DISNEY BUILDING NEW HOTEL
Richard Verrier
of The Sentinel Staff

Published in The Orlando Sentinel on September 2, 1999.


African theme.Thatched roofs, reed walls and tribal shields will give the lodge a village look. In 18 months, when Disney's newest hotel opens, guests will be able to look out their hotel room windows and see zebra, giraffes and antelopes grazing nearby.

Walt Disney World has already begun construction of its 18th resort, a 1,307-room safari lodge close to the Animal Kingdom theme park.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge, an upscale hotel set to open in spring 2001, will be modeled on an African village and will overlook three savannas with more than 200 birds and a variety of grazing animals.

The savannas will total nearly 35 acres, about one quarter the size of the savanna at Animal Kingdom. The lodge is a mile southwest of Disney's fourth theme park, which opened last year.

"The animals are very popular at Animal Kingdom, and this gives our guests an opportunity to enhance their experience with animals," said Don Robinson, senior vice president of resort operations for Disney World.

The lodge will be Central Florida's 10th largest resort and the third resort in the Animal Kingdom area. The other two are Coronado Springs Resort, built in 1997; and All-Star Resorts, which added a third hotel earlier this year.

Since 1995, Disney World has added 6,702 hotel rooms.

The five-story, 800,000-square-foot lodge, off Osceola Parkway, will be shaped like a horseshoe and will have a distinctly African theme, including thatched roofs, reed walls and African tribal shields.

The lodge will include three restaurants, a swimming pool, an arcade and a gift shop.

The animals will be acquired from American Zoo and Aquarium Association-accredited organizations, Disney spokesman Craig Dezern said.

"A lot of people never make it to Africa," Robinson said Wednesday. "This is an opportunity to experience what the African lodge feeling is like."

Lodge room rates will run from $185 for a standard room and up to $500 a night for a suite.

The project's architect is Peter Dominick, who also designed Disney's Wilderness Lodge, near Magic Kingdom. The Wilderness Lodge has been "very, very popular," Robinson said. "We're using that same concept but applying the African theme and storyline to it."

Local hotel consultant David Theophilus predicted the Animal Kingdom Lodge would do well.

"The market has slowed down in the last two years, but when you have their location and their marketing force behind it -- they come in first," Theophilus said.

Disney officials declined to disclose the project's cost.