Abandoned - The Magic Kingdom Resorts

[Music] what's up guys my name is Jake welcome to abandoned episode 20 this of course is the show where we talk about some of the coolest abandoned places in the world so Walt Disney World most of you have been there or at least heard of it it's you may also know that the surrounding the Magic Kingdom there Disney themed resorts along the lake what you may not know is that Disney had a lot more plans for the resorts than most people actually know about these plans were eventually abandoned and still to this day have never been built so I thought we should take a look at the abandoned plans for Disney's Magic Kingdom resorts way back in the late 60s when Walt Disney World was in it's extremely early planning just about everything looked pretty different than we actually got now except for the concept of Disney's Contemporary Resort the reason why it won't include any of these is because later on just a few years later most of these things were changed and finally later on we got the master plan which included these three main resorts that we're going to talk about these three resorts for Disney's Asian Resort Disney's Venetian Resort and Disney's Persian resort now I know these weren't the only planned hotels in the area that were eventually abandoned Disney's Polynesian Resort looked pretty different than what we actually got and when Walt Disney World was actually being built you can see land being cleared for something called Cypress Point Lodge this later on became the concept for Disney's Wilderness Lodge and then obviously Disney's Wilderness Lodge was built a few years late something all right now if you're not entirely familiar with the layout and geography of Disney World's Magic Kingdom area because why would you be I'll give you a quick rundown so everyone knows the Magic Kingdom park and then it's built on the shore of a lake 7c the lagoon to be exact in the Magic Kingdom area there are two lakes that connect to each other one is called Bay Lake which is a natural lake in Florida and the other is called seven seas Lagoon which was actually man-made by Disney all of the immediate resorts are on the shores of these Lakes the monorail for the Magic Kingdom circles around seven seas Lagoon and stops at all of its resorts now to give you a point of reference this is where the Magic Kingdom park is and if you've actually watched our other abandoned videos you may remember River Country and Discovery Island so now you know the basics of what the layout of the Magic Kingdom area looks like I promise this is important anyways let's talk about the resorts themselves so way back in 1970 Disney open the Walt Disney World preview center which gave people a real finalized version of what the new Resort would look like the previous showed the resort's five-year master plan and what was to come after the grand opening on October 1st 1971 the entire resort opened to the public with the Magic Kingdom Disney's Polynesian Resort and Disney's Contemporary Resort and soon after with Disney's Fort Wilderness campground so as the main hotels and resorts were in for phase one it was time to move along with the next phase of hotels so I guess now we should talk a little bit about each of the three hotels and I'll start with Disney's Asian resort I have lunch on the way at the new Disney designed and Disney managed aging hotel now this hotel was one of the closest ones to be actually built at the time the park opened the Asian resort was slated to open in 1974 and with the land cleared and ready for construction this hotel was so far along that the road adjacent to the property was actually called Asian way the Thailand themed resort was to house over 500 rooms and feature a pretty spectacular Lobby in addition since it was placed alongside the monorail line it would also feature a monorail station this resort was very very close to actually becoming reality as the proper blueprints were actually drawn up and the site tested multiple times in Disney's 1972 annual report the company claimed that their to existing hotels were at a steady 100 percent occupancy and that the company would begin architectural work on the new Asian themed hotel across seven seas Lagoon in between the contemporary and the transportation a ticket center would lay Disney's Venetian Resort all of these new hotels will be managed and run as a working part of Walt Disney World this one is a bit of Venice and st. Mark's Square Venetian throughout and design and decor not a looker but it did have some interesting things about it after its Venice inspiration the hotel would feature its own enclosed Harbor and small waterways in which guests would actually be able to ride in gondolas around the resort a hundred and twenty foot scale replica of the Campanella at st. Mark's Square would be constructed as the resort's main focal point and the main building would have an open lobby with the majority of the roof in glass lastly we have Disney's Persian Resort located just to the east of the Magic Kingdom park I think this one honestly is probably the most interesting this one will be a vision out of the arabian night the Persian hotel a veritable Palace the motel keepers like this hotel was the only one to be placed on Bay Lake to the reserve would feature massive 24 foot dome in the middle in which the lobby shops and restaurants would all reside the hotel would feature some really amazing architectural work which looks really impressive especially for the time it was developed in from the center building guest buildings would surround the main structure with this unique design guest rooms would actually be rate on the controlled water which would allow guests to practically even sail up to their own rooms from the lake which is kind of cool now this hotel did something very very interesting with the monorail even though the hotel is placed off the monorail loop the hotel would actually feature a monorail stop instead of going straight from the contemporary to the Magic Kingdom Station the monorail would actually stop at the Persian and actually go through Tomorrowland all the way back to the Magic Kingdom station now technically the monorail line was constructed however it was never built to actually go through the Magic Kingdom park and it's being used as a service line to the monorail maintenance building so all of these hotels sound pretty great actually don't they so what really happened with everything well like I said before is following the Magic Kingdom's opening things were actually going pretty well and their main two hotels were filling up pretty quickly and honestly the demand for a more deluxe resorts were kind there and with this in 1972 all three hotels were considered to be greenlit projects however the following year in 1973 the oil and energy crisis took its toll on basically all of tourism and this included Walt Disney rolled attendance for the park dropped off around 20 percent which took a hard hit on Disney's hotels so with all of this happening Disney made the reasonable decision to opt for a much cheaper hotel to build one that would be placed in Disney's palm and Magnolia golf courses called the golf resort which would later on be named the Disney end in 1986 unless you actually stayed there yourself a lot of you may not know this actually exists that's probably because it was purchased by the United States government in 1996 exclusively for military personnel anyways following the opening of the Golf Resort nothing was really ever said about the other hotels then the development of Epcot Center began in 1974 which really put a halt to all on property resorts until they were absolutely needed and later on the financial mess of Epcot really didn't help with the need of these resorts and at this point all three hotels were put on hold until the company believed it would be a safe investment you have to remember too that the Disney company was struggling and they really didn't have the money to throw at a massive new deluxe resort especially with Epcot costing so much to build so with all three resorts shelved and Michael Eisner fixing Disney as their new CEO what ended up happening to all these resorts and their land well with Epcot now earning steady attendance numbers and with Disney's MGM Studios being announced Disney was ready to build a new resort however oddly enough at the time around 1986 all advertisements in signage for the Asian resort disappeared that are brough to massive square in seven seas Lagoon now seemed completely useless this was until the late 80s when Disney announced they would be building a Floridian style resort which was a pretty different idea from the previous one apparently Michael Iser just didn't like the idea of building thailand themed resort and wanted something grand an elegant and something that would pay tribute to the old-time turn-of-the-century hotels the land for the asian resort would now be used for this brand-new hotel so with that specific land being vacant on seven seas Lou for over 17 years in 1988 Disney's Grand Floridian Resort opened to the public it was Disney's first on-property Hotel since 1973 so after a few years past Disney's MGM Studios are now open and Walt Disney World's attendance numbers are skyrocketing and with this Michael Eisner wanted to once again expand with another deluxe hotel so a better place to look than the old Venetian Resort plans well at least for the land of the Venetian Michael Eisner signed Imagineers to come up with the concept for a brand new hotel that would be placed on that prime real estate what they came up with was actually pretty cool the new Resort was to be called Disney's Mediterranean Resort and it was a pretty interesting take on ancient Greek architecture mixed with some modern elements the smaller resort was to be an ultra premium deluxe resort that would rival the flirt in the land began to be cleared in the mid to late 90s only to find one big problem see the land that the resort was to be built on was extremely poor grant has reportedly kept showing that the land could just not be used for such a massive structure allegedly the pylons for the hotel's foundation would have been deeper than those used for spaceship earth which would have been unbelievably expensive so with this news the hotel was just simply cancelled and trees were replanted on its site now apparently Disney does keep a close eye on new construction techniques and every few years Disney does go back and perform some ground tests as they probably are still really interested in that land finally edge for the Persian resort well not much actually really happened with that allegedly this resort came the closest to being built as it was offered to be completely funded and staffed back in 1978 now in the beginning when the Magic Kingdom was actually being constructed in the early 70s the land was actually cleared out on where the Persian resort would have been now my best guess is that the land was actually being used for construction crews when building the park so I'm sure Disney thought well we're gonna put a hotel there in a few years so we might as well clear out the land and put stuff there and actually ever since that point the land has actually stayed completely clear presumably for the Persian resort at some point but in recent years since the land is so close to the backstage areas the lands actually being used for parking areas and sometimes even like a massive storage facility once you're past the contemporary the road system becomes very odd and kind of confusing so the placement of the land there being essentially backstage and out of the way from everything else makes it kind of inconvenient however it would be awesome to see a change in the monorail line perhaps even running through the park itself like they previously had planned so will anything ever happen with the three original Hotel ideas and the two remaining plots of land well as for the ideas and plans for the resorts those seem to be permanently shelved now to be fair those plans were drawn up 46 years ago and the logistics of building anything remotely similar to them are kind of slim now that doesn't mean the ideas behind those resorts are gone forever it's entirely possible that we may see something asian-inspired say one day I honestly think the Mediterranean resort would be the most realistic one to be built and even some elements from the Venetian Resort and the Asian resort have been already implemented in places like Epcot already but as for the other two plots of land that remain unused I have a feeling that the Persian one is going to remain a service parking and storage area for a while I think just because of its location it's pretty unrealistic that they would build a massive resort so close to backstage areas I've actually seen a lot of rumors suggesting that there might actually be something there and that Disney is just really hesitant about doing something there the only problem with that is obviously the location plus they would need to do a lot of infrastructure reworking which would just add to the massive cost for the resort however I have heard that Disney has been giving this spot a hard look at for a while and maybe there may be something there at some point and honestly I think that would be pretty cool as for the Venetian slash Mediterranean land well that land will probably be used as soon as it can be I'm sure as soon as that land becomes safe to build on Disney would jump on that opportunity in a heartbeat perhaps even something along the lines of a Mediterranean resort that they were planning before honestly though I really think we realistically can see something in the future happening either in the Persian area or the Venetian area but hey I mean early master plans so that Disney was at some point planning on an expansion to seven seas Lagoon which would be very interesting to see and actually kind of makes sense since you can add more hotels with lake views I wonder what the costs are for extending a man-made lake probably a lot anyway guys my name is Jake follow us on Twitter Instagram and snapchat and thank you very much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 1,703,916

Keywords: ABANDONED 20, INTROS, Magic Kingdom, disney, walt disney world, abandoned by disney, disney world, hotels, abandoned hotel, abandoned disney hotel, abandoned resort, abandoned florida, florida, magic kingdom abandoned, orlando, disney hotel, Disney Asian Resort, Disney Persian Resort, Venetian resort, grand floridan, seven seas lagoon, bay lake, lake beauna vista, river country, discovery island, disney 1971, disney world vintage, 1971, disney behind the scenes, funny, abandoned

Id: OE42_V7RWbc

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016