Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa is a Victorian-themed deluxe hotel and spa at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida, situated on the shore of the Seven Seas Lagoon one stop from the Magic Kingdom on the Resort Monorail. It opened on June 28, 1988, as the Grand Floridian Beach Resort, and adopted its present name in the autumn of 1997. Disney has long treated it as the flagship hotel of Walt Disney World.
History and influences
The Grand Floridian was the first new hotel on the monorail loop since opening day in 1971, built on a lagoon-side site that had originally been reserved in early plans for an Asian-themed resort. Its design looks back to the grand beach hotels built along Florida's coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when rail travel first made winter stays in the state fashionable.
The exterior, with white walls, red gabled roofs and wide verandas, draws principally on the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California, and the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, with further influence from the former Belleview-Biltmore Hotel in Belleair, Florida. The resort was designed within Disney and executed by the architectural firm Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo, at a reported construction cost of about $135 million.
The hotel arrived as part of the expansion of Walt Disney World under chief executive Michael Eisner, which also produced Disney's Wilderness Lodge and a wave of new resorts across the property in the following decade.
Layout
The main building contains the lobby, a five-storey atrium with chandeliers, stained-glass domes, marble floors and a birdcage-style lift, along with most of the resort's restaurants and shops. Guest rooms are divided between the main building and five outer lodge buildings, each named for an island in the Florida Keys: Sago Cay, Sugarloaf Key, Conch Key, Boca Chica and Big Pine Key.
The grounds include two pools, a beach on the Seven Seas Lagoon and a full-service spa, whose presence in the resort's name dates from the 1997 renaming. The Villas at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, a Disney Vacation Club building in the same Victorian style, opened on October 23, 2013, on the lagoon shore south of the main hotel, and a second, converted DVC building followed in 2022.
Dining
The resort's best-known restaurant is Victoria & Albert's, a small fine-dining room in the main building that has held AAA Five Diamond status for many years and is the most formal restaurant at Walt Disney World. Cítricos serves Florida-influenced dishes with Mediterranean touches, and Narcoossee's occupies a freestanding octagonal building on the lagoon, serving seafood within sight of the Magic Kingdom. The Grand Floridian Café provides casual table service, while 1900 Park Fare offers character dining. The Enchanted Rose lounge, which opened in 2019, takes its decorative cues from Beauty and the Beast.
Transport
In addition to the monorail, the resort is linked to the Magic Kingdom by boat across the Seven Seas Lagoon and by a pedestrian walkway along the lagoon shore, completed in 2020, which allows guests to walk between the hotel and the park entrance for the first time. Buses serve the remaining parks and Disney Springs.