The Federal Aviation Administration has granted a permit for construction of a mobile crane at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground. The permit is just the latest in an ongoing series of tea leaf readings that Walt Disney World will finally begin construction of Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge on the former River Country water park site at the sleepy resort. Let’s take a look at the most recent permit filing!
Disney World Receives Clearance for 10-Story Hotel at Fort Wilderness
We’ll start with the permit itself, which grants the use of a mobile crane at coordinates matching the proposed Reflections hotel. The permitted work schedule begins October 14th and runs for 10 months until August 14, 2025. The crane will be 240 feet tall, which is similar to other cranes that we’ve seen used for the construction of Walt Disney World hotels recently.
The most interesting part of the permit can be found in the “description of proposal” section, which confirms that the crane will be on site to build a “10-story hotel”:
Construction of mobile cranes to construct a 10-story hotel. The mobile cranes can reach a max height of 240 ft. AGL when raised to its highest point. When idle, during non-working hours, the crane will be at a max height of 150 ft. AGL.
Walt Disney World has not returned requests for comments about the project, but there’s far too much smoke here to not declare that there is a fire, metaphorically speaking. Just yesterday we covered a permit that appears to indicate that Disney is restarting plans to create a third-party construction trailer complex. Before that, we took a look at permits that had the same exact addresses as permits previously filed for Reflections.
In short, something major is coming to this site, and the most likely candidate is the previously announced Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge. As of publish time, Walt Disney World has not announced plans to restart this project following a COVID-19 pause, but we expect to see significant construction starting very soon.
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. Now, recent permits suggest that the project will be revived very soon.
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!