Shades of Green is one of the few unique resorts on Walt Disney World property that share the
distinction of not actually being owned or operated by Disney themselves.
However this resort isn’t owned by Hilton or Sheraton or Four Seasons.
No, this resort is owned by the United States Department of Defense, and it exists thanks
to some perfect conditions and a pretty smart business deal.
Now, Shades of Green is technically 24 years old, but in a way it’s actually much older
than that.
In fact, it’s been around almost as long as Disney World itself.
Back in 1971 when Disney World first opened, it offered up two golf courses called the
Palm and Magnolia.
They were right next to each other, so Disney built a clubhouse for both courses right in
between the two.
Two years later in 1973, while scrambling to add more rooms to their property due to
Disney World’s popularity, Disney decided to convert the clubhouse into a resort by
adding over 150 guest rooms.
When it came time to theme and name the resort, Disney, the company behind some of the most
beloved and memorable creative works of the last 100 years settled on…
The Golf Resort.
Over the following 13 years the resort struggled.
It was a Disney owned and operated hotel, but it was kind of an odd man out.
Not too far away you had the Polynesian and Contemporary hotels.
One had a beautiful and immersive polynesian setting on the water, the other had a novel,
massive, and modern atrium, and both were connected to The Magic Kingdom and later Epcot,
via monorail.
Then, across the road, you had… the golf resort.
It featured… golf.
As a result, The Golf Resort saw average occupancy rates of 60%-75%.
Now compared to other hotels in central Florida, that actually wasn’t too bad, but right
across the street the Polynesian and Contemporary were almost constantly in the high 90% range.
As shocking as it sounds, The Golf Resort wasn’t seen, by many, as a “Disney hotel”.
So in 1986 they decided to do something about it.
Not Disney enough, eh?
Alright, we’ll make it more Disney.
We’re gonna change the name to “The Disney Inn”.
How’s that for Disney?
Theme?
Snow White.
Short of an actual Mickey Mouse hotel, which Eisner did consider, you can’t really get
more “Disney” than that.
Here’s the catch though.
By this point Michael Eisner and Frank Wells were now running Disney, and part of their
goal at Disney World was to expand the hotel offerings.
So while The Golf Resort was given a second life as the Disney Inn, just two years later
it would be dwarfed by The Grand Floridian and joined by the Caribbean Beach resort.
The few years after that would bring us the Yacht Club, the Beach Club
Port Orleans, Old Key West, and Dixie Landings.
They were hotels designed as hotels and all memorable in one way or another.
The Disney Inn was just a clubhouse turned hotel that never really found it’s stride.
Now around this time is when the Department of Defense was starting to consider a new resort.
At this point they already had three.
They were called AFRCs, which stood for Armed Forces Recreation Center.
They were affordable and self-sustaining resorts where members of the armed forces could go
or take their families on vacation.
They had one in Germany, one in South Korea, and one in Hawaii.
However with the Gulf War recently coming to a close, more and more service members
were returning home to the states, and so the DoD decided they wanted a resort on the
US mainland.
This was the early 1990s and so between Disney World, the beaches, and the recently opened
Universal Studios Orlando, central Florida would make for a perfect location.
Initially over 40 hotels and motels expressed interest in being the location of choice for
DoD, and that included Disney and The Disney Inn.
Now if we think about this for a moment, it was a brilliant move on Disney’s part.
By offering up The Disney Inn, they were offloading this hotel that was never really intended
to be a hotel to begin with, and were trading in subpar occupancy rates for a dependable
pay-day.
But perhaps more importantly, they would be striking a blow against their competition.
Like I said, Universal Studios had just recently opened, so
by getting the Department of Defense to put their 4th AFRC smack dab in the middle
of their property, they were ensuring that nearly all of the service members visiting
would be spending money at Disney World.
Ultimately the DoD did go with Disney, and cited that it was the quality of their rooms
and the proximity to the parks that won them over.
In November of 1993 they announced a deal in which they would sign a 100 year lease
on the hotel and the land it sat on.
Just three months later on February 1st, 1994, the hotel would reopen as Shades of Green.
To keep the hotel affordable to service members, the rates were lowered.
While an average night at the Disney Inn ran between $180-$215 a night, a stay at Shades
of Green, depending on your rank, ran between $49 and $92 a night.
In other words, any occupancy problems the hotel faced were now a thing of the past.
Within the first month as Shades of Green, occupancy jumped up to 98% and the hotel would
remain fully booked for the first 8 months of operation.
However the resort still ran into financial problems.
You see like I mentioned, the room prices were based on rank.
Privates would only pay the $49 while the highest ranking officers would pay the top
end $92.
So it was no surprise that the majority of guests at the hotel that year were lower ranked
members and paying lower rates as a result.
It hurt the hotel’s bottom line and put them a million dollars into the red by the
end of the first year.
Oddly enough, one of the proposed solutions to this problem, beyond just raising the room
rates, was to just outright purchase the hotel.
They’d be investing more in the short-term, but the year to year costs would lower without
the hotel lease and with a renegotiated land lease, and they’d then own a hotel that
would hopefully appreciate in value over time.
So in 1996 that’s just what they did, and for the price of 43 million dollars, the Department
of Defense purchased Shades of Green.
Today Shades of Green is still around and despite being owned by the government, still
offers some of the perks of a Disney owned resort.
Guests staying there can enjoy Extra Magic Hours, book fast passes up to 60 days before
their stay, and enjoy complimentary bus transportation.
It’s an interesting case of all of the right events lining up just around the right time,
and it was one of the multiple examples we would see of Disney’s new leadership finding
creative ways to get people to stay on Disney property.
If there’s one note to end on when it comes to the history of this unique and interesting
hotel though, it’s… really Disney?
The Golf Resort?