Update on Wilderness Lodge Refurb
By Dave Shute
During my Disney World visit earlier this month I dropped by the Wilderness Lodge to do a status check on the current refurbishment.
There’s been a lot of progress since my July stop by, but not enough to make me believe that this will be done in 2016, as some have indicated it will.
Half of the upper walkways surrounding the lobby continue to be walled off–this is the principal aesthetic issue with the refurb.
Along the shores, the eastern set of “bungalows” and buildings is well under way.
The replacement pool is also a little clearer, and the larger new building in the back left is also walled in. Many expect this to be restaurant, but I’m not seeing the venting that I’d associate with a restaurant. Maybe the venting comes in later, or maybe this will be a community room for DVC folks.
Another view of the pool area (peer through the trees to spot the pool formers)…
…and another view of the larger new building, from the water.
The western set of bungalows is still largely piles of dirt. (Click any of these photos to enlarge them.)
As you can also see in this shot of the western end, a lot of trees are gone. This is yielding some nice Wishes views from many of the rooms on this side of this half of the Lodge. There’s a link here in the comments in co-author Josh’s Wilderness Lodge update to a great (zoomed) view of Wishes.
The other half of the Lodge remains closed during conversion into Disney Vacation Club spaces. (This has resulted in low crowds in the lobby, restaurants, pool, bus stops, etc.)
I find it interesting that the entire interior of this wing has been gutted.
In the image, note how you can see through the window all the way to the window on the far side of the floor–the corridor walls and interior walls are gone.
It’s unclear what Disney is building in this wing of the Lodge. The footprints of the old rooms were pretty small, but Disney put studios and one bedroom villas in equivalently small spots at the Animal Kingdom, in its “value” studios and villas there.
Micah, great contributor to the easyWDW forums and author of MousePerks, just stayed in an Animal Kingdom value and regular studio on consecutive nights, and emailed me these observations:
– The bed and couch are in opposite locations (bed closer to the balcony).
– The small table with a lamp on it is missing from the Value room.
– The small padded bench is missing from the Value room (location where the connecting door can be in some rooms). The wardrobe/closet is immediately after the kitchenette (with only 6″ or so for the thermostat).
Otherwise it really does feel the same, and everything else matches exactly, but they just removed those two pieces of furniture to make it work in the smaller space.
The Studio as Disney has traditionally laid it out is the space that’s hardest to fit into the footprint of the old Wilderness Lodge rooms, so if those can work, one and two bedroom villas can work too–and the spaces at the corridor ends that used to contain two deluxe rooms and two regular rooms would make for an interesting location for Grand Villas.
But why gut everything? Could something more interesting be being planned here?
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