Back when Walt Disney World opened in 1971, the two notable hotels on property were the
Polynesian and Contemporary resorts by the Seven Seas Lagoon.
Did you know there were plans for three more hotels there that were ultimately never built?
First up was Disney’s Asian Resort, which would have sat along the Seven Seas Lagoon
right where the Grand Floridian sits today.
The Asian Resort would have been heavily themed around the country of Thailand, and Disney
had hopes of opening it in late 1974.
It was planned to be a square plot of rooms surrounding a 160 foot tall main building
that would have featured a Thai themed restaurant at the top, overlooking both the Seven Seas
Lagoon and parts of the Magic Kingdom.
The second resort, Disney’s Persian Resort, was actually the only one of the five planned
to sit outside of the Seven Seas Lagoon area.
Situated along the coast of Bay Lake, the Iranian themed hotel was planned at one point
to share a dedicated monorail line that would run into Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom.
Lastly, Disney’s Venetian Resort, built along the lagoon between the Ticket & Transportation
Center and The Contemporary Resort was going to be themed after the Italian city of Venice.
Guests would actually get around the resort by gondola on streets of water and under bridges
that connected the various parts of the hotel.
So what happened?
Well for a while these hotel projects were actually going along as planned.
The Asian Resort was scheduled to start construction in early 1974 with plans to open later that year.
In fact in early photos of the lagoon you could see the flat plot of land jutting out
into the water in preparation for the Asian Resort, and across the lagoon on the other
side, land was visibly cleared for the Venetian Resort.
Then the oil crisis happened.
In October of 1973 OPEC instituted an oil embargo on a number of nations, including
Canada, the UK, Japan, and the United States.
As a result in less than half a year the price of a barrel of oil in the US quadruped.
Suddenly the nation was facing gas shortages and climbing prices.
Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 wouldn’t occur for another five years, higher
airfare meant that at this point flying was still more of a luxury for a family on vacation.
The vast majority of families still drove to Disney World and during this oil embargo
families were cancelling their vacations out of fear that they might not be able to afford
or even find the gas needed to get to or from Disney.
As a result Disney saw a decline in attendance to Disney World and the company, taking a
financial hit from it, was forced to reconsider their priorities with the resort.
By the mid 1970s Disney was less concerned with building more hotels and rooms to fill
up and instead shifted their focus on using their resources to create new rides as well
as their first ever second-gate, EPCOT.
At this point the three resort ideas were shelved.
It’s said that in 1978 the Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi offered to fund
the Persian hotel to make it happen, however in the following year he would be overthrown
during the Iranian Revolution, rendering the offer moot.
That same revolution would kick off a second oil crisis in 1979, causing the price of oil
to more than double, once again causing a financial impact not only for Disney but tourism as a whole.
Then in the mid 1980s Disney would see a leadership shakeup with the replacement of Ron Miller
by Michael Eisner.
Eisner jumped into the role of CEO with an energy dedicated to revitalizing and growing
Walt Disney World, and that included expanding their resort offerings in order to capitalize
on all of the guests who were coming down but staying off property.
While the Persian hotel was out, there were still plans to put more hotels around the
Seven Seas Lagoon.
In place of the Thailand inspired Asian Resort and on the same plot of land, Disney instead
opted to build a Victorian era beach resort similar in style to those built around the
coast in the early 1900s.
In June of 1988 the hotel was completed and Disney’s Grand Floridian Beach Resort would
open to the public.
As for the the Venetian Resort, the concept would eventually be replaced with plans for
Disney’s Mediterranean Resort.
The five star hotel was going to be themed around a Greek island on the land in between
the Ticket and Transportation Center and the Contemporary.
It was cleared for the hotel, but Disney quickly found that the land around that part of the
lagoon proved to be extremely difficult and unstable to build on, and so the project was
ultimately abandoned.
Lastly, there was something to be said about the necessity of building extra hotels around
the Seven Seas Lagoon by that point.
When Disney World first opened, Walt’s plans for EPCOT hadn’t fully died yet.
The Magic Kingdom and its surrounding resorts were considered phase one of the overall project,
with the city to follow.
So at that time it made sense to group the hotels closely around the Magic Kingdom.
As far as they were concerned in the 1970s, that was the only theme park the property
would ever have.
Over time that obviously changed.
EPCOT transformed from a city of the future to a theme park, and by the 1990s Disney-MGM
Studios would open for all to enjoy.
With the city concept long gone, and various theme parks spread out across the property,
there was no longer the need to keep the hotels constrained to the Seven Seas Lagoon area.
And so Disney would begin to expand, building hotels all over Walt Disney World so that
guests would have more options and closer proximity to the different parks.
The fate of the Persian, Asian, and Venetian Resorts at Walt Disney World serve as great
examples of how the path in which Disney World developed
sometimes wasn't even in Disney's own hands.