Pleasure Island opened in 1989, tacked on the west end of the Walt Disney World Shopping Village, to do battle with downtown Orlando's Church Street Station and Exchange nightclub attractions. If you just said to yourself "what are those?", well, then you see just how successful Disney was.
But when Disney expanded the renamed Downtown Disney past Pleasure Island, creating the West Side outdoor mall, that left Disney with two family-oriented shopping and entertainment zones split by a booze-fueled no-kids zone. Plus, Universal Orlando's CityWalk, with its better segeration of family-friendly and nightclub zones, provides additional competition for evening entertainment for both the park-weary tourist and the bored local.
The changes will physcially open up the Pleasure Island area, which Disney no longer requires an additional admission to visit. (Though hard tickets are required to get into the clubs.) Still, booze and kids are a tricky mix. I admit that I cringed when I read a Disney VP talk about making an area where parents can feel comfortable drinking in front of their kids.
Partyers are still welcome. But so are people seeking to relax. Or a father with children, [Disney VP for Downtown Disney Djuan] Rivers said."He can walk through here, and if he wants to have a drink on the street, he doesn't feel awkward with his children, and you won't feel awkward either," he said.
A Pleasure Island visitor offered a different view, at the end of the story.
"You don't want to be drunk in front of a bunch of kids," she said. "You're going to be paranoid. You don't have to worry about that downtown."
Ah well, glad they are going to change it but as mentioned, taking your 2.25 children through there late at night (It really happens, a lot) might not give them the best impression of Disney, and that good old Disney Magic...
While we are on the subject of downtown Disney, let me congratulate them on their upgrade to the big store. The spitting "Stitch" is a fantastci idea. Watched so many people pushing their kids though it by mistake, fantastic, and the new Pirates of the Caribbean Themeing (Just in time for #2) is brilliant...
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I kid the Mouse, of course (by the way, Mr. Lassiter, what was that e-mail address where I could send to you my cv?). Hell-fire, what the damned place needed from moment that it was first pitch to “Mookie” Eisner (remember him? Tall guy with a squinty eye, used to hang out with Sparky Katzenberg a lot?) was MORE SLEAZE on Pleasure Island! Not family fun sleaze (Hooters has that market pretty well sewn up), but actual, honest-to-goodness, “holy crap!” simulated sleaze!
Remember when (oh, so long ago in the mid-1990s) when it was a scandal when there was some astonishing Seminole woman on horse back selling shots of tequila (that is, on her nights off from The Doll House)? NOT ENOUGH! It should have been a sweaty, dark, loud, dangerous place. OK, sure, you should have had SOME idea that you would REALLY get beaten up by a couple of drag queens while standing in line Mannequins, but there should have been that thought, was back in your liquor-soaked lizard brain that something like that MIGHT happen. It should been the food-‘n-beverage version of a roller coaster: thrilling, the illusion of danger, but with a good chance of survival (Mission Space aside).