http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/tourism/orl-disney2808jun28,0,2367595.story
Well, this is a bit of a surpise and admittedly, a bit of a disappointment even though I’ve yet to visit any of the actual clubs myself. Apparently Disney announced yesterday that three months from now, it’ll be closing its doors on the remaining six nightclubs at Pleasure Island to make way for a more “family-friendly” experience.
The article (and attached video) make point to mention that they’ve been getting requests from the guests for more shopping and dining accommodations at Downtown Disney, but I have to wonder if this is another case of not so much the masses asking for more places to spend their money as a few outraged guests who don’t think that nightclubs belong anywhere within Walt Disney World. And yeah, I’ll admit that I’ve passed some ladies wearing some rather provocative attire when passing through the area to get from the Marketplace to the West Side, but just because it isn’t my cup of tea doesn’t mean that I don’t think that there shouldn’t be a little something for everyone at the Resort. Sure, it wasn’t exactly an area that the entire family would go to spend an evening, but not everyone who goes to Disney World brings a family and I’m guessing that a balance was made of deciding that it would be worthwhile overall to lose the nightclubbing crowd to other establishments to install more gift shops and high-end dining to milk that family vacation pocketbook.
It just seems to me that Downtown Disney already has plenty of shopping and dining capacity – I don’t really know what else they could add, and I’ve got a feeling that anything that they do add is going to be more along the lines of shops for looking, not for buying (i.e. the guitar shop, the super-expensive movie memorabilia shop). Odd because the other part of me thinks that this is totally a money play, which doesn’t make sense unless the clubs really weren’t doing as well as they’d have liked us to believe. I’m also intrigued because with a second shopping area opening up on the west end of the property and such an unstable economy due to energy costs right now, I’d have assumed that the last thing Disney would be doing would be making changes like this that weren’t just absolutely obvious in benefit.
I suppose this means that if we ever want to experience the comedy club and the Adventurer’s Club, we’d better make a trip over soon, eh?