How Canceled Is This Disney World Hotel Really?

When it comes to construction projects, things change a LOT at Disney World.

Take the big EPCOT transformation, for example. Although a few things were planned as part of that transformation (a new film for the China Pavilion, an update to Spaceship Earth, a Mary Poppins-themed attraction, and more), some of those things were either postponed or outright canceled. However, there’s one project we all thought was canceled that may actually be moving forward.

That project is Reflections — A Disney Lakeside Lodge. Disney World first announced the resort in 2018 and had some pretty ambitious plans for it. The resort would sit on Bay Lake between Disney’s Wilderness Lodge and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground on the land that used to be River Country.

Reflections – A Disney Lakeside1 Lodge Concept Art ©Disney

The nature-themed resort would be a deluxe resort with more than 900 rooms, including a variety of Disney Vacation Club villas. It was also announced that the resort would have A Princess and the Frog-themed restaurant on site. Disney even released concept art of the restaurant:

So what happened? Well, in 2019, Disney changed its D23 Expo announcements blog post and removed all mentions of Reflections — A Disney Lakeside Lodge. Fast forward to 2023, and Disney has still not made an official statement about the project.

Disney, though, remained quiet on the resort’s actual status. However, the company did quietly remove all construction equipment from the area. This would lead pretty much anyone to believe that the project had been canceled.

It seemed Disney had given up on the project, especially with the company not filing any new permits for it — that is until a permit extension was filed just recently. That extension was granted for five more years, which could mean that Disney has plans for Reflections, after all. However, that isn’t a guarantee that the project is back on Disney’s radar.

We recently took a Segway tour at Wilderness Lodge (which we highly recommend!). Our tour guide pointed out the Reflections property, told us a little bit about the project, and said that it was still very much in progress. This was the first confirmation we’ve heard from anyone at Disney about the resort.

So, although everyone had pretty much given up on Reflections, it seems that Disney may have not completely forgotten it. With the company recently announcing it had plans to spend $60 billion over the next decade to expand its theme park resorts, this could be one of the projects that gets picked back up. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for more updates, so check back with AllEars again soon for more.