the Lake Buena Vista Shopping Village did open in 1975. Without its associated neighborhood or the Monorail that would’ve connected it to the rest of the resort, though, the Shopping Village felt more or less separate from the core of Walt Disney World.
1978 map, featuring the new name “Walt Disney World Village.” Image: Disney
To help, it was renamed just three years later to the Walt Disney World Village. But it wasn’t enough to make the collection of shops worth a drive for most Disney World visitors. It needed more. And that was exactly what it was about to get… Read on…
Modus operandi
Image: Disney
This is when we arrive at a common juncture in so many of our in-depth features. Frequent readers of our Lost Legends series know that so many tales revolve around the introduction of perhaps the most controversial figure in Disney history. And once more, our pivot point is Michael Eisner.
For more than a decade following Walt’s death, Walt Disney Productions had rusted. Its once-golden name was tarnished; its studios had gone years between blockbuster hits; its theme parks were stagnating as tired, dusty remants of another era. But when Eisner arrived as the CEO of Walt Disney Productions – hand-picked by Roy O. Disney, Walt’s nephew – he brought with him an extensive and important history as CEO of Paramount Pictures. Eisner had exactly the experience and insight necessary to revive Disney’s studios and – by extension – its parks.
Image: Disney
And think about it… in 1955, Walt Disney had infused Disneyland with the stories, settings, and characters that had touched his generation… Tom Sawyer, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Legend of Zorro, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Swiss Family Robinson are just a few of the characters alive in Disneyland that shaped a generation. Through that lens, Eisner’s suggestion wasn’t at all controversial: that to stay relevant, Disney Parks needed to update to reflect the stories, settings, and characters that mattered to modern audiences. Eisner believed that Disney Parks should be stocked with the hottest films, the biggest stars, and the most famous moviemakers; that, at Disney Parks, guests should be able to “ride the movies”!
Sounds fair, right? The only problem is that, in the ’70s and ’80s, Disney wasn’t making movies worth watching, much less riding. Which is why, even before he would turn around Disney’s movie studio, Eisner decided to reach out to some colleagues in the filmmaking industry to try to get Disney Parks up to snuff.
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
George Lucas, as it happens, was eager to work with Disney, and hit the ground running with a series of can’t-miss Lost Legends: Captain EO, STAR TOURS, and The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, each in turn making Disney Parks into cool, hip, edgy, cinematic, popular places in touch with current pop culture, modern movie stars, famous filmmakers, and hot music.
Eisner’s faith in the power of cinema ran so deep, he proposed a pavilion for EPCOT Center based on the filmmaking industry (elevating it stand alongside oceans, energy, imagination, transportation, agriculture, and communication) before ultimately deciding that it deserved more – an entire theme park dedicated to Hollywood, its history, and the magic of moviemaking… The Disney-MGM Studios.
He also believed that Disney’s spectacular storytelling and commitment to theme might also crack the problem of the longstanding Walt Disney World Village shopping district… Though he had a little inspiration.
Competition
Image: Walter, Flickr (license)
Just up the road from Walt Disney World, a new attraction was gaining steam. The old Church Street Station in Downtown Orlando was constructed in 1889 by the South Florida Railroad, operating as a train station until its closure in 1926.
But during the 1970s, an intentional revitalization saw the old railway station transformed into a new entertainment center populated by nightclubs. Spanning both sides of Church Street and both sides of the railroad tracks, Church Street Station became a bustling, go-to hangout for young people who could pay a single price to club-hop between its nightclubs.
Image: Church Street Station
Believe it or not, in 1985 alone, Church Street Station had 1.7 million visitors, making it the fourth biggest tourist attraction in Florida by attendance after Disney World, SeaWorld, and Busch Gardens (but beating Cypress Gardens, Gatorland, Weeki Watchee Springs, and many others).
Eisner and his team saw the nightclub entertainment complex as a viable option for import to Walt Disney World, and supposed that it might be the way to finally draw guests in sizable numbers to the once-marooned Shopping Village far off in the resort’s southeastern corner. Plus, a collection of clubs would help Eisner on his longstanding goal: to make Disney Parks hot, trendy places that appealed to more than simply families with young children.
It’s no coincidence that in 1986, Disney announced that a set of adventurous Imagineers had “stumbled” upon the long-lost, overgrown remains of Pleasure Island mere feet away from the Walt Disney World Village…
Pleasure Island
Image: Disney
Alright, so the “history” of Pleasure Island we noted earlier is more Disney fantasy than fact. But this, Eisner supposed, was the key to Disney’s own club-hopping, adult-oriented nighttime entertainment center. To his cinematic thinking, the phony story of Merriweather Pleasure and the grand, heralded “rebirth” of Pleasure Island as a club-hopping venue was exactly the “Disney touch” to set Pleasure Island apart…
In so doing, Pleasure Island would also capitalize on the “adaptive reuse” trend that was only beginning to sweep the country, wherein abandoned industrial warehouses and long-vacant urban factories would be repurposed as art collectives, bars, breweries, and clubs… an urban design strategy still widely in use today.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
Pleasure Island would look like a historical world built over the course of decades, with each and every square foot explained by some piece of the massive, connected frame-story of Merriweather Pleasure – from hidden hints and vague clues to outright obvious architecture. Pre-dating (and by most accounts, dwarfing) Disney’s best examples of overarching, land-wide continuities (arguably, Magic Kingdom’s New Tomorrowland and Disneyland’s Adventureland renovations, both in 1995), the scale of Pleasure Island’s story was so massive – perhaps too massive – that most people might miss it.
But by purchasing a ticket to Pleasure Island, you wouldn’t just visit bars, clubs, and restaurants, you’d be stepping into the story of the Pleasure family and their cross-continental journey; you would see, feel, touch, and hear the history of the island as you journeyed between the old Merriweather mansion (now “repurposed” as the Portobello Yacht Club) and the docked paddlewheeler he arrived aboard (now Fulton’s Crab Shack), the infamous Fireworks Factory (“built in 1924” by Merriweather’s Chinese connection), the canvas fabrication plant (housing the Mannequins nightclub), or the island’s power plant (now home to the Comedy Warehouse).
Image: Disney
Already, perhaps you’re getting a sense of the “living story” of Pleasure Island; like the immersive theater experiences cropping up around the world today, by stepping onto Pleasure Island, you were becoming part of a story; if you like, solving a mystery by exploring the island’s “histerical society” plaques, connecting modern clubs to what they were “originally,” and seeing what became of Merriweather Pleasure and his family.
Founding
Image: Disney
So even if Disney’s new Pleasure Island looked a century old, that was exactly the point. And there, amid this vast island of world-building and immersive storytelling stood a new kind of experiment…
As the story goes, two prominent figures in Imagineering are the focal points of the Adventurers Club’s founding. Chris Carradine – at the time, Vice President of Walt Disney Imagineering – supposedly came up with the idea and sketched it out on cocktail napkins in a New York City restaurant one evening.
He proclaimed that it would have “twice as many rooms as guests will ever see,” referencing the tremendous world-building backstory and the sense of place. In fact, the building itself was constructed with space to add new rooms as the Club grew.
Carradine was also a frequent audience member at the Los Angeles stage production Tamara that premiered in 1981. Famously dissolving the boundary between spectator and actor, Tamara invited 150 viewers onto (or maybe, into) the stage, freely flowing between eleven rooms designed to resemble an Italian villa, interacting at will with a dozen actors in a live, immersive theater… a kind of entertainment not yet commonly known.
Image: Disney
Another leading figure we’ve already mentioned – Joe Rohde, of Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Aulani fame – supposedly inspired the Club’s atmosphere by throwing an annual Sunday afternoon theme party he called “The Last Days of the Raj” wherein Rohde and his friends and colleagues would dress in British colonial attire. Or, as one of the Club’s actors, Craig McNair Wilson told MousePlanet, “it came out of our collective, shared love of the world of the pith helmet and all that circled around it. It was the place we always wanted to go, but it didn’t exist.”
Ah, but now, it’s time to journey on. Remember Pleasure’s library, custom-built to contain the vast wonders of his artifacts and collections? By stepping inside, you become an explorer; an actor; an inventor; a part of the story. And on the next page, we’ll finally rejoin the Adventurers Club.
The Adventurers Club
Image: Disney
The Adventurers Club, from the start, probably looks quite unlike anything you’ve seen at Downtown Disney before. Among the modern, repurposed warehouses of Pleasure Island, the Adventurers Club sticks out. Perhaps it’s believable that this club once masqueraided as a library, but now it’s easy to see that whatever it contains is probably unusual… Climbing vines entomb a single, spectacular, sandstone-colored obelisk, a curved portico supported by a seemingly-unsteady pillar. Where the stone facade has chipped away, ancient runes (undeciphered as of today, but almost certainly with a message to tell) are carved into the exterior. There’s an otherworldly draw to this mysterious locale…
And as luck would have it, the veil of mystery shrouding the Adventurers Club has been pulled away. Tonight is an open house. It’s New Years Eve 1937 every night at the Adventurers Club, and we have been drawn into this exceptional place’s magnetic field. A banner invites us in with a simple but telling offer: “Come in a stranger, leave a little stranger.”
Image: Disney
At once we’re ushered inside and into the Zebra Mezzanine.
The adventure begins right away. The only character likely to greet us here is Graves, who’s served as the dutiful butler to the Adventurers Club since its inception. And arriving now, he welcomes us back and assures us that, while we were away, he was certain to collect our mail. Lowering a silver platter, Graves hands us a letter. These really-for-real souvenir sealed envelopes contain gems such as this one (discovered by the amazing Jeff Lange), from Club President Pamelia Perkins:
Images: Jeff Lange
Only a few steps in the door, it’s likely that you’re recognizing what makes the Adventurers Club so special… And if that doesn’t convince you, your next view will.
The Mezzanine exists as the Club’s grand entrance – a circular balcony acting as the top floor of the Club, encircling the iconic Main Salon. The walls and balconies of this hexagonal, grand, central atrium are littered with flags, artifacts, mementos, and oddities. This isn’t simply a collection of things, but of stories; expeditions; fish tales; adventures…
The only path forward is around the balcony and to a set of steps leading down into the Main Salon.
Image: Disney
The Main Salon is where the Club’s primary bar is, built around a priceless statue that – some say – is called “Zeus Goes Fishing…” An (eh-hem) modified replica of the famous Artemision Bronze, a sculpture believed to be of Zeus, but found without the lightning bolt historians presume it must’ve once held. With drink in hand, guests can mill about the Main Salon, meeting and greeting with some of the Club’s most noteworthy members… Like Pamelia Perkins (Club President, I’ll have you know), Fletcher Hodges (an absent-minded Club Curator, who claims to have “mounted every object in the Club”), Samantha Sterling (a noted explorer-slash-cabaret-singer), and our hero, Emil Bleehall. Hailing from Sandusky, Ohio, Bleehall is a Junior Adventurer, poised to win the Balderdash Cup.
And herein lies the beauty of the Adventurers Club. Dozens of characters mill about, each with a backstory that they’d happily spend hours explaining. Resident adventurers, maids, butlers, and visiting explorers have all descended on their Adventurers Club for this New Years Eve extravaganza, and three times nightly, they initiate the New Member Induction Ceremony here.
Adventurers new and old gather in the Main Salon for the membership drive, inviting visitors to pledge. In this prestigious ceremony, all members learn the Club Salute, which ends with a chorus of the Club’s official greeting: “KUNGALOOSH!” Perhaps most importantly comes the recitation of the Club Creed, as established by founder Merriweather Pleasure a decade ago, in 1927:
“We climb the highest mountains,
just to get a better view.
We plumb the deepest oceans,
cause we’re daring through and through.
We cross the scorching deserts,
martini in our hands.
We ski the polar ice caps,
in tuxedo looking grand.
We are reckless, brave, and loyal,
and valiant to the end.
If you come in here a stranger,
you will exit as a friend.”
With business out of the way, it’s time to awaken Colonel Critchlow Sunchbench, the Club Gleemeister himself, generally sitting “on duty” (read, asleep) in a maestro’s box over the Salon. The Colonel is meant to lead us in a chorus of the Club’s Song, but first he needs awoken with his favorite phrase, “Free drink, Colonel!” Even when it’s time for the tune, he doesn’t always get it right the first time…
The Colonel is one of the Club’s first ingenious secrets: a expressive, eccentric, unusual characters brought to life through live puppetry.
But there’s much more to see…
The Mask Room, the Treasure Room, and the Library
One of the smallest rooms in the Club is the Mask Room, located just off the Main Salon. It’s a cozy corner of the otherwise boisterous Club, decorated in dozens and dozens of masks from around the globe… many of which move and laugh. Throughout the night, the Mask Room would also suddenly spring to life with seemingly-instantaneous shows, where the Club Maid would do an impromtu stand-up routine with any guests lucky enough to be seated inside.
Otherwise, two Bacchanalian-style masks featured prominently in the room – Arnie and Claude – were known to awaken and interact directly with guests in their own improv routines, long predating Universal’s Mystic Fountain. And beware, they’re not above heckling guests…
The Treasure Room – an equally tiny side-salon – contained artifacts collected and curated by the Adventurers Club, and throughout the night, Club members would host artifact lectures, explaining their acquisitions and, inevitably, awakening the Genie Beezle in a riotous back-and-forth comedy exchange.
Images: Jeff Lange
The largest room in the Club is, as you’d expect, the towering Library. Giving Belle’s a run for its money, the Library isn’t just a sprawling resource for tomes of adventure and legend. It’s the venue’s main stage. Throughout the evening, the Library is continuously alive with scripted shows, musicals, and special events. There’s the nightly Welcome Party hosted by Samantha Sterling and Fletcher Hodges; The Balderdash Cup Competition; cabarets; sing-alongs…
One of the most memorable was a nightly Radio Broadcast wherein President Perkins and Otis Wren (Club Treasurer and resident ichthyologist) live-hosted their serial radio show, “Tales of the Adventurers Club,” only to find during the broadcast that half of the cast was missing, necessitating stand-ins from the audience. In another radiothon, members of the Adventurers Club would put on a variety show in hopes of raising the $2,000 needed to save the Club’s lease.
Remember, every night at the Adventurers Club is New Years Eve, and that means a celebratory fireworks finale. At 11:45, the Club proudly moves outside to watch the fireworks launch, ringing in 1938 with all the wild, eccentric fun you’d expect.
Kungaloosh
Image: Disney
Every square inch of the Adventurers Club is a part of a living world; a fully immersive themed environment; a secret society who’s invited you in. Come again and again; every time you’ll see familiar and new faces, become a voice in the chorus of the Club Song; come to know the Adventurers and invest in their stories; become a part of the inside jokes and the massive “history” of the Club and its founder…
With all the depth and mythos of Haunted Mansion, the scale of Pirates of the Caribbean, and a cult following inexplicably strong in an era before social media, the Adventurers Club was, without a doubt, one of the most unique attractions to ever grace Walt Disney World. We asked early on if it was a club, attraction, walkthrough, bar, or show… And in hindsight, it was all of that and more. Packed with Audio-Animatronics, puppets, special effects, unforgettable characters, and camaraderie, the Adventurers Club became a legitimate exercise in community; a beloved group of explorers; a welcoming refuge for Pleasure Island visitors; a must-see attraction that shaped and was shaped by a new generation of Disney Parks designers.
And then, it was gone. What happened? And where does the spirit of the Adventurers Club live on? That’s where the story picks up on the next page…
Downtown Disney (1997)
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
Just as the late 1980s had seen the opening of Pleasure Island and its lineup of cinematic adult-oriented nightclubs, bars, and hangouts, the changing tastes of 1990s brought another addendum to join the Marketplace and Pleasure Island. From the same cultural shift that briefly turned Las Vegas into a family destination of themed shows, amusement parks, and thrill rides, the entire complex had its fourth renaming in 1997, becoming Downtown Disney. It was joined by a brand-new third neighborhood, the West Side, which would be a glowing Mecca of ‘90s-style entertainment.
Image: Disney
The radical new entertainment playground would feature mainstays of the era, like a grungy, rusted warehouse-style House of Blues, a custom-built modern white big top for Cirque du Soleil’s La Nouba, a must-visit Virgin Megastore (to purchase a compact disc or cassette for the flight home, no doubt), a Planet Hollywood restaurant, and a Disney’s most unusual experiment yet: the subject of our in-depth Disaster File: DisneyQuest, which remained frozen in its ‘90s form for decades.
Image: Disney
Kitschy, comic, and cool, the West Side felt like the perfect 1990s interpretation of what a “Downtown” Disney World would feel like – a master-planned expansion that looked, felt, and sounded like the era. With its three regions – the Marketplace, Pleasure Island, and West Side – Downtown Disney was a full-day of family fun. Quirky, cool, oversized, and playful.
Of course, by the end of the 1990s, Church Street Station – the collection of clubs that had spurred Pleasure Island’s opening – had shuttered. Heading into the New Millennium, times and tastes had changed, and – as it had done in every decade since – it seems that Downtown Disney would need to evolve once more.
Pleasure falls
The closure of Church Street Station in 1996 signaled the end of the era that had inspired Pleasure Island, but the clubs in Downtown Disney continued onward without skipping a beat. Maybe – even though the ’80s/’90s era of imagining Orlando as a cool, hip place for young adults was over – Pleasure Island would survive!
Image: Disney
However, after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, destination tourism flatlined. Disney reeled from the loss of visitors by slamming most projects to a halt and cutting costs. Given the industry’s decline (and the state of Disney management at the time), it was practically inevitable. The large and expensive-to-operate clubs on Pleasure Island were doomed.
The Jazz Club closed first in 2005, and the space was leased out to an external company who re-opened it as Raglan Road Irish Pub & Restaurant. Now this was particularly interesting… Suddenly, Disney executives saw a new road forward for Pleasure Island… By leasing the space out to an outsite company, Disney could get their own hands out of the messy business of operations and logistics and staffing and instead, simply sit back and collect hefty rent payments from outside corporations for such premium real estate. Hmm… As you imagine, Disney quickly got to work trying to find outside companies to take over the rest of Pleasure Island’s clubs.
The problem is that, by then, the United States was well on its way toward the 2008 “Great Recession,” sending tourism into another nosedive, further limiting attendance, and toppling Downtown Disney’s Pleasure Island entirely. Its clubs – including the Adventurers Club – closed together on September 27, 2008.
Still, Pleasure Island (or what was left of it) remained the only pass-through between the Marketplace and West Side. And since the closure of the Island’s clubs had turned this walkway into a veritable graveyard of walled-off, mostly-empty warehouses, Disney did get to work figuring out how best to replace the area.
They even decided on a solution.
In 2010, it was announced that Pleasure Island would be no more. A press release announced, “A nostalgic yet modern take on an early 20th century port city and amusement pier will evolve Pleasure Island into Hyperion Wharf. By day, the bustling port district will draw guests in with its stylish boutiques and innovative restaurants…
Image: Disney
“…and by night, thousands of lights will transform the area into an electric wonderland.”
It seemed like a win-win. The “reclaimed urban industrial” design concept was (and still is) in fashion, so simply re-using some of the abandoned warehouses of Pleasure Island to stage a modern, laid-back, millennial entertainment district from an “old” fishing wharf had merit. Best of all for Disney, the enormous warehouses that had housed expensive and ambitious clubs could now be sub-divided into retailers, restaurants, and more.
Image: Disney
If Pleasure Island was of the ’80s and the West Side of the ’90s, Hyperion Wharf would be very clearly a product of the 2000s, born of the age of the American downtown revival.
It never happened. Though many of Downtown Disney’s clubs were demolished in 2011 in preparation for Hyperion Wharf, the Island remained as a mere construction-wall-lined walkway (just with construction equipment instead of warehouses). Further exploration had convinced executives (probably correctly) that giving a flashy, fresh name to the abandoned Pleasure Island wouldn’t be enough to convince high-end brands that they should pay Disney rent… especially in the wake of an economic crisis that had crippled Americans’ disposable income.
It became clear that – for Downtown Disney to remain relevant in the 2010s – it would need more than a light repurposing and renaming of Pleasure Island’s long-abandoned industrial buildings.
Disney Springs (2015)
In 2013, Disney upped the ante by announcing that all of Downtown Disney would become Disney Springs, an upscale shopping, dining, and entertainment district that, like Disney’s best theme parks, would be an immersive area with key details one would expect from Disney.
The space once home to Pleasure Island became a new neighborhood – The Landing (below, left) – with an all-new district called The Town Center (right) built on the former parking lot. The Marketplace and the West Side had some light placemaking as well, though they remained – in their own way – very ‘90s-kitsch.
Image: Disney
Pleasure Island was built by Imagineers with a baked-in “story” that guests could follow not only via tiny, tucked-away details, but in the very architecture of the island. That deeply-embedded, half-fantasy-half-historical story of the Pleasure family and the island’s decades-long growth, disappearance, and rediscovery created a larger-than-life mystery for themed entertainment fans to follow.
Its replacement, Disney Springs, has a baked-in “story,” too, but it’s not really centered on a character or any sort of fantasy narrative.
Designers will explain that Disney Springs is meant to resemble any number of real villages that popped up around natural Florida springs throughout the late-18th and early 19th century. If you keep an eye out, the architecture of the town will even give you a clue as which areas were built first, and how the Springs developed over a century fueling the Springs Bottling Co. But it’s mostly just nice and above-average placemaking for an otherwise standard upscale outdoor shopping mall, not an attraction unto itself.
Image: Disney
And that’s fair! As in much of the industry, the emphasis on family entertainment has mostly fallen away. (See again Las Vegas, which shed its brief pretense of being a themed family entertainment destination in the 2000s.)
So Downtown Disney was a veritable one-stop shop for kitsch ‘90s roadside attractions: a oversized playground paradise reined over by the Rainforest Café, Planet Hollywood, DisneyQuest, the House of Blues, and the cinematic, themed clubs of Pleasure Island…
The West Side (blue), the Landing (red), the Town Center (orange), and the Marketplace (green). Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
But Disney Springs is unapologetically different: an upscale retail district of expensive brands and pricy restaurants your average family wouldn’t go near. And why shouldn’t it be? Just as the average American suburban shopping mall has been stomped into irrelevance by outdoor shopping centers with boutique brands and upscale restaurants, Disney Springs downplays the remains of the West Side in favor of the likes of the Boathouse, Edison, Vera Bradley, Chanel, and Pandora.
The Adventure Lives On
The change from Downtown Disney to Disney Springs will no doubt be hotly debated by Disney Parks fans for years as the radical shift in demographic takes place… But even among the dozens of closures and demolitions that were required of the district’s facelift, the closure of the Adventurers Club was – and continues to be – one of the hardest hits to Disney fans.
Image: Disney
While the Adventurers Club has now been gone for a full decade, the impressions it inspired live on not only in the Disney Parks guests who were so influenced by the groundbreaking attraction, but in the stories, rides, and characters it inspired… On the last page, we’ll see where the ingredients of the Adventurers Club were scattered around the globe… Read on…
The Adventurers Club hosted its final public event on September 27, 2008, closing along with the rest of Pleasure Island. Petitions to save the club earned thousands of signatures in a matter of days. Fans of our Lost Legends series already know what kind of good that does…
The Adventurers Club remained operable for another year, during which time it was available only for private rentals. Appropriately, on the last day its doors opened – September 25, 2009 – it was rented out to the Congaloosh Society, Inc. – a Florida nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of interactive improvisational theater.
Much of Pleasure Island was standing but not operating from that point forward, awaiting the cancelled Hyperion Wharf rebirth that would never come. Demolition took place in 2011. But as we know, good ideas never die at Disney… While some of the Club’s props returned to their original, globetrotting owner (Joe Rohde), many of the stories and set pieces were scattered around the globe…
The Society of Explorers and Adventurers
At least in part, Disney fans seem to agree that the Adventurers Club set the stage for something even more grand…
The Society of Explorers and Adventures (S.E.A) is perhaps the grandest tale ever told by Imagineers. A cross-continental frame story, the mythology of S.E.A. is interwoven into rides, shows, and restaurants around the world, uniting Disney Parks continents apart into one massive continuity.
Image: Disney
Take, for example, the spectacular Modern Marvel: Tower of Terror at Tokyo DisneySea, which – without the well-known Twilight Zone story applied to the other Towers – tells of one of S.E.A.’s early members, Harrison Hightower, who traveled the globe stealing priceless artifacts to hoard in his palatial New York hotel… until New Year’s Eve 1899 when he draws the ire of one of his own cursed idols, dooming himself and his hotel by way of a penthouse-bound elevator.
Since the Adventurers Club opened long before the first official S.E.A. references (which debuted with Tokyo DisneySea in 2001), we can say for certain that the Adventurers Club wasn’t originally intended to integrated into S.E.A.’s story.
Image: Disney
However, Imagineers later added a few clever retro-continuity nods added to the club. During its final years, the Adventurers Club’s walls of mementos, news clippings, and artifacts displayed a letter from president Pamela Perkins discussing Hightower and how “his idol really took him for a ride.” Even if an outright in-universe connection between the two was only hinted at retroactively, in the real world, it’s clear that the Adventurers Club inspired S.E.A.’s style, substance, and story.
You can read our comprehensive list of all the interconnected attractions in this continent hopping, globetrotting adventure story – S.E.A.: The Society of Explorers and Adventurers.
But perhaps most phenomenally, a number of attractions were almost certainly directly inspired by The Adventurers Club and Disney’s recurring attempts to bring it to life once more…
1. L’Explorers Club (Disneyland Paris, 1992)
Image: Disney
If there’s one thing Disneyland Paris is known for, it’s ambition. The park is almost inarguably the most beautiful Disneyland-style park on Earth, somehow balancing the charming coziness of Disneyland with the grandeur and magnificence of Magic Kingdom. It was also packed with unimaginable, reborn classics, like the Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune and the ghostly Modern Marvel: Phantom Manor. Of course, the Parisian park might’ve been a little too ambitious, as its overbuilt resort hotels are almost singlehandedly understood as sending the lavish park’s finances tumbling.
Still, when crafting the park from scratch, Disney’s designers had been told in so uncertain terms that the French would be incredibly particular about one thing: food. They’d want to eat decadently in fine, full-service restaurants dripping in elegance and European glamour.
Image: Disney
And so, there in the park’s Adventureland opened The Explorers Club, an out-of-Africa style gentleman’s club; a colonial estate tucked away in the dense, uncharted jungle. Consider it an “Adventurers Club lite,” set beautifully within one of the most breathtaking Disney Parks ever built. With veranda views of waterfalls, a room built around a towering tree filled with “living” birds, global artifacts, and even interactions between Audio-Animatronics and actors, The Explorers Club was indeed up to snuff…
…Except that, shortly after opening, Disney designers were baffled to discover that European visitors didn’t want the park’s upscale, elegant restaurants as promised… They wanted hot dogs… hamburgers… pizza! Unbelievably, the short-lived Explorers Club closed in the park’s first year, re-opening as Colonel Hathi’s Pizza Outpost, a quick-service restaurant lightly themed to The Jungle Book.
Image: Disney
Still, one need only look around to recogize that this surprisingly detailed location is meant for much more than a counter service pizza parlor…
2. Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar (Disneyland, 2011)
Image: Disney
Opening in 2011 at the Disneyland Hotel in California, Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar is perhaps the best example of Disney capturing the viral appeal, dense detail, and spectacular mini-shows that made The Adventurers Club so appealing. Inside the miniscule, thatch-roofed bar (with enough seating for less than 20 groups), guests are immersed into a hut whose walls are lined with newspaper clippings (announcing, among other things, the discovery of the legendary Temple of the Forbidden Eye by famed archaeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones), exotic artifacts, and more.
Like its namesake Adventureland attraction – the Modern Marvel: Enchanted Tiki Room – the bar is supported by totem poles which move their eyes and mouths… though here, it’s so imperceptively slowly, you may not notice until someone asks, “Wait… wasn’t it looking the other way a minute ago?” Most spectacularly, the friendly bartenders offer a host of one-of-a-kind drinks.
Image: Disney
Ordering one typically results in the bar coming amazingly and unexpectedly to life… sinking ships-in-a-bottle, erupting volcanoes outside the window, sprays of water, or – at least at Walt Disney World’s spin-off Grog Grotto – awakening the ancient goddess Uh-Oa from the Declassified Disaster: The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management.
What the Tiki Bar lacks in size or notoriety it makes up for in fun… a 21st century evolution of the Adventurers Club concept.
2. Mystic Manor and the Explorer’s Club (Hong Kong Disneyland, 2013)
Image: Disney
Disney’s Imagineers, though, didn’t stop at Disneyland Paris or Tiki Bars. In their continuous effort to bring a spiritual successor of the Adventurers Club to life, they invoked the S.E.A. mythology once more. Believe it or not, many of the props from the Adventurers Club were shipped overseas for their own international journey, becoming props scattered among the wonders of Hong Kong Disneyland’s newest land.
While Harrison Hightower was scouring the globe stealing exotic (and cursed) treasure, Lord Henry Mystic was going about his collecting the old fashioned way – by making friends. Yes, another member of S.E.A., Mystic took his collection of oddities, wonders, and art and retired to an eclectic private estate in Papua New Guinea – Mystic Point.
Image: Jon Fiedler, CharacterCentral.net
Visitors to Hong Kong Disneyland’s Mystic Point will encounter Adventurers Club props scattered about the land, from its own Explorer’s Club restaurant to the land’s headlining E-Ticket and certified Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor. Yes, when riding what some call Disney’s best ride ever, you’ll be face-to-face with real props from Downtown Disney’s Lost Legend. It may be fair to imagine Mystic Manor as a sort of “spiritual sequel” to the Adventurers Club, wrapping up the collection of international oddities, grand adventures, and S.E.A. era exploration into a stunning dark ride.
3. Adventureland and the Skipper Canteen (Magic Kingdom, 2015)
Image: Disney
Naturally, the spirit of the Adventurers Club extended into its closest living relative, Adventureland at Magic Kingdom. As with S.E.A., it’s fair to imagine that – in Disney’s continuity – the Adventurers Club and Adventureland might be pieces of the same story… they are, after all, set in the same pre-World-War-II period, and both heavily painted with romantic exoticism detailing the clash between the wild unknown and the high society of the Western world.
As you might expect, references to the Club and its prominent members were located throughout the Jungle Cruise’s boathouse – for example, the “luggage” that creates the Jungle Cruise’s FastPass distribution machines included travel trunks belonging to Emil and Pamelia, and artifacts in the queue marked as being on loan from the Adventurers Club’s private collection.
Image: Disney
In 2016, the long awaited Skipper Canteen restaurant opened across from the Jungle Cruise in Magic Kingdom. Ostensibly owned and operated by the same Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. that charters the skipper-led boat tours across the plaza, the restaurant naturally echoes heavily of S.E.A. and the Adventurers Club, borrowing a few artifacts from each. It also offers a surprisingly robust menu of truly exotic offerings matching the proprietor Albert Falls’ international taste… one menu item? The Kungaloosh cake.
4. Adventure in the Valley of the Unknown
Image: COSI
The last noteworthy place DNA of the Adventurers Club could be found? Somewhere unlikely…
In the 1990s, COSI – a well-respected science center in Columbus, Ohio –began planning for a move to a new, custom-built, 21st century museum. Brilliantly, designers responsible for creating the “new” COSI looked to Disney’s EPCOT Center model with its all-encompassing pavilions dedicated to areas of science and innovation and determined that the idea of immersive, deeply-themed, living “learning worlds” would be a groundbreaking model for a hands-on museum.
When COSI opened in its new home in 1999, it contained seven of these completely-immersive, theatrical “learning worlds,” each focused on a single slice of the “pie chart” of what makes up science: Space, Life, Progress, Gadgets, Ocean, i|o… and Adventure.
Image: COSI / Roto Entertainment
Any chance we get, we sing the praises of this long-lost experience – as spectacular as anything Disney could create. As novel as it may have sounded, the idea of Adventure being an element of science – on par with space or oceans or life – was brilliant, and the Adventure exhibit was a fully-encompassing, 9,000 square foot lost tropical island under perpetual night skies: the Valley of the Unknown, discovered in 1937 by members of the Explorers Society.
Dropped into the Valley, circa 1939 guests would rendezvous with an eccentric member of the Explorer’s Society in a newly erected Outpost on the island, take control of a map hand-drawn by the Explorers Society’s cartographer, and attempt to awaken the ancient Spirits of Adventure – Question, Inspiration, Reason, and Perseverence – each holding a piece of the four-part code needed to unlock the long-sealed Observatory of Knowledge.
Image: COSI / Roto Entertainment
Those willing to dive deep in the exhibit could unearth a complex, ancient puzzle requiring dozens of hours of deciphering and decoding, conversations with members of the Explorer’s Society, and interactions with the Valley’s Audio-Animatronic spirits to fully uncover.
Adventure was unlike anything anyone could’ve expected from a science museum, and earned its own in-depth entry in our series, Lost Legends: Adventure in the Valley of the Unknown. Clearly taking a page from lessons, characters, and atmosphere crafted by Disney Imagineers, Adventure lived on as its own spiritual continuation of the Adventurers Club, just a thousand miles away.
Kungaloosh
Image: Disney
At its heart, the Adventurers Club was an experiment… it fused Disney’s signature storytelling and special effects with the spirit of community and creativity. Perhaps more than any attraction in any Disney Park, the Adventurers Club allowed guests to become someone new; to truly step into an adventure; to become part of an ever-changing community of misfits, explorers, and friends.
It’s hard even in retrospect to say exactly what it was… a club? A restaurant? An attraction? A bar? A walkthrough funhouse? A show? Ultimately, the answer is “all of the above.” An early entry in the genre of living, immersive theater that’s now swept across the country by way of immersive entertainment and escape rooms, the concept still feels timeless, even thirty years after its opening and ten years after its closing.
While fans may forever clamor for a look inside Disneyland’s sought-after Club 33, we counter that it’s the Adventurers Club we’d do better to remember.
“We are reckless, brave, and loyal,
and valiant to the end.
If you come in here a stranger,
you will exit as a friend.”
If you felt a tinge of nostalgia catching up on the history of Downtown Disney and its esteemed Adventurers Club, make the jump over to Theme Park Tourist’s In-Depth Collection Library, packed with the secret histories of Disney’s closed classics, modern masterpieces, and disastrous flops. And don’t forget to share your memories, thoughts, and dreams of the Adventurers Club in the comments below!
