Pleasure Island (Walt Disney World)
Pleasure Island was an adults-oriented nightlife district at Walt Disney World in Florida, occupying a man-made island within the Downtown Disney shopping and entertainment complex, on the site now known as The Landing at Disney Springs. Behind a single admission gate stood a row of themed nightclubs, comedy and dance venues, linked by a street where the district celebrated New Year's Eve every night at midnight. Pleasure Island opened on May 1, 1989, and its clubs closed on September 27, 2008.
History
Through the 1980s, Walt Disney World's evening entertainment for adults was limited, and the Walt Disney World Village shopping area emptied after dark. Disney announced in 1986 that it would build a dedicated nightlife district beside the Village, aimed at adults — including the convention and local audiences that otherwise left Disney property for Orlando's Church Street Station clubs.
Pleasure Island was given an elaborate backstory. Its fictional founder, the adventurer Merriweather Adam Pleasure, had supposedly built the island as a sailmaking settlement before vanishing at sea in 1941; the clubs were presented as his old workshops, warehouses and private club, rediscovered and reopened. The district opened on May 1, 1989 — the same day as Disney-MGM Studios, now Disney's Hollywood Studios — with six clubs under one admission price.
For most of its life the island worked as a gated, ticketed enclave: guests paid once at the turnstiles and moved freely between clubs, while the surrounding shops and the street stayed part of the atmosphere. In the mid-2000s Disney dropped the gate and the single admission, opening the island's streets to anyone passing through Downtown Disney, with cover charges handled club by club. Many regulars felt the change diluted the district's separate, grown-up identity.
Attractions
The two best-remembered venues outlasted nearly everything around them. The Adventurers Club was styled as a 1930s British explorers' club, its walls crowded with artefacts, talking masks and mounted heads, staffed by a resident cast of comic characters — club members, a maid, a club president — who improvised with guests all evening, inducted new members, and greeted regulars with the club salute and its cry of "Kungaloosh!" The Comedy Warehouse, by contrast, offered improv comedy: after an early parody revue, it settled into short-form improvised shows built entirely on audience suggestions, performed several times a night.
Around them stood a changing line-up of dance clubs and music venues, most with single-genre themes: Mannequins Dance Palace, with a rotating dance floor and mannequins suspended overhead; 8TRAX, devoted to 1970s and 1980s hits; the Neon Armadillo country club, later replaced by the BET Soundstage; the Rock 'n' Roll Beach Club; and a roller-skating club, the XZFR Rockin' Rollerdome, in the earliest years. Each night the district staged a street party culminating in fireworks and a New Year's Eve countdown at midnight, whatever the date.
Closure
On June 27, 2008, Disney announced that Pleasure Island's nightclubs would close, saying guests were asking for more shopping, dining and family-oriented entertainment in their place. The announcement was met with petitions and a vocal campaign from Adventurers Club and Comedy Warehouse loyalists, but it held. The last clubs — among them the Adventurers Club, the Comedy Warehouse, Mannequins, 8TRAX, Motion and the BET Soundstage — operated for the final time on September 27, 2008, with a last midnight New Year's Eve celebration in the street.
Legacy
The island's buildings stood empty for several years, some rented for private events, before Downtown Disney's transformation into Disney Springs swept the district away. The site was rebuilt as The Landing, a dining and retail district with a 1920s waterfront theme; The Edison, a restaurant and entertainment venue on the island, consciously echoes the Adventurers Club's industrial-adventurer styling, and props and artefacts from the club were dispersed to other Disney locations around the world. The Comedy Warehouse cast reunited for holiday shows at Disney's Hollywood Studios years later, and Pleasure Island remains the high-water mark of Disney's attempt to run nightlife for adults at Walt Disney World.