Lazy River Confirmed for Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge

Construction on Disney Lakeshore Lodge, the new Magic Kingdom resort, continues moving at a fast pace as the resort is now topped out and work continues to enclose rooms with windows and balconies. Additionally, we’re starting to see the amenities of the resort take shape, including the waterfront restaurant and lazy river!

In case you’re unfamiliar with Disney Lakeshore Lodge, it was originally Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge and was paused during early site prep amidst the COVID closure of Walt Disney World 5 years ago. Demolition of the abandoned River Country water park already happened in 2019, as had site clearing and prepwork for the new lodge in early 2020.

Reflections — A Disney Lakeside Lodge was previously set to debut in 2022, but Disney Lakeshore Lodge is not set to open until 2027. This makes sense given the delay, and suggests the construction timeframe from start to finish is more or less unchanged–it was just delayed by ~5 years. Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge is a mixed-use resort, meaning there are separate hotel and Disney Vacation Club wings. Here’s everything you need to know about Disney Lakeshore Lodge.

In the interim, Walt Disney World converted the Cabins at Fort Wilderness into Disney Vacation Club inventory. In so doing, they actually replaced the old cabins with brand-new ones that are more modernized and mirror the style what we’re expecting of Disney Lakeshore Lodge.

These cabins are one of a trio of stop-gap projects aimed at adding DVC inventory in lieu of Reflections, along with the Island Tower at the Poly and Resort Studios at the Grand Florida. Whereas the monorail loop projects were low-risk, slam dunk additions that would sell themselves, the cabin conversion is another story entirely.

The DVC Cabins opened in phases starting about one year ago. They’ve proven controversial among Disney fans, but we love the new DVC Cabins at Fort Wilderness.

There’s also been a “collection of improvement projects” at Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground aimed at enhancing the guest experience. Examples include pool and walking trail enhancements, as well as expanded dining experiences at Trail’s End Restaurant and Crockett’s Tavern.

Most likely, these improvements have been made with Disney Lakeshore Lodge in mind, and modernizing the amenities at Fort Wilderness so it appeals more to a contemporary, upmarket audience. While Lakeshore Lodge will have plenty of its own amenities, there will obviously be crossover between the two resorts. Think of these projects as similar to the enhancements at Caribbean Beach in the lead-up to Riviera Resort’s opening back in 2018-2019.

Now, let’s turn to progress on Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge, which continues to move at an incredibly fast pace ahead of its projected 2027 opening. As always, all aerial photos are courtesy of friend of the site bioreconstruct, who graciously provided the construction photos here…

Let’s start with a high-level look at the Magic Kingdom resort area, including the Disney Lakeshore Lodge construction site. You can also see Discovery Island to the far right, along with Wilderness Lodge, Grand Floridian and Contemporary above the Lakeshore Lodge.

This should give you an idea of Lakeshore Lodge’s location. At least, relative to those Magic Kingdom resorts. Although it’s spaced out nicely from Wilderness Lodge, it’s right on top of Fort Wilderness.

The Settlement area of Fort Wilderness is on the left side of the above photo. It’s difficult to discern because it’s so much smaller (and brown), but the boat dock on the far left is basically the outer edge of the Settlement. Pioneer Hall is closer 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, which is a bunch of spread out campsites, cabins, and–as the name suggests–wilderness. But it’s nevertheless quite large!

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. It’s hard to tell from such a high-level photo, but Lakeshore Lodge is also really, really close to the Settlement.

Here’s another aerial shot showing just how close Disney Lakeshore Lodge is to Pioneer Hall. At the bottom of this frame is the Pioneer Hall and Clementine Beach, with construction of A-frame cabins on that beach and directly in-line with Pioneer Hall.

The Disney Lakeshore Lodge towers, quite literally, tower over Pioneer Hall. For reference, Disney Lakeshore Lodge is much closer to Pioneer Hall than Gran Destino is to the (old) main lobby of Coronado Springs or even Island Tower is to the existing longhouses at the Polynesian.

For a ground-level perspective on this, see our Disney Lakeshore Lodge Construction Progress Photos from late August. It’s almost impossible to overstate just how much Lakeshore Lodge encroaches upon Pioneer Hall.

Disney Lakeshore Lodge is going to be a 10-story resort with 900 rooms. That’s a very large–you’d have to go back to Art of Animation or Animal Kingdom Lodge for the last resort of this size.

By contrast, Wilderness Lodge has has a 7-story main building and 728 rooms in total. The largest resort in the Magic Kingdom area is currently Grand Floridian; it’s just over 1,000 rooms between the hotel and DVC wings. Lakeshore Lodge will be fairly close in size to the main resort–with more inventory than the Poly or Contemporary.

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. It’s not necessarily 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.

The footprint of Disney Lakeshore Lodge is unchanged from the previous permits and site plans for Reflections. Disney Lakeshore Lodge has a “W” layout of its wings, with two main courtyards.

There’s no reason to believe the layout or site plans have materially changed. That would trigger permitting updates with the South Florida Water Management District prior to construction, and nothing was filed. What is being built is substantially the same as what was permitted. The differences, if any, will be thematically or aesthetically.

As we’ve been saying for over a year, the site plans indicate that there will be a lazy river and feature pool, along with a waterfront restaurant in the courtyard closer to Fort Wilderness. The lower courtyard will hold the quiet pool and boat dock. None of this really needed “confirmation” in light of the site plans and permits, but construction photos nevertheless confirm all of it!

Here’s a look at the courtyard closer to Fort Wilderness.

The lower structure is the waterfront restaurant, which is now clearly taking shape. Here’s a better look from a higher angle:

Back at the 2019 D23 Expo, Parks Chairman Bob Chapek announced this restaurant would be “along the bayou of Bay Lake” have a Princess and the Frog theme. However, that was before Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and more additions of Princess and the Frog at Port Orleans, so another IP might be chosen.

My hope is that it’s something else. Princess and the Frog fits perfectly at Port Orleans; if more of the IP “needs” to go anywhere, have it be there. (I also question whether we’ve reached a saturation point with Princess and the Frog.) Regardless, I hope the interior design differs from the concept art flashed on screen at D23. It was rather bland.

In much more exciting news, we have visible confirmation of the lazy river!

At the risk of stating the obvious, the lazy river is the incomplete loop that’s partially yellow. Above that and to the right is the feature pool. This lazy river is huge. The pool complex will be the likely highlight of Disney Lakeshore Lodge, making it only the third Walt Disney World hotel to offer one, joining the iconic Stormalong Bay at the Yacht & Beach Club Resorts.

Disney Lakeshore Lodge’s feature pool will also include a zero-entry design for easy access, water slides, and a splash pad for the children’s play area. Positioned near the lake and nestled behind the main hotel building, the pool area is expected to offer scenic waterfront views of Bay Lake.

From the permits, site plans and now the construction site, we also know that there will be treehouse villas and A-frame cabins along the waterfront. In the above image, you should be able to spot several of these A-frame structures on the left and right side of the frame.

What used to be the Clementine Beach at Fort Wilderness should also become home to a second ‘row’ of treehouses behind the A-frames, which will presumably have water views thanks to their elevation. This will completely replace Clementine Beach–we’d expect everything on the other side of the boat dock at Fort Wilderness to be gated off.

Some of these treehouses and A-frames will be much closer to the Fort Wilderness boat launch than the new dock at Lakeshore Lodge. Speaking of which, the new boat dock is also taking shape…

That’s the dock at the top of the above photo.

Below that in this courtyard is what remains of the former River Country ‘natural’ pool that fed into Bay Lake. You can also see early work on the quiet pool over here.

Here’s one last look at the lazy river, restaurant, boat launch, and quiet pool. All coming along quite nicely!

One thing I appreciate about the waterfront restaurant is that it actually will have views of the “bayou of Bay Lake,” as the waterfront trees have not been removed here. My hope is that many more trees are planted around the periphery of the resort once exterior work is finished.

One of the big issues with the Island Tower and other recent projects is a lack of lushness, and if this continues with a resort in the wilderness, it’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Trees can also help conceal underwhelming facade work, and back of house areas. There are some spots like this that are plainly visible at the Island Tower, and look awful.

Ultimately, it’s impressive how quickly Disney Lakeshore Lodge is speeding along. It’s been about a year since this project resumed, and already, the resort wings are at their full and final height. Obviously it’s a simpler project and a lot of site prep was done in 2019-2020, but it’s nevertheless amusing to see how quickly DVC development is done.

Given the pace of the project to date, it’s hard to imagine that this will take over another full year to complete. Our expectation is that it opens in the first half of 2027. Quite honestly, it wouldn’t surprise us in the least if Disney moved this up to late 2026. It probably depends on when it’s most strategically-advantageous to launch a new DVC resort from a sales perspective, so perhaps Island Tower sales are more outcome-determinative than construction progress.

It’s also curious that Walt Disney World hasn’t really said much officially about Disney Lakeshore Lodge. The only “announcement” about the project’s resumption was basically just a single passing reference from Disney Vacation Club with the new name. Not even a full press release.

That was almost a full year ago, and there have been zero updates since. Nothing at Destination D23, during any media events or anywhere else. With the Island Tower at the Polynesian still brand new and in active sales, this makes sense. Disney Vacation Club doesn’t want to steal the spotlight from that.

But it is becoming a bit awkward that we can easily confirm specifics about the upcoming resort from construction photos, and yet, Walt Disney World still hasn’t really said anything. Maybe that’ll change this holiday season–we’re excited to learn more about the new mixed use resort, and would love concept art of the hotel’s lobby, rooms, restaurant, and more!

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Your Thoughts

What do you think of the construction on Disney Lakeshore Lodge? Surprised at just how massive this new Magic Kingdom resort looks from above? Have you seen it from on the ground at the Fort Wilderness Settlement? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? 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!