Island Tower Opens Dec. 17 at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, 58 Years After the First Sketch
Island Tower at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows opens December 17 on the shores of Seven Seas Lagoon, finishing an idea Imagineers first drew in the 1960s. The Disney Vacation Club addition adds four terrace gardens, a lobby level with open views toward Magic Kingdom, and a design that trades 1970s Waikiki styling for natural materials and Polynesian pattern work.
Island Tower at Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows opens December 17, and the shape of it goes back roughly 58 years. Early concepts for Disney's Polynesian Village Resort called for a terraced, multi-story structure surrounded by three-story buildings along Seven Seas Lagoon. That drawing sat unbuilt through five decades of Walt Disney World history, and the Disney Vacation Club tower opening this winter is the first time the idea has been carried out.
Key Details
- Opens: December 17
- Where: Disney's Polynesian Villas & Bungalows, on Seven Seas Lagoon at Walt Disney World Resort
- What it is: Island Tower, a Disney Vacation Club addition to the existing villas and over-water bungalows
- Design roots: a terraced tower drawn for the original resort and never built
- Inside: four tropical terrace gardens with seating, a lobby-level pool deck and Wailulu Bar & Grill
- The view: across Seven Seas Lagoon toward Magic Kingdom Park
Where the tower idea started
Disney Legend Marty Sklar used to say that a good idea never goes away. Walt Disney Imagineering has been quoting him on this project, and for once the phrase has receipts. The starting point is 1966, when Walt Disney laid out the Florida Project: a theme park, hotels, recreation areas, E.P.C.O.T. and more. The hotel plan called for "theme resort hotels" clustered so that visitors could stay in a district of properties with distinct international themes, one of them inspired by the South Seas.
After Walt died, Imagineers at WED Enterprises kept developing the plan and rebranded the property the "Vacation Kingdom of the World." Seven Seas Lagoon was dug as part of that work, giving the resorts an open body of water for boating and other recreation.
Jewels on a necklace around Seven Seas Lagoon
Five international theme resorts were designed to line the lagoon, described internally as jewels on a necklace. Each was meant to read as its own place from across the water, which is why the drawings gave several of them tall structures. The architecture was doing double duty: setting the theme up close, and creating a distinct silhouette from a mile away. Only two of the five opened with the resort on October 1, 1971. Disney's Polynesian Village Resort was one of them, and its tower was not part of what got built.
What changed between the 1970s drawing and the finished building
The version drawn in the early 1970s would have looked modern for its moment, closer to the luxury hotels going up on Waikiki Beach than to the longhouses below it. Building the tower now let Imagineers take a different approach. Island Tower uses natural materials, patterns drawn from Polynesian tattoo work, and a color palette meant to sit next to the existing Longhouses rather than compete with them. The result reads as a design that covers both older and current Polynesian visual culture instead of the mid-century resort look the first drawing chased.
Terrace gardens, the pool deck and the Magic Kingdom view
The landscaped terraces from the old concept became four tropical terrace gardens in the finished tower, each with seating areas set among planting and artwork. The lobby level is where the site does its real work: the sightlines across Seven Seas Lagoon run unobstructed toward Magic Kingdom Park, whether guests are at the pool or at Wailulu Bar & Grill.
What this means for Disney Vacation Club members
Disney's Polynesian Village Resort has been a monorail-loop hotel since opening day, and Disney Vacation Club has been part of it since the villas and over-water bungalows arrived in 2015. Island Tower adds inventory to a home resort that has been among the hardest to book at the seven-month window, and it does it on the lagoon side, where the Magic Kingdom view is the whole point. Members and guests booking a December stay onward should expect the tower to change how quickly that resort disappears from the availability calendar.