Disney's Yacht Club Resort
Disney's Yacht Club Resort is a deluxe resort hotel at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. Opened on November 5, 1990, it stands on the northern shore of Crescent Lake in the EPCOT Resort Area, a short walk from EPCOT, and was the first deluxe hotel built outside the Magic Kingdom resort area. Together with its sister hotel, Disney's Beach Club Resort, which opened two weeks later, it presents a formal, nautical version of the turn-of-the-century New England seaside resort.
Design and theme
Both the Yacht Club and the Beach Club were designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, which modelled them on the shingle-style summer inns of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The Yacht Club takes the more formal role of the pair: grey shingle siding, white trim, a lighthouse on its boat dock and interiors of dark polished wood, brass and nautical fittings, including a lobby globe and model ships. A ship's-mast flagpole and manicured lawns running down to the lake complete the impression of a private club rather than a beach hotel.
The resort was planned partly with adult and convention guests in mind. A convention centre shared with the Beach Club sits between the two hotels, and the Yacht Club's public rooms have generally been kept quieter and more restrained than those of its neighbour.
Rooms and dining
The hotel has about 635 guest rooms, most with balconies, in standard, water-view and club-level categories; the club level is known as the Regatta Club. Rooms were comprehensively refurbished in the late 2010s in a cleaner nautical style.
The principal restaurant is the Yachtsman Steakhouse, a table-service restaurant centred on steaks cooked over an oak-fired grill, which has operated since the hotel opened. The Ale & Compass Restaurant serves the hotel's everyday dining in the lobby area, and the Crew's Cup Lounge adjoins the steakhouse. Further restaurants, including the Cape May Cafe character breakfast, are a short internal walk away in the Beach Club.
Stormalong Bay
The Yacht Club shares its main swimming complex, Stormalong Bay, with the Beach Club. The three-acre complex holds about 750,000 gallons of water and is reserved for guests of the two hotels. Its distinguishing features are a sand-bottomed main pool, a lazy river with a current, whirlpools and a waterslide that begins in the crow's nest of a wrecked ship beached on the far shore of the lake inlet. A white-sand beach runs along Crescent Lake in front of the hotels, although swimming in the lake itself is not permitted. The Yacht Club also has a quiet pool of its own, at the far end of the resort near the convention centre.
Stormalong Bay is regularly cited in surveys of Walt Disney World as the most elaborate pool complex at any of its hotels, and access is controlled by room credentials for that reason.
Transportation
Guests can walk to EPCOT's International Gateway in a few minutes, and reach Disney's Hollywood Studios on foot in about twenty minutes or by Friendship Boat across Crescent Lake and along the canal to the park. The boats also serve Disney's BoardWalk Inn and the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin. Buses connect the resort with the Magic Kingdom, Disney's Animal Kingdom, the water parks and Disney Springs.