Disney World to Add Nature-Themed Resort

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Walt Disney World plans “nature-inspired” resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.

At nearly 40 square miles and reportedly more than 50 million visitors a year, Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., is an entertainment behemoth by any standards. And now it will be getting bigger.

A new “nature-inspired” deluxe resort—as yet unnamed—will open in 2022 along the shore of Disney World’s Bay Lake, between Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground.

The resort, according to Disney, “will be themed to complement its natural surroundings” and will feature more than 900 hotel guestrooms and 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 guestrooms and proposed Disney Vacation Club villas we are building at four different resorts will create thousands of new construction and permanent jobs,” George Kalogridis, president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a prepared statement.

The magic keeps growing, and greening

This new resort joins three others underway at Walt Disney World; together all four will deliver more than 1,700 new hotel guestrooms and Disney Vacation Club villas. These include:

• Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, which opened in 1997 and will reopen next year with a new 15-story tower overlooking Lago Dorado and featuring 545 new guestrooms and suites, along with a two-level entrance lobby, new meeting spaces and a rooftop restaurant with panoramic views;
• Disney’s Riviera Resort, currently under construction near Epcot and scheduled to open in 2019, will include about 300 units and will connect to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the International Gateway at Epcot via the Disney Skyliner;
• Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, an immersive Star Wars–inspired destination and probably the highest-profile addition now underway is set to open next fall.

In April, Disney World announced that it would be developing, in partnership with Duke Energy, a 50-megawatt solar project to power two of its theme parks. When online around the end of this year, the estimated half a million solar panels across 270 acres should handle about 25 percent of the power needed at Disney World.

Image courtesy of Walt Disney World