After a four-year pause, construction has restarted on the planned Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge hotel at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campgrounds. The hotel is planned to be a 10-story structure, and Disney’s last official announcement was that it is planned to be a Disney Vacation Club property. Disney has not made any new statements about the hotel, and requests for comments have gone unanswered. The restart of construction follows weeks of permit filings that have hinted at the restart of the project. The most recent permit was an FAA permit granting the use of a 240-foot-tall crane for the construction of the hotel.
Construction Begins for 10-Story Hotel at Fort Wilderness
We’re calling it the Fort Wilderness hotel for now as a generic term until Disney confirms that the work is for the previously announced Reflections DVC hotel. While visiting the Bay Lake area today, we noticed that earth was being moved and infrastructure work was underway.
First, here’s a look back at the site from the air just over a month ago thanks to friend of the site Bioreconstruct. As you can see, the site looks to be largely untouched, with grass growing extensively over areas that were previously prepared for construction before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. The only dirt is that of pathways that were driven.
Now, we can see that earth moving is underway as construction resumes on the project. We’ll have a few different vantage points of the work, starting with a look at the construction site from Disney’s Contemporary Resort nearly 3/4 mile northwest of the site. As we zoom in, we can see that there is some dirt being moved around, and that infrastructure work is underway!
Our next vantage point will be from the boat ride over from Magic Kingdom to Fort Wilderness. Again, we see some fresh dirt and construction equipment moving around the site to install infrastructure.
Finally, here’s a look at the construction site from in and around The Settlement at Fort Wilderness.
History of Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge
Back in March 2018, we posted an article that said that Disney World was exploring the development of the land where the long-shuttered River Country water park used to be located. The exploratory project was called Project 89 and our early coverage of the permits included impact studies for land viability.
More than 6 months later, Walt Disney World officially announced that they were, in fact, going to build on the former River Country land and that an all-new nature-inspired resort would be built. This announcement came in October 2018 and Disney announced that the resort would open in 2022.
A new nature-inspired, mixed-use Disney resort will welcome families in 2022 along the picturesque shoreline of Bay Lake. Located between Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground, this resort project joins three others underway at Walt Disney World Resort, bringing a total of more than 1,700 new hotel rooms and proposed Disney Vacation Club villas online over the next four years.
The deluxe resort, which will be themed to complement its natural surroundings, will include more than 900 hotel rooms and proposed Disney Vacation Club villas spread across a variety of unique accommodation types.
“Walt Disney World is in the midst of our most significant expansion in the last two decades and the combined 1,700 new hotel rooms and proposed Disney Vacation Club villas we are building at four different resorts will create thousands of new construction and permanent jobs and will drive economic opportunity and incremental revenue for Central Florida,” said George A. Kalogridis, president of Walt Disney World Resort. “We continue to add new attractions, new lands — and these beautiful accommodations will be right in the heart of all that magic.”
The soon-to-be named resort is slated to be Disney’s 16th Disney Vacation Club property and it will continue to build on the value and flexibility of a Disney Vacation Club membership.
“This resort experience will be a celebration of Walt Disney’s lifelong love and respect for nature, with some fun and even surprising accommodation types that families will find irresistible,” said Terri Schultz, senior vice president and general manager of Disney Vacation Club. “It will give our members and guests yet another opportunity to stay in close proximity to all the newest attractions and experiences in our theme parks, and with the flexibility, value and world-class service families expect from Disney.”
In March 2019, we spotted demolition underway at the former River Country site. Disney would eventually flatten and regrade the site in preparation for the Reflections DVC hotel.
In May 2019, Disney World filed a series of permits showing the planned footprint of Reflections on the former River Country site. We added some color to the permit to highlight some of the notable elements of the project. Starting with the blue buildings, those are planned to be standalone cabins – similar to what you would find over at Wilderness Lodge. The red structure is the main hotel. The green building is Pioneer Hall. If this hotel is built as previously proposed, it will forever change the landscape of Fort Wilderness as it creeps into areas that are currently rather secluded.
Also, in May 2019, the former Mickey’s Backyard BBQ venue was demolished.
Of course, then Spring 2020 happened and COVID-19 not only closed the theme parks, but also put a halt on many construction projections around Walt Disney World property. Some projects were cut completely, some cut back, and some paused. It was tough to tell what category Reflections initially fell into. In April 2020, Walt Disney Imagineering filed a series of permits that covered work such as a table service restaurant, transportation elements, outdoor structures, and more. It seemed like the project was moving forward.
Fast forward to June 2020 and rumors began circling that Reflections had either been canceled or paused indefinitely. Helping bolster those rumors was when Disney scrubbed Reflections from its 2019 D23 Expo announcements blog post in August 2020. Everything went quiet on the project until April 2021 when Disney filed permits for the removal of construction trailers that were associated with the project. That was, at the time, the final nail in the coffin…or so it may seem.
It wouldn’t be until more than 2 years later that we’d see the first hints that Disney might still want to pursue the Reflections project. In April 2023, Walt Disney Imagineering filed for an extension on a permit for an area associated with the Reflections project near the former STOLport airplane strip. While this permit wasn’t the exact construction site of the hotel, it was essentially a construction staging area that was directly related to the project. Signs of life.
Then, this past May, Walt Disney Imagineering filed a permit for an extension of the Reflections construction site permit. This was confirmation that Disney wanted to keep the project alive. Disney later filed a permit for “site and facility improvements” with an expiration date of March 2027. Now, construction has resumed on the site as Disney seemingly pushes forward with the Reflections concept. Again, Walt Disney World has not returned requests for comment, but we’ll keep you updated with the latest official news (in addition to construction photos) when more information is available.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
They should do a Copper Creek Expansion, instead of a completely new DVC. Just like they did with Kidani when they added it to Animal Kingdom Lodge and just like they did with the Polynesian Towers. With only 42 dedicated studios, CC is one of the smallest DVC’s on Disney World Property, and hence one of the hardest to book. Especially since the Cabins allowed them to sell A LOT more DVC contracts, but most of those people just wanted to book Studios. As a comparison, Boulder Ridge has 65 Studios, Polynesian started with 360 PLUS will add 268 MORE with the new tower.
Reality is that a Copper Creek expansion would do 4 things for Disney. #1. Make CC owners happy, right now many feel as if they’ve been sold something VERY difficult to use. #2 It would save them money, since they wouldn’t have to create an all new Vacation Club Property. #3. Copper Creek expires 2068, allowing Disney to resell the properties a decade sooner. #4. Avoid the Riviera Curse. A lot of people won’t buy Riviera because of the resale restrictions and the lower resale value on the secondary market. The new Copper Creek expansion won’t have those limitations.