I Can’t Be the Only Disney Adult Who Thinks About This Abandoned Hotel in the Middle of the Night

Oh, what could have been…

While Disney is continually adding to its resorts with new theme park attractions and state-of-the-art resort hotels, that doesn’t mean every project that has ever been planned has been completed. In fact, there are plenty of projects that never escaped the blue sky phase, even if Disney seemed like it was ready to move forward. When we think about these projects, one specific hotel always comes to mind.

When Disney World opened in 1971,  it did so along with the Polynesian Village Resort and the Contemporary Resort along the shores of the Seven Seas Lagoon. But did you know there was supposed to be another hotel?

Due to Disney World’s vast footprint, Disney always planned on building many more resorts — like the ones we see today. Two of those hotels were supposed to be the Persian Resort and the Asian Resort. However, it’s fairly apparent that those plans fell through.

Disney has always been about theming and embracing cultures around the world, so these two hotels were meant to add yet another layer of immersion and wonder for guests visiting Disney World. However, the gas crisis of the 1970s hit the economy hard, and Disney scrapped the projects altogether. In fact, the resort’s hotel expansion plan didn’t see anything tangible until 1988, when Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa finally opened.

As the decades progressed, Disney couldn’t really shake the idea of culturally themed lodging. In the 1990s, Disney World wanted to create hotels based on Venetian culture and the Mediterranean.

Disney’s Mediterranean Resort was meant to change the game for Disney World hotel theming — and it remains (to this day) one of Disney’s biggest “what ifs”.

Originally developed in the 19080s, the resort was going to be a massive complex themed after a Greek fishing village, and it was designed — in part — by renowned architect Alan Lapidus.

This wasn’t just an idea. There was real progress being made before it was put on hold in favor of the Grand Floridian. The idea of the resort was picked up again in the 1990s.

In Lapidus’s 2007 book Everything by Design, the architect wrote, “The resort began to take shape as a series of streets with multicolored waterfront ‘houses’ (actually, rows of hotel rooms of various heights). There was a waterfront walkway with a mosaic serpentine design, a harbor entrance with a lighthouse, windmills, a breakwater, a marketplace, olive groves, and trellis-covered walkways leading to streets of ‘tavernas,’ market squares, and many hidden courtyards with a variety of fountains and outside cafes.”

The project was so real that models of the unbuilt hotel exist at the University of New Mexico.

When Disney revisited the idea of the Mediterranean Resort, the company floated the idea of it being the swankiest hotel at Disney World. However, infrastructure quickly became an issue. Disney World is largely built on swamp land, and the cost to fortify the resort went beyond Disney’s budget. Thus, construction never even began.

It’s a shame, because the ambition of this project was truly impressive. A full Greek village along the shores of Seven Seas Lagoon could’ve been Disney’s best hotel ANYWHERE. I guess we’ll never know…

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Would you have liked to see this hotel get built? Let us know in the comments, and continue to follow us here at AllEars for more retrospective looks at the history of Disney World.

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Which Disney World hotel is your favorite? Let us know in the comments!

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