March 23, 2011|By
Jason Garcia, Orlando Sentinel
Walt Disney World is preparing to build an addition to
Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, the most expensive of the giant
resort's 17 hotels.
A permit application submitted to the South Florida Water
Management District describes a six- to seven-story, T-shaped building that
will be connected via a covered walkway to the existing Grand Floridian. The
nearly 900-room, Victorian-themed hotel, next to the Magic Kingdom, has
standard room rates that begin at $440 a night.
No construction timetable was provided, and Disney
wouldn't discuss the project Tuesday.
"At any given time, we have numerous projects in various
stages of development across our resort," spokesman Bryan Malenius said. "If a
project comes to fruition, we will share details when it makes sense to do so
for our business."
But the plans, which were filed with the water-management
district earlier this month and quickly surfaced online in Disney fan forums,
have touched off widespread speculation that the building will be used for
Disney Vacation Club time shares.
"It has all the markings of it," said Tim Krasniewski,
publisher of DVCNews.com, a news website for Disney time-share owners.
Disney would be following a familiar model if that's what
it does. The company's newest time-share project in Orlando, the 15-story Bay
Lake Tower, was built as an addition to Disney's Contemporary Resort, another
high-priced Disney hotel by the Magic Kingdom.
Disney also has a history of attempting to keep its
time-share projects quiet for as long as possible, for fear of undermining
sales at already-open properties. Disney refrained from discussing its Bay
Lake Tower plans until nearly two years after breaking ground on the project.
Disney is currently peddling units in three open time
shares at Disney World — Bay Lake Tower, Disney's Animal Kingdom Villas, and
Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa — as well in an under-construction
resort in Hawaii dubbed "Aulani." That project, the first major resort Disney
has built that isn't tied to a theme park, is scheduled to open in phases
beginning this fall.
A new time-share project would be the first Disney has
launched since the global recession and credit crunch, which decimated much of
the time-share industry. Sales at Disney's time-share business fell during the
downturn; the unit generated an estimated $190 million a year in operating
profit before the slump.
Still, Disney says it has been happy with Vacation Club's
performance through the recession.
"It has been a business that has been far more resilient
than I think any of us internally would have thought," Walt Disney Co. Chief
Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said during an analyst conference earlier this
month.
Rasulo added that Disney prefers not to do lengthy
pre-sales for its time-share developments. "We basically like people to be
able to use their unit as soon as they buy in for the Vacation Club," he said.
Krasniewski said it would make sense for Disney to begin
work on its next Orlando time share now. He said he expects Bay Lake Tower to
sell out before the end of the year, based on documents filed with Orange
County.
Disney declined to discuss the pace of sales in Bay Lake
Tower, other than to say it is "pleased with the continued popularity" of the
project.
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