The Villa's of Grand Floridian

 

Artist rendering of the proposed Grand Floridian DVC building

 

*Construction walls are going up - July 2011

*Screen added near wedding pavilion November 2011

*Land clearing December 2011

*Pylons going up 05-2012

*much progress, working on the third floor now 07-13-2012

*Exterior almost completed 08/21/2013

 

Exterior is almost complete 08-16-2013

 

Two years later its finally starting to look like it belong 07-2013

Construction progress of the Grand Floridian DVC 07-13-2012

Monorail behind the construction of the Grand Floridian DVC 07-13-2012

Land being cleared for the new Grand Floridian DVC 12-11-2011

View of the site from a mouse boat 12-11-2011

Monorail view of the site 12-11-2011

Land Clearing 12-11-2011

A few walls, August 21, 2011

How it looks before the construction begins, looking from the Wedding Pavilion side. The building will take up most all this area shown.

How it looks before the construction, looking from the Grand Floridian side. The building will take up most all this area shown.

 

Wedding Planners giving info to potential wedding guests, click here for images via wdwmagic.com

 

DVC coming to the Grand Floridian

 

Walt Disney World plans to build a six- to seven-story, T-shaped addition to Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Although Disney declined to discuss its plans for the project, speculation is that the building will be used for Disney Vacation timeshares.

The 900-room Grand Floridian is the most expensive of the Disney hotels, with room rates starting at about $400 a night.

 

Here is more of the plans - Click here PDF

This is close representation overlay I put together.

 

 

Disney planning addition to Grand Floridian

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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