Disney’s Hotel Crisis Explained: Las Vegas Hires Reportedly Replace Imagineers

in Disney Parks

Split image showing Cinderella's castle at Disney World on the left, bustling with visitors, and a construction site for a luxury hotel with an unfinished building and debris on the right.

Credit: Disney (left) u/qalpi (right)

Over the past few years, we have seen Disney construct new hotels and refurbish existing hotels on Walt Disney World property. While these refurbishments and new builds certainly have a clean look to them, that has been one of the major criticisms of the recent updates on resorts by guests who love the over-the-top theming and immersive atmosphere that Disney is known to create.

Disney's BoardWalk Inn at night
Credit: Disney

One of the most recent resorts to gain a retheme to its resort is Disney’s BoardWalk Inn. When that resort had its room decor changed, it was not met with excitement. Disney’s BoardWalk Inn sits on the BoardWalk at Disney World, and is meant to have a Coney Island feel to it. Guests can play carnival games, watch busker performances, dine at restaurants like Flying Fish and Trattoria al Forno, shop, and more. Being steps away from EPCOT and offering so many amenities, this resort of one of the most popular at Disney.

That being said, the resort has been a target for guests who feel like the theming is being stripped from the hotel. Even the new DVC tower at Disney’s Polynesian Resort has been compared to look like a “Marriott” hotel, indicating that Disney is turning into more of a chain hotel system with less creative and more volume.

Most recently, we shared that the Fort Wilderness Campgrounds’ new look for the cabins was also not widely received due to the aesthetic. As we shared, fans had responses of the likes “Ok so now we’re just completely doing away with the theme of resorts in a themed resort?”. Many stated that the look resembled more of a Hyatt asthetic, rather than the wilderness.

Concept art for the Cabins at Fort Wilderness Resort
Credit: Disney

So why is Disney moving in a direction that is more sleek and less themed?

Brayden (@SirBrayden) took to Twitter (X) to share that Disney has taken to using Vegas hires to build their hotels, using a reported third party source to complete their projects.

I have an exciting plan for Iger to help kick off this $60B park investment: fire the outside-hires now running creative and the Vegas hires de-theming Disney’s hotels. Rehire the generational Imagineers you lost in mass due to your own incompetence and then step down yourself.

According to sources of Mickey Views, “leadership at Walt Disney World is well aware of what their Vegas-hires have done to the hotels. Their previously uniquely themed resorts now have cheap, modern accutroments which clash with the untouched areas of the resorts. When the Grand Floridian main building is refurbished to look like the Springhill Suites by Marriott, why pay eight times more per night for the same thing? Location is quickly becoming the sole advantage Disney’s hotels have to lean on.

Allegedly, the Las Vegas talent is on the way out at Walt Disney World, and executives anticipate having to reimagine the just-reimagined resorts again. Particularly, the execs already want to re-update the update to Disney’s Boardwalk Inn.”

Grand Floridian Resort, exterior aerial shot
Credit: Disney

When asked for the specific names of the new Vegas hires, Brayden said, “I have names, I just don’t feel good about singling behind-the-scenes people out. The individuals are irrelevant, they all need to be fired, it’s a cancer. We have Airbnb people in Imagineering creative hiring all their buddies and making generational Imagineer jobs superfluous.”

One of the replies to the Tweet (X) came from Marc Moran (@MCMarkyMarcYT) who noted that Disney has been outsourcing in general for years, as noted by Bob Gurr.

Reading a memoir by Bob Gurr. It looks like outsourcing for full themed manufacturing happened in 2013. Lots of outsourcing of projects have occurred in the 21st century.

As we recently revealed, Disney is putting in $60 billion when it comes to the parks and cruise line departments, and according to these reports, it seems that some of that money will be reallocated to adding more in-depth theming to their resorts.

Documentary style creators Bright Sun Travels shared a video of Disney’s most “polarizing” and “aggressively bland” resort, Disney’s Riviera Resort, in which they stay inside the smallest room at the hotel for nearly $500. In the review, the creators also reference the new hotel to look like other chain resorts.

And it seems their followers agree. One viewer said,

“It is incomprehensible to me how Disney has systematically removed every single competitive advantage from their hotels. No theming, no airport transfers, no extra magic hours, and no FastPass. And since I’m forced to rent a car now because they killed the Magic Express I can just as easily drive to a bland corporate hotel or a bland Disney hotel. The only difference between these options is that the bland corporate hotel has a bigger room for 1/3 the price. Otherwise they are identical in virtually every way, and many of the corporate hotels are only a few minutes farther from the parks. Hmm.. what should I choose?”

The theming debate is not just taking place in the resorts, but the theme parks too.

Spaceship Earth in EPCOT
Credit: Lee (myfrozenlife), Flickr

The new addition of EPCOT’s World Celebration Gardens was enjoyed by some, but to others, satisfaction was not met due to Disney pulling back on the budget and removing certain aspects of the concept art like the fountain. Overall, we can see that theming is a general source of frustration for some fans, especially those comparing the new developments to the older nostalgic creations of the past.

While not referencing the current choices made by Disney, former Disney Imagineer Eddie Sotto (@boss_angeles) shares a photo of how Imagineering was run when Marty Sklar was incharge, with many comments referencing that they wish Disney would get back to this.

EDL Circa 1991-2. WDI President Marty Sklar was continually guiding us designers by explaining the “why” of what we were doing (or why we were doing it wrong! ) He focused on what is or isn’t “Disney” about the things we were creating. Invaluable insight.

Of course, it is not shocking to see Disney continue to change and scale as it continues to grow, but it appears that many feel that the creative abilities and design that Imagineers are capable of bringing are getting lost in the shuffle, or being forfeited for speed and cost.

Inside the Magic reached out to Disney for comment, but has not heard back at the time of this article’s publishing.

Do you like the recent look of Disney’s hotels? Do you think that there has been a loss in creative theming? 

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