Disney World Confirms Hotel Perks for Lakeshore Lodge, Installs Oversized Otter & Heron at Lazy River

Walt Disney World continues to make major progress on construction of Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge, which looks much closer to completion than its Summer 2027 opening date would suggest. Along with this, they’ve confirmed details about on-site hotel perks, added a model of the resort to Hollywood Studios, and installed the oversized otter and heron that’ll define the water play area.

Before digging into all of the latest updates, let’s start with brief background. Located along the ‘bayou’ of Bay Lake, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge will feature floor‑to‑ceiling windows that welcome natural sunlight, allowing the outdoors to flow into the architecture, artwork, and ambiance. It’s not really a “lodge” in the conventional sense of the term, but is instead decorated with art from nature-inspired Disney movies.

Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge will offer 967 themed accommodations, including standard studios, a variety of villas, waterfront A-frames, and even the Club Level lounge and presidential suite. Check out Inside Resort Rooms & Club Level of Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge for more. Cash rate rooms are now available for booking, with reservations having opened earlier this month. Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge officially opens July 1, 2027, with a DVC preview event prior to then.

Turning to a couple of new developments, Walt Disney World has confirmed that guests staying at Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge will be eligible to participate in free water park day perk at Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon on their arrival day. According to Disney’s official website for Free Water Park Benefits in Summer 2027, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge has been added to the list of resorts that are eligible for this perk.

This is not particularly surprising, as every other hotel with “Disney” in the name is eligible. Nevertheless, it’s nice to have confirmation, especially as the Campsites at Fort Wilderness that are a stone’s throw away (quite literally, in some cases) from Lakeshore Lodge are excluded.

Walt Disney World has not announced the start and end dates of the free water park arrival day benefit, but our expectation is from around Memorial Day to shortly after Labor Day 2027. It would be nice to see an earlier start date given the popularity of the water parks as soon as the weather warms up, but the week of Memorial Day seems like the safest bet.

Similarly, Walt Disney World confirmed that Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is also included among the resort hotels participating in both Early Theme Park Entry and Extended Evening Theme Park Hours. This is also entirely expected, as every single Deluxe and/or Disney Vacation Club Resort is eligible for both. That includes the nearby DVC Cabins at Fort Wilderness. As Lakeshore Lodge is upmarket from those, this should be no surprise.

Early Entry is daily at all 4 parks and all on-site guests are eligible, but is only 30 minutes long. By contrast, Extended Evening Hours typically is twice per week (usually Mondays at EPCOT and Wednesdays at Magic Kingdom), lasts 2 hours, but is only available to guests staying at the top tier resorts.

These have their own pros & cons, from being only available to on-site guests (or a subset thereof) to requiring people to get up early or stay late. If you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of each, learn more in our Guide to Early Entry at Walt Disney World and Guide to Extended Evening Hours at Walt Disney World.

With those updates out of the way, let’s take to the friendly skies above Bay Lake with aerial photographer and friend of the site bioreconstruct, who graciously provided the construction photos here:

It still boggles my mind that Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is opening in Summer 2027. If I had to guess whether this resort were opening in early, spring, or mid-2027, I’d guess early without hesitation. Obviously, we don’t have visibility into the interior, but the outside is coming along nicely.

The most noteworthy progress this month is that the Wetlands pool area is now taking shape beyond just the contours of the lazy river. The oversized otters and blue heron sculptures are installed, and other elements of the water play area are staged. The animals are a nod to the line “the heron and the otter are my friends” from Pocahontas‘ “Colors of the Wind,” and meant to be a more subtle form of themed design. Well, as subtle as gigantic animals can be. The subtlety is more about their connection to Disney IP than the structures themselves.

Otherwise, progress continues at a swift speed. We’re starting to see more exterior details, landscaping and hardscaping, and other flourishes that we’d expect in the final stages of construction, as opposed to 8 months out. (My gut is that this resort will soft open early; even before the ‘First Wave’ DVC event.)

The Settlement area of Fort Wilderness is on the right side of the above photo (and bottom right below). It’s difficult to discern because it’s so much smaller (and brown), but the boat dock on the upper right is basically the outer edge of the Settlement. Pioneer Hall is close to the construction site.

This should really put into perspective the footprint of Disney Lakeshore Lodge. It’s obviously not as sprawling as Fort Wilderness; it’s instead a tower (or multiple that are connected), which is quite the juxtaposition.

The key difference is that these three interconnected resort wings top out at 10 stories tall. Nothing at Fort Wilderness is more than a couple of stories. And again, Lakeshore Lodge is really close to the Settlement.

It cannot be overstated how massive of a resort complex Disney Lakeshore Lodge is. This 10-story resort will be Walt Disney World’s biggest since Art of Animation or Animal Kingdom Lodge. Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is slightly smaller than the Grand Floridian once including the DVC wing, and larger than the Poly, Contemporary, or Wilderness Lodge.

Relative to recent resorts, Disney’s Riviera Resort is 9-stories tall but with only 300 rooms. This will be one story taller and with a significantly larger footprint. Not triple the size of the Riviera, but it’s the largest new resort at Walt Disney World in a long time–with more room inventory than Riviera and Island Tower combined.

Depending on how you count, it’s either the largest or second-largest behind Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort, which has 888 vacation homes, plus the 60 Treehouse Villas. (Obviously, that adds up to 946, but that’s not the only measure of a resort size; Lakeshore Lodge has 45,552 timeshare weeks, which is below SSR. Not that it’s a competition. They’re both very large, albeit with very different layouts.)

Along with these new aerials of Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge, we have new photos from the model that’s been added to Walt Disney Presents at Hollywood Studios, courtesy of friend of the site Drew the Disney Dude, who graciously provided these quasi-aerial photos:

This model looks pretty consistent with the aerial construction photos, albeit in finished and smaller-scale form. What stands out most to me is all of the trees, and unlike concept art that takes certain liberties, this should be consistent with what opens next summer.

Reservations are now available for all guests to make on disneyworld.com. As we previously discussed, the prices are pleasantly surprising. The below rates are for bookings with cash, meaning that members or anyone else booking will need to pay the regular rack rate for the rooms.

Disney Vacation Club members will be able to make points-based reservations at a later date. We’re marking our calendars for that. We did not and will not book a room for the cash rack rates. Here’s a quick rundown of rack rates in spot-checking availability for late Summer 2027 and the off-season that follows:

• Duo Studio – Preferred View: $505/night
• Resort Studio – Resort View: $559/night
• Resort Studio – Preferred View: $604/night
• Deluxe Studio – Resort View: $621/night
• Deluxe Studio – Premium View: $738/night
• Resort Studio – Club Level: $888/night
• Resort Studio – Premium View – Club Level: $1,093/night
• 1 Bedroom Villa – Resort View: $916/night
• 1 Bedroom Villa – Premium View: $1,128/night
• 2 Bedroom Villa – Resort View: $1,526/night
• 2 Bedroom Villa – Premium View: $1,863/night
• 3 Bedroom Grand Villa – Premium View: $2,930/night
• 1 Bedroom Lakehouse: $2,319/night
• 2 Bedroom Lakehouse: $2,899/night

With regard to pricing and whether this should actually be viewed as pleasantly surprising, a couple of things are worth noting. First and foremost, almost all Deluxe Villas (DVC Resorts) are astronomically expensive when looking at rack rates. If you’re reading this, you’re accustomed to booking special offers as opposed to paying full freight.

When comparing apples to apples, these rack rates are actually lower than other recent Deluxe Villas. They’re not as bad as comparable accommodations at Disney’s Riviera Resort, Island Tower at the Polynesian, or either of the Grand Floridian and Poly add-ons.

Although I have zero interest in paying rack rates for Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge, we are “pleasantly surprised” by these amounts, exorbitant as they might be, because they also suggest that the points chart should be more reasonable than Riviera or the monorail loop properties.

Once discounts are available via disneyworld.com, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge should look similar to the other lodges. Rack rates are currently positioned just above both Wilderness and Animal Kingdom Lodge, which are two Deluxe Resorts we often highlight as having the best nightly rates after discounts.

From our perspective, this is why Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge being added to Early Entry, Extended Evening Hours, and the Free Water Park perk is interesting. Obviously it was going to be eligible for all of those things. That was never really in doubt.

The bigger question is when Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge will be rolled into special offers, and whether it will be included in existing ones (some of which already run until late July 2027) or only new ones. I’m particularly interested in bouncebacks, which it hadn’t been looped into as of last week.

My guess is that Walt Disney World will want to capture as many full-priced bookings as possible, but we’re still expecting the first discounts on Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge to drop sometime between early December 2026 and January 2027.

They won’t want to wait too long because, as evidenced above in the discussion of its size, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge has a ton of rooms to sell. The question of mixed-use hotel vs. dedicated exclusively to DVC is utterly meaningless for now. No matter what Disney calls it, Lakeshore Lodge is a mixed-use hotel for at least the next decade or two.

Whether you’re a DVC Member or are considering renting Disney Vacation Club points to save money, this is significant if you’re looking at the ‘cheapest’ way to stay. It underscores that Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge should be a better use of points.

As is usually the case with new DVC resorts, there should be a ‘window of opportunity’ when Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is easier to book via points than established resorts that are fully or mostly sold out.

This is both because they take time to fill up (aside from opening week) and because there’s more declared inventory than there are sold points. If you want the best option for scoring a ‘deep discount’ on Lakeshore Lodge, the best answer is simply booking with points, whether rented ones or your own.

It’s also possible that deep discounts will be available for lower occupancy dates in 2027 and 2028, as the vast majority of the Disney Vacation Club resort will be undeclared. That means it’ll be sold as standard hotel rooms via cash rates, as opposed to bookable with DVC points.

This is why Disney’s Riviera Resort had deep discounts when it first opened offering 40% off, and the same is true of the Cabins at Fort Wilderness today. Although not DVC, it was a similar story with Gran Destino Tower having deeply-discounted $199/night rooms when it first opened.

Lakeshore Lodge is going to be 90% or more weighted to cash bookings in 2027 and probably at least 80% in 2028. Over time, as more of the resort is gradually declared, that number will tilt in the favor of DVC. But that’ll take two decades or more for Lakeshore Lodge to sell out of DVC points. In the meantime, cash will be king and good deals will likely be needed to help fill those rooms.

Guests are booking 2027 Walt Disney World vacations right now (and have been for several months), and as noted above, Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is not available at discounted rates yet. It’ll likely be a few more months before Lakeshore Lodge is included in special offers, rolled into the bounceback, etc. All of this means it’ll be playing catch-up with its occupancy numbers versus the other WDW hotels.

Given all of that, it’s safe to expect aggressive last-minute discounts on par with or exceeding the 40% off that Disney’s Riviera Resort offered its first year. Keep in mind that Riviera had far fewer rooms to fill, and debuted with the novelty of the Skyliner.

It would not surprise me in the least to see flat-rate nightly rates a la the Disney+ and Disney Visa deep discounts that have been offered over the last two years. Standard Studios for $369 per night wouldn’t surprise me in the least; to the contrary, I would bet on under $400 per night rooms at some point after mid-July 2027.

Ultimately, we remain cautiously optimistic about Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge. We’re looking forward to staying at the new resort when it opens on July 1, 2027. Most likely via DVC points for night one, but depending on how that goes, we wouldn’t be averse to a second stay later in the off-season if there’s a deep discount on a standard room for under $400 per night.

I’m really looking forward to Lakeshore Lodge at this point, and had become increasingly optimistic about the project prior to this. Part of that is my unabashed love of lodges, and the ‘wilderness region’ of Walt Disney World. Another part is how I’ve ended up feeling about other dubiously-designed resorts that have opened since 2018.

Ugly and underwhelming as they all might be from the outside, Gran Destino, Island Tower and Riviera Resort are all accommodations and amenity-rich, and great places to stay as a result. Lakeshore Lodge looks poised to join that list. Plus, you can’t see the outside when you’re inside the towers–just the big views they boast!

Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge looks much more ambitious, fully-featured, and better looking than any of those. If this has a healthier budget for placemaking and a lush environment around the outside, that alone will make it a massive upgrade over the Island Tower.

It’s a shame that Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge towers over the Settlement, as opposed to being centered between Fort Wilderness and Wilderness Lodge, but it should still be an asset to this resort ‘region,’ as well as the DVC portfolio and Walt Disney World as a whole. Failing all else, we’re looking forward to finally being able to walk between Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness again!

If you’re considering joining DVC and want more guidance, be sure to read our Ultimate Guide to Disney Vacation Club. That guide covers the pros & cons, resale v. direct, how much money you’ll save, and other important things to know before taking the plunge. If you still can’t decide whether membership is right for you, “try before you buy” with the recommendations in How to Save BIG on Deluxe Disney Accommodations Renting DVC Points.

Your Thoughts

When do you expect the first special offers to hit for Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge? Expecting it to be eligible for bouncebacks, or offer deep discounts for late Summer or early Fall 2027? Thoughts on the new aerial photos, either of actual construction or the model at DHS? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment on pricing? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!