Walt Disney International has a number of development signals for Recent Lodge and Bay Lake Tower, together with a brand new person who extends the continuing refurbishment via a complete yr to July 2026. This covers the most recent updates to the resort, plus our statement about what we are hoping to peer occur all the way through this long venture.
It’s bizarre how personal tastes and priorities exchange. Over the previous few years, Disney’s Recent Lodge has turn into one in all our most well-liked puts to stick at Walt Disney International–we mentioned the explanations for this in Our Favourite Resort for Disney International Journeys as Folks with a Infant. That covers the various promoting issues of the Recent and BLT, with essentially the most notable being its proximity to Magic Kingdom.
We now keep on the Recent reasonably often. That is regardless of critical misgivings with the resort, which has numerous obvious weaknesses that I’d in reality love to peer corrected. That is all the reason we’ve been observing the Bay Lake Tower room reimagining with baited breath–it appears to be like implausible to this point–and are eagerly watching for extra updates at the long development venture deliberate for the hotel as an entire. Talking of which, Walt Disney International has simply prolonged that via a yr–let’s check out the previous and present development announcements…
Disney’s Recent Lodge Building Indicators
September 2024 Via Summer season 2025 (OLD) – Refurbishments will happen in choose spaces of Disney’s Recent Lodge—together with Bay Lake Tower and the Conference Middle. Please permit for additonal shuttle time. Visitors might also see and listen to development all the way through their keep.
September 2024 Via July 2026 (NEW/CURRENT) – Refurbishments will happen in choose spaces of Disney’s Recent Lodge—together with Bay Lake Tower. Please permit for additonal shuttle time. Visitors might also see and listen to development all the way through their keep.
September 2024 to September 2025 (CURRENT) – Room refurbishment paintings will happen in Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Recent Lodge. All the way through this time, Visitors will see and listen to development paintings during Bay Lake Tower. Please permit overtime for shuttle as change paths is also applied.
January 26, 2026 Via Early Might 2026 (CURRENT) – The Bay Cove Pool, the water play house and the whirlpool spa at Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Recent Lodge will briefly be closed for repairs. The Bay Lake Pool, the Cove Bar, the characteristic pool, the water play house and the whirlpool spa at Disney’s Recent Lodge will stay open for Visitors to revel in.
The problem right here is determining what this new understand from Walt Disney International is even referencing. By way of means of removal, we will rule out a couple of issues. The primary is a pool venture, since that’s indexed one at a time and results in Might 2026. Another way, this will be the perhaps candidate for a resort-wide understand impacting each the resort aspect and DVC wing.
2nd is the year-long Bay Lake Tower refurbishment, as that has its personal separate understand at the Disney Holiday Membership web page. In the past, this involved commonplace spaces and the Skybridge connecting the A-frame to the tower, however that has been got rid of. With many flooring of Bay Lake Tower already reopened, it’s not going that this venture relates to BLT.
There’s additionally the sensible truth that Bay Lake Tower tasks in most cases don’t cause announcements at the resort web page for Disney’s Recent Lodge. This handiest works in opposite. There aren’t any facilities in BLT for visitors of the resort aspect, while there are within the A-frame for DVC visitors.
It’s additionally extremely not going that it is a room refurbishment venture at the resort aspect of Disney’s Recent Lodge. The ‘Incredibles Injection’ simply came about in 2020-2021 in the primary development, and the next yr within the Lawn Wing. Although the ones rooms have garnered combined opinions, it could be untimely for even a comfortable items refurbishment. Now not handiest that, however a room refurbishment at the resort aspect most probably wouldn’t cause an alert at the DVC web page for Bay Lake Tower.
Although it’s no longer the Bay Cove Pool, it may well be one thing alongside the ones strains–impacting the waterfront, strolling paths, or different commonplace house facilities shared via BLT and the Contempo. The least fascinating or thrilling clarification is infrastructure paintings that leads to a bit of of noise or visible blight within the parking zone, however doesn’t quantity to a lot distinction within the visitor revel in or yield any tangible development when it’s finished in 2026.
Some other risk that I may just see being most probably is relocating the safety checkpoint. Everybody and their brother tries to park on the Recent, which may end up in site visitors backups on International Force. Shifting that station nearer to the resort development is the most straightforward repair for this. Disney could also be doing numerous roadwork presently, so it may well be one thing extra bold.
In any case, there’s the chance that that is lengthy past due paintings to the Grand Canyon Concourse. Although that is the A-frame atrium, it’s a commonplace house that’s house to eating places, retail and different shared facilities. It could completely cause an alert for each BLT and the Recent.
I in reality hope that is what it’s. This weblog has been bemoaning the datedness and simply common ugliness of the Grand Canyon Concourse for years. Lengthy prior to the Incredibles Injection even started, and we’ve endured complaining about this because the foyer overhaul that’s been sorely wanted as Walt Disney International has introduced different tasks on the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, BoardWalk, and so forth.
You could be skeptical that Walt Disney International would revisit the Recent after “completing” the overhaul again in Fall 2021. However did they in reality end? That venture used to be slated to be finished in time for Walt Disney International’s fiftieth Anniversary, and ended up being a race in opposition to the clock.
If truth be told, it used to be no longer finished on time–we heard development employees in any respect hours in October 2021 suffering to finish the rooms (some even opened in unfinished shape). The Lawn Wing used to be driven off till the next yr, and new completing components stored showing within the foyer even after it used to be “finished.”
Now not handiest that, however this wouldn’t be the primary time Walt Disney International has hit pause on tasks on the motels for extended sessions of time. Clearly, there’s Disney Lakeshore Hotel, however that’s more or less a separate factor.
Extra notable is the Grand Floridian foyer, which is now being labored on lengthy after the remainder of the hotel used to be completed. There used to be a virtually 18-month hole from the of entirety of the rooms to begin of labor at the foyer.
The Grand Canyon Concourse is simply embarrassing at this level. It’s simply the worst atrium some of the flagship Deluxe Lodges. There’s no excuse for Walt Disney International no longer redoing it again in 2020-2021 when occupancy used to be low and so they had the chance prior to Walt Disney International’s fiftieth Anniversary.
Not anything higher encapsulates the visible hodgepodge of the Recent higher than the above picture (excuse the scrims–they’re previous footage, however nonetheless utterly consultant of the way the Grand Canyon Concourse lately appears to be like).
On this shot, there are 5 other types of carpet and four several types of tiles–and that’s no longer counting the planned development possible choices across the buffet at Chef Mickey’s. All possibly put in all the way through other tasks through the years.
For those who have been to face within the heart of the hallway above Grand Canyon Concourse, it’s good to depend much more disparate types, because the quite a lot of reward stores at the different aspect have their very own types, as does the middle of the atrium.
Upload the ones to the other types within the hallways across the visitor rooms, and you have got a few dozen carpet patterns. I’m a large fan of patterns and textures, however no longer like this. Then there’s the Fantasia reward store, which used to be simply plopped into the middle to extend income in line with sq. foot, and wishes to move.
The eating places at the different aspect aren’t a lot better. Despite the fact that we’re keen on the meals served at Contempo Cafe, the design of the eating place is not anything particular–it appears to be like drained and its handiest redeeming qualities are the monorail and Mary Blair mural overhead. It’s a an identical tale with Chef Mickey’s; this is the maximum iconic persona eating revel in at Walt Disney International, however one that point has handed via.
The Grand Canyon Concourse appears to be like drained, dated, and visually chaotic. It’s an unsightly patchwork of eras, with its taste proceeding to age and muddle frequently added. Satirically, it’s almost definitely the least recent hotel at Walt Disney International, with little or no modernity in its taste.
There is not any coherent aesthetic to the Grand Canyon Concourse. Its present “taste” is the results of Disney’s Recent Lodge having visible muddle added over the a long time, with increasingly stuff (PG time period) gathering through the years with none overarching imaginative and prescient.
It’s if truth be told a bit of ironic that it’s referred to as the Grand Canyon Concourse, for the reason that layers of muddle are very similar to the sedimentary rock layers within the Grand Canyon. Except for unpleasant as a substitute of awe-inspiring. Minor element.
Many Walt Disney International fanatics view the Recent throughout the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. I will not consider being a first-timer with little wisdom of or historical past with this hotel, reserving it according to the “Recent” title and paying over $1,000 in line with night time to stick within the A-frame. To mention I’d be almost definitely be upset could be a colossal understatement.
The excellent information is that the blueprint for an overhaul to the Grand Canyon Concourse already exists! Again forward of the fiftieth Anniversary, Walt Disney International redid the primary foyer and check-in house and it’s beautiful.
The brand new-look looby takes a undying mid-century trendy taste and combines that with a selection of trendy artwork items, Mary Blair-inspired design, and historic, behind-the-scenes pictures of Disney’s Recent Lodge in building and beneath development. It wasn’t that bold of an overhaul–it used to be achieved beautiful temporarily–and but, it made a global of distinction.
The Recent’s new foyer appears to be like remarkable. It emulates Disneyland Resort with a pitch-perfect mixture of nostalgia and swish stylization. The Recent Lodge’s foyer now has persona. As a substitute of having a look like a vaguely trendy design from the 2000s, it’s imbued with a pointy mid-century trendy taste. It’s distinctly Disney and can age some distance higher than chasing present developments.
This marriage of a undying trendy aesthetic together with distinctly Disney artwork and decor makes for a successful aggregate. That is the very best rebuttal to all the speak about how the Recent is a conceptually-flawed resort (a variation of the Tomorrowland drawback) that can’t be “mounted.” Sure, it might probably–and right here’s how!
I will not say sufficient tremendous issues about what Disney did right here. I really like the foyer up to I dislike the Grand Canyon Concourse, and the previous is proof-positive that trendy Disney may just redo the latter and hit it out of the park.
They have been status at the precipice of greatness with the resort overhaul again in 2021, and I in reality assume what avoided the Grand Canyon Concourse from being a part of that used to be a loss of time. Or most likely in-fighting about whether or not it must be some other Incredibles-injection or Disneyland Resort-inspired?
In the end, my honest hope is that the foyer used to be merely an ordeal run for grandiose plans for the Grand Canyon Concourse and that is what’s deliberate for development lasting via July 2026. It’s just about that, grounds enhancements or front infrastructure paintings. Whilst the latter almost definitely must occur, so too does a Grand Canyon Concourse overhaul.
Disney’s Recent Lodge won’t ever overtake its monorail loop opposite numbers, as Grand Floridian is the flagship hotel and Polynesian oozes attraction and environment. However the Contempo may just beef up vastly and turn into the sleeper fan-favorite with a redone Grand Canyon Concourse.
Disney’s Recent Lodge already has distinctive structure and the monorail gliding throughout the atrium–if it turned into a love letter to the Holiday Kingdom of the International with a undying mid-century trendy aesthetic, it could be a Walt Disney International fan-favorite–simply as is the case with Disneyland Resort in California!
Making plans a Walt Disney International travel? Find out about motels on our Walt Disney International Lodges Critiques web page. For the place to consume, learn our Walt Disney International Eating place Critiques. To economize on tickets or resolve which sort to shop for, learn our Pointers for Saving Cash on Walt Disney International Tickets submit. Our What to Pack for Disney Journeys submit takes a novel take a look at artful pieces to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney International Experience Guides will lend a hand. For complete recommendation, the most efficient position to begin is our Walt Disney International Shuttle Making plans Information for the entirety you want to grasp!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you recall to mind the development alert via July 2026 at Disney’s Recent Lodge? Any guesses as to what this thriller venture may well be? Hopeful that the Grand Canyon Concourse will obtain an overhaul similar to the foyer? Or do you concern that it’ll get another in step with the Incredibles rooms? Have you ever stayed on the Recent in the previous few years? Do you assume the hotel is dated and drained, or nonetheless has a modern environment? Assume the Grand Canyon Concourse wishes an overhaul? Do you settle or disagree with our overview? Different ideas or considerations? Any questions we will can help you resolution? Listening to your comments–even while you disagree with us–is each fascinating to us and useful to different readers, so please proportion your ideas under within the feedback!
Walt Disney International has a number of development signals for Recent Lodge and Bay Lake Tower, together with a brand new person who extends the continuing refurbishment via a complete yr to July 2026. This covers the most recent updates to the resort, plus our statement about what we are hoping to peer occur all the way through this long venture.
It’s bizarre how personal tastes and priorities exchange. Over the previous few years, Disney’s Recent Lodge has turn into one in all our most well-liked puts to stick at Walt Disney International–we mentioned the explanations for this in Our Favourite Resort for Disney International Journeys as Folks with a Infant. That covers the various promoting issues of the Recent and BLT, with essentially the most notable being its proximity to Magic Kingdom.
We now keep on the Recent reasonably often. That is regardless of critical misgivings with the resort, which has numerous obvious weaknesses that I’d in reality love to peer corrected. That is all the reason we’ve been observing the Bay Lake Tower room reimagining with baited breath–it appears to be like implausible to this point–and are eagerly watching for extra updates at the long development venture deliberate for the hotel as an entire. Talking of which, Walt Disney International has simply prolonged that via a yr–let’s check out the previous and present development announcements…
Disney’s Recent Lodge Building Indicators
September 2024 Via Summer season 2025 (OLD) – Refurbishments will happen in choose spaces of Disney’s Recent Lodge—together with Bay Lake Tower and the Conference Middle. Please permit for additonal shuttle time. Visitors might also see and listen to development all the way through their keep.
September 2024 Via July 2026 (NEW/CURRENT) – Refurbishments will happen in choose spaces of Disney’s Recent Lodge—together with Bay Lake Tower. Please permit for additonal shuttle time. Visitors might also see and listen to development all the way through their keep.
September 2024 to September 2025 (CURRENT) – Room refurbishment paintings will happen in Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Recent Lodge. All the way through this time, Visitors will see and listen to development paintings during Bay Lake Tower. Please permit overtime for shuttle as change paths is also applied.
January 26, 2026 Via Early Might 2026 (CURRENT) – The Bay Cove Pool, the water play house and the whirlpool spa at Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Recent Lodge will briefly be closed for repairs. The Bay Lake Pool, the Cove Bar, the characteristic pool, the water play house and the whirlpool spa at Disney’s Recent Lodge will stay open for Visitors to revel in.
The problem right here is determining what this new understand from Walt Disney International is even referencing. By way of means of removal, we will rule out a couple of issues. The primary is a pool venture, since that’s indexed one at a time and results in Might 2026. Another way, this will be the perhaps candidate for a resort-wide understand impacting each the resort aspect and DVC wing.
2nd is the year-long Bay Lake Tower refurbishment, as that has its personal separate understand at the Disney Holiday Membership web page. In the past, this involved commonplace spaces and the Skybridge connecting the A-frame to the tower, however that has been got rid of. With many flooring of Bay Lake Tower already reopened, it’s not going that this venture relates to BLT.
There’s additionally the sensible truth that Bay Lake Tower tasks in most cases don’t cause announcements at the resort web page for Disney’s Recent Lodge. This handiest works in opposite. There aren’t any facilities in BLT for visitors of the resort aspect, while there are within the A-frame for DVC visitors.
It’s additionally extremely not going that it is a room refurbishment venture at the resort aspect of Disney’s Recent Lodge. The ‘Incredibles Injection’ simply came about in 2020-2021 in the primary development, and the next yr within the Lawn Wing. Although the ones rooms have garnered combined opinions, it could be untimely for even a comfortable items refurbishment. Now not handiest that, however a room refurbishment at the resort aspect most probably wouldn’t cause an alert at the DVC web page for Bay Lake Tower.
Although it’s no longer the Bay Cove Pool, it may well be one thing alongside the ones strains–impacting the waterfront, strolling paths, or different commonplace house facilities shared via BLT and the Contempo. The least fascinating or thrilling clarification is infrastructure paintings that leads to a bit of of noise or visible blight within the parking zone, however doesn’t quantity to a lot distinction within the visitor revel in or yield any tangible development when it’s finished in 2026.
Some other risk that I may just see being most probably is relocating the safety checkpoint. Everybody and their brother tries to park on the Recent, which may end up in site visitors backups on International Force. Shifting that station nearer to the resort development is the most straightforward repair for this. Disney could also be doing numerous roadwork presently, so it may well be one thing extra bold.
In any case, there’s the chance that that is lengthy past due paintings to the Grand Canyon Concourse. Although that is the A-frame atrium, it’s a commonplace house that’s house to eating places, retail and different shared facilities. It could completely cause an alert for each BLT and the Recent.
I in reality hope that is what it’s. This weblog has been bemoaning the datedness and simply common ugliness of the Grand Canyon Concourse for years. Lengthy prior to the Incredibles Injection even started, and we’ve endured complaining about this because the foyer overhaul that’s been sorely wanted as Walt Disney International has introduced different tasks on the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, BoardWalk, and so forth.
You could be skeptical that Walt Disney International would revisit the Recent after “completing” the overhaul again in Fall 2021. However did they in reality end? That venture used to be slated to be finished in time for Walt Disney International’s fiftieth Anniversary, and ended up being a race in opposition to the clock.
If truth be told, it used to be no longer finished on time–we heard development employees in any respect hours in October 2021 suffering to finish the rooms (some even opened in unfinished shape). The Lawn Wing used to be driven off till the next yr, and new completing components stored showing within the foyer even after it used to be “finished.”
Now not handiest that, however this wouldn’t be the primary time Walt Disney International has hit pause on tasks on the motels for extended sessions of time. Clearly, there’s Disney Lakeshore Hotel, however that’s more or less a separate factor.
Extra notable is the Grand Floridian foyer, which is now being labored on lengthy after the remainder of the hotel used to be completed. There used to be a virtually 18-month hole from the of entirety of the rooms to begin of labor at the foyer.
The Grand Canyon Concourse is simply embarrassing at this level. It’s simply the worst atrium some of the flagship Deluxe Lodges. There’s no excuse for Walt Disney International no longer redoing it again in 2020-2021 when occupancy used to be low and so they had the chance prior to Walt Disney International’s fiftieth Anniversary.
Not anything higher encapsulates the visible hodgepodge of the Recent higher than the above picture (excuse the scrims–they’re previous footage, however nonetheless utterly consultant of the way the Grand Canyon Concourse lately appears to be like).
On this shot, there are 5 other types of carpet and four several types of tiles–and that’s no longer counting the planned development possible choices across the buffet at Chef Mickey’s. All possibly put in all the way through other tasks through the years.
For those who have been to face within the heart of the hallway above Grand Canyon Concourse, it’s good to depend much more disparate types, because the quite a lot of reward stores at the different aspect have their very own types, as does the middle of the atrium.
Upload the ones to the other types within the hallways across the visitor rooms, and you have got a few dozen carpet patterns. I’m a large fan of patterns and textures, however no longer like this. Then there’s the Fantasia reward store, which used to be simply plopped into the middle to extend income in line with sq. foot, and wishes to move.
The eating places at the different aspect aren’t a lot better. Despite the fact that we’re keen on the meals served at Contempo Cafe, the design of the eating place is not anything particular–it appears to be like drained and its handiest redeeming qualities are the monorail and Mary Blair mural overhead. It’s a an identical tale with Chef Mickey’s; this is the maximum iconic persona eating revel in at Walt Disney International, however one that point has handed via.
The Grand Canyon Concourse appears to be like drained, dated, and visually chaotic. It’s an unsightly patchwork of eras, with its taste proceeding to age and muddle frequently added. Satirically, it’s almost definitely the least recent hotel at Walt Disney International, with little or no modernity in its taste.
There is not any coherent aesthetic to the Grand Canyon Concourse. Its present “taste” is the results of Disney’s Recent Lodge having visible muddle added over the a long time, with increasingly stuff (PG time period) gathering through the years with none overarching imaginative and prescient.
It’s if truth be told a bit of ironic that it’s referred to as the Grand Canyon Concourse, for the reason that layers of muddle are very similar to the sedimentary rock layers within the Grand Canyon. Except for unpleasant as a substitute of awe-inspiring. Minor element.
Many Walt Disney International fanatics view the Recent throughout the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. I will not consider being a first-timer with little wisdom of or historical past with this hotel, reserving it according to the “Recent” title and paying over $1,000 in line with night time to stick within the A-frame. To mention I’d be almost definitely be upset could be a colossal understatement.
The excellent information is that the blueprint for an overhaul to the Grand Canyon Concourse already exists! Again forward of the fiftieth Anniversary, Walt Disney International redid the primary foyer and check-in house and it’s beautiful.
The brand new-look looby takes a undying mid-century trendy taste and combines that with a selection of trendy artwork items, Mary Blair-inspired design, and historic, behind-the-scenes pictures of Disney’s Recent Lodge in building and beneath development. It wasn’t that bold of an overhaul–it used to be achieved beautiful temporarily–and but, it made a global of distinction.
The Recent’s new foyer appears to be like remarkable. It emulates Disneyland Resort with a pitch-perfect mixture of nostalgia and swish stylization. The Recent Lodge’s foyer now has persona. As a substitute of having a look like a vaguely trendy design from the 2000s, it’s imbued with a pointy mid-century trendy taste. It’s distinctly Disney and can age some distance higher than chasing present developments.
This marriage of a undying trendy aesthetic together with distinctly Disney artwork and decor makes for a successful aggregate. That is the very best rebuttal to all the speak about how the Recent is a conceptually-flawed resort (a variation of the Tomorrowland drawback) that can’t be “mounted.” Sure, it might probably–and right here’s how!
I will not say sufficient tremendous issues about what Disney did right here. I really like the foyer up to I dislike the Grand Canyon Concourse, and the previous is proof-positive that trendy Disney may just redo the latter and hit it out of the park.
They have been status at the precipice of greatness with the resort overhaul again in 2021, and I in reality assume what avoided the Grand Canyon Concourse from being a part of that used to be a loss of time. Or most likely in-fighting about whether or not it must be some other Incredibles-injection or Disneyland Resort-inspired?
In the end, my honest hope is that the foyer used to be merely an ordeal run for grandiose plans for the Grand Canyon Concourse and that is what’s deliberate for development lasting via July 2026. It’s just about that, grounds enhancements or front infrastructure paintings. Whilst the latter almost definitely must occur, so too does a Grand Canyon Concourse overhaul.
Disney’s Recent Lodge won’t ever overtake its monorail loop opposite numbers, as Grand Floridian is the flagship hotel and Polynesian oozes attraction and environment. However the Contempo may just beef up vastly and turn into the sleeper fan-favorite with a redone Grand Canyon Concourse.
Disney’s Recent Lodge already has distinctive structure and the monorail gliding throughout the atrium–if it turned into a love letter to the Holiday Kingdom of the International with a undying mid-century trendy aesthetic, it could be a Walt Disney International fan-favorite–simply as is the case with Disneyland Resort in California!
Making plans a Walt Disney International travel? Find out about motels on our Walt Disney International Lodges Critiques web page. For the place to consume, learn our Walt Disney International Eating place Critiques. To economize on tickets or resolve which sort to shop for, learn our Pointers for Saving Cash on Walt Disney International Tickets submit. Our What to Pack for Disney Journeys submit takes a novel take a look at artful pieces to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney International Experience Guides will lend a hand. For complete recommendation, the most efficient position to begin is our Walt Disney International Shuttle Making plans Information for the entirety you want to grasp!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you recall to mind the development alert via July 2026 at Disney’s Recent Lodge? Any guesses as to what this thriller venture may well be? Hopeful that the Grand Canyon Concourse will obtain an overhaul similar to the foyer? Or do you concern that it’ll get another in step with the Incredibles rooms? Have you ever stayed on the Recent in the previous few years? Do you assume the hotel is dated and drained, or nonetheless has a modern environment? Assume the Grand Canyon Concourse wishes an overhaul? Do you settle or disagree with our overview? Different ideas or considerations? Any questions we will can help you resolution? Listening to your comments–even while you disagree with us–is each fascinating to us and useful to different readers, so please proportion your ideas under within the feedback!
