Construction on Lakeshore Lodge continues moving really, really fast by Walt Disney World standards. This massive resort near Magic Kingdom is slated to open in 2027, but possibly could open in 2026. This shares new aerial construction photos and digs into progress on Riviera and Island Tower at similar points to determine whether an early opening is realistic.
Officially, almost nothing is known about Disney Lakeshore Lodge. The full extent of Walt Disney World’s announcement was basically “it’s being built” and will open in 2027. That was back in 2024. It’s been over a year of radio silence since on the development of Disney Lakeshore Lodge, which is a bit odd for a company that gives us regular updates on pretty much everything.
This isn’t to say that nothing is known. Disney Lakeshore Lodge was originally Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge, which was paused during early site prep amidst the COVID closure of Walt Disney World ~6 years ago. Although some details could’ve changed since, it should be substantially the same resort that was announced then.
This mixed use development between Wilderness Lodge and Fort Wilderness at Walt Disney World will feature both hotel rooms and Disney Vacation Club villas. As originally announced, the lodge was set to be a “celebration of Walt Disney’s lifelong love and respect for nature” with more than 900 rooms. There’s no reason to believe any of that has changed.
We also know that the footprint of Disney Lakeshore Lodge is unchanged from the previous permits and site plans for Reflections. Disney Lakeshore Lodge has a “W” layout of its wings, with two main courtyards. These permits and site plans tell us a lot in the absence of official announcements.
The biggest question marks about Disney Lakeshore Lodge involve the themed design, characters and movies that’ll be featured, and other window-dressing. We’ve yet to see any interior concept art–or any new concept art of Lakeshore Lodge since its revival.
Back at the 2019 D23 Expo, Bob Chapek revealed details, including a Princess and the Frog waterfront restaurant, along with Pocahontas and Bambi-inspired decor throughout. It’s unknown the degree to which all of this has changed in the last 6+ years. All of the IP could be completely different, or 100% the same. Beyond that, here’s everything you need to know about Disney Lakeshore Lodge.
The biggest source of updates on Disney’s Lakeshore in the last year-plus has been aerial photos courtesy of friend of the site bioreconstruct, who graciously provided the construction photos here. These offer an updated look at progress as of mid-January 2026…
The Settlement area of Fort Wilderness is on the left side of the above photo. It’s difficult to discern because it’s so much smaller (and brown), but the boat dock on the far left is basically the outer edge of the Settlement. Pioneer Hall is close to the construction site.
This should really put into perspective the footprint of Disney Lakeshore Lodge. It’s obviously not as sprawling as Fort Wilderness; it’s instead a tower, which is quite the juxtaposition.
The key difference is that these three interconnected resort wings top out at 10 stories tall. Nothing at Fort Wilderness is more than a couple of stories. And again, Lakeshore Lodge is really close to the Settlement.
Here’s essentially the opposite angle of the massive resort complex. This 10-story resort, 900 room resort will be Walt Disney World’s biggest since Art of Animation or Animal Kingdom Lodge.
By contrast, Wilderness Lodge has has a 7-story main building and 728 rooms in total. The largest resort in the Magic Kingdom area isGrand Floridian; it’s ~1,000 rooms between the hotel and DVC wings. Lakeshore Lodge will be fairly close in size to the main resort–with more inventory than the Poly or Contemporary.
Relative to recent resorts, Disney’s Riviera Resort is 9-stories tall but with only 300 rooms. This will be one story taller and with a significantly larger footprint. Not triple the size of the Riviera, but it’s the largest new resort at Walt Disney World in a long time–with more room inventory than Riviera and Island Tower combined.
Disney Lakeshore Lodge will feature both a waterfront restaurant and a lazy river, both of which are visible in the main courtyard, on the side closer to Fort Wilderness.
This lazy river is huge. The pool complex will be the likely highlight of Disney Lakeshore Lodge, making it only the third Walt Disney World hotel to offer one, joining the iconic Stormalong Bay at the Yacht & Beach Club Resorts.
Disney Lakeshore Lodge’s feature pool will also include a zero-entry design for easy access, water slides, and a splash pad for the children’s play area. The pool area should offer scenic waterfront views of Bay Lake.
There will also be A-frame cabins along the waterfront based on permits and visible progress. Tremendous progress has been made on these in the last couple of months.
What used to be the Clementine Beach at Fort Wilderness should also become home to a second ‘row’ of treehouses behind the A-frames, which will presumably have water views thanks to their elevation. This will completely replace Clementine Beach.
Some of these units will be closer to the Fort Wilderness boat launch than the new dock at Lakeshore Lodge. This dock is also starting to take shape (see far right on the photo below).
The waterfront restaurant in the middle of the above photo (below the lazy river) is interesting, and should actually have views of the “bayou of Bay Lake,” as the waterfront trees have not been removed here.
My hope is that many more trees are planted around the periphery of the resort once exterior work is finished. One of the big issues with the Island Tower and other recent projects is a lack of lushness. If this continues with a resort in the wilderness, it’ll stick out like a sore thumb.
Trees can also help conceal underwhelming facade work, and back of house areas. There are some spots like this that are plainly visible at the Island Tower, and look awful. It’s nice that Disney has left so many mature trees in place, but they also cleared out a ton of them. Planting young trees around the perimeter will be badly needed.
Given the pace of the project to date, it’s hard to imagine that this will take over another ~18 months to complete.
We’ve been saying for months that this should easily open in the first half of 2027. More recently, I’ve been starting to wonder whether Walt Disney World will move it up to late 2026. So much so that I’ve started digging into details about the timelines for both Disney’s Riviera Resort and the Island Tower at the Poly.
Both of those resorts are instructive for the obvious reason that they’re the last big resort expansions at Walt Disney World. They are also DVC resorts and ones that had Christmas-time opening dates. Riviera opened on December 16, 2019 and Island Tower debuted on December 17, 2024. The timing, almost 5 years apart to the day, does not seem coincidental.
We were locals throughout the construction of Disney’s Riviera Resort, and I documented that–and Island Tower–extensively. Here’s a look at progress on Riviera as of January 2019.
It’s difficult to use Disney’s Riviera Resort as a benchmark, as the approach was different with a lot more scaffolding and fewer cranes, lifts, and other heavy equipment on-site. By contrast, Lakeshore Lodge is utilizing the same efficient construction method that enabled Island Tower at Disney’s Polynesian Resort to be built quickly.
It’s also fair to point out that Disney Lakeshore Lodge is a larger resort, with features like the lazy river, waterfront restaurant, and boat dock. All of that may extend the timeline. And that even if we judge exterior progress, it’s impossible to say where each of these three resorts stood as of January of their respective opening years.
With all of those caveats out of the way, my untrained eye says the exterior of Lakeshore Lodge is at roughly the same point as of January 2026 that Riviera or Island Tower were as of January 2019 and 2024.
I would also add that the pace of each has been fairly consistent. It’s not as Lakeshore Lodge has taken longer to reach this point, despite its comparative complexity (unless you count that 5-year pause).
This is not to say with any degree of definitiveness or authority that Disney Lakeshore Lodge could open by December 18, 2026. The interior could be months behind Riviera or Island Tower at this point, for all we know. All we are saying is that it’s within the realm of possibility, at least in looking at the exterior, that Disney Lakeshore Lodge could open in the waning weeks of 2026.
It’s not just construction progress that is the relevant consideration here, though.
It also depends on when it’s most strategically-advantageous to launch a new DVC resort from a sales perspective, so perhaps Island Tower sales are more outcome-determinative than construction progress.
According to the latest sales data from DVCNews, Island Tower is on pace to sell out in Summer 2028 and has had roughly half of its units declared. Even tacking on another year to Summer 2029 wouldn’t be bad.
Equally as significant, DVC sales are starting to slow. That same sales data indicated that November of last year was the slowest month for DVC sales in 19 months–since April 2024.
It’s still too early to say whether this is a trend (data should be coming literally any day for December), but we assume that a deceleration is in order. Not based on any overarching economic conditions, but rather, the practical reality that DVC doesn’t have anything new to market. And it needs to feed the beast, so to speak.
It used to be the case that Disney Vacation Club tried to avoid active sales on multiple resorts simultaneously, giving each new addition its own time in the spotlight. That has changed in recent years, with DVC being less inclined to shy away from having several resorts starting sales in closer proximity to one another.
Regardless, that’s not really cause for concern here. Disney’s Riviera Resort has not sold out yet, but it will. And it’s in a good position even if Lakeshore Lodge does open in late 2026 as opposed to 2027. Island Tower is at the Poly, which sells itself. Disneyland Hotel is at Disneyland, so it’s not really direct competition. The Cabins at Fort Wilderness are literally never going to sell out, so they’re a non-factor.
If anything, it seems like it would be pragmatic to bring the next DVC resort online 2 years after the last one. There doesn’t really seem to be any downside in that from a sales cannibalization perspective. That’ll be doubly true if year-over-year numbers continue to be negative for December and beyond.
It’s not just DVC sales stats to be juiced, though.
Regardless of the eventual mix of hotel vs. DVC inventory, the overwhelming majority of Disney Lakeshore Lodge will be undeclared when it first opens. That means that it’ll be booked as hotel inventory, and at hotel prices. And anyone who has looked at the rack rates for Riviera or Island Tower knows those are a bit on the obscene side!
One of the huge advantages of opening a hotel at Christmas-time is those nightly room rates, and high demand. I assume it’s not a coincidence that Disney pushed to have both Riviera and Island Tower open for the busiest ~10 days of the year. A stretch when discounts are not offered and room rates are the highest of the year, both because demand is so high.
If at all possible, I would hazard a guess that Walt Disney World would want a repeat of that with Lakeshore Lodge. And even if it’s not possible, it’s worth pointing out that the lengthy window between Christmas and Spring Break is supposedly the highest-occupancy stretch of the year according to Walt Disney World.
I believe it. But it’s also worth pointing out that rack rates plummet in winter, and good discounts are offered. It’s also worth pointing out that’s such a long window that we’re comparing it to shoulder season, summer, and early fall. Of course Christmas, Spring Break, and even winter are busier than those months!
The other interesting wrinkle here is that Disney hasn’t announced anything about Lakeshore Lodge other than “it exists again” and is slated to open in 2027 (as of 2024).
By this stage in the game, we already knew a lot about both Island Tower and Riviera Resort. To give just a couple of reference points, hotel reservations for Riviera opened on January 22, 2019, and DVC sales started two months after that. The model room also debuted around the same time, and we already had full official details on all of the restaurants, pools, etc.
Island Tower is perhaps a better barometer, as its sales didn’t start until October 1, 2024–just in time for the fresh fiscal year. It’s also notable that it was pretty much radio silence from Disney on that resort until May 2024, at which point the name was revealed, as were a few other details. After that, there were regular updates to generate interest and enthusiasm throughout the summer and fall.
It was a savvy strategy that sustained excitement as the hotel came online, and we’d expect Disney to pull from that playbook when it comes to Lakeshore Lodge. Meaning we probably won’t know much else about the massive new resort, including whether it’ll debut in mid-December 2026 or early 2027, until late spring or early summer.
Finally, here’s an aerial video showing progress thus far, again via bioreconstruct:
Aerial video of Disney Lakeshore Lodge construction. pic.twitter.com/IhyfI9aiIT
— bioreconstruct (@bioreconstruct) January 18, 2026
Ultimately, it’s impressive how quickly Disney Lakeshore Lodge is speeding along regardless of whether it ends up opening in 2026 or 2027. While I have a lot of reservations about this project and its proximity to Fort Wilderness, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m also really looking forward to staying here.
The big driver for this is how we’ve ended up feeling about other resorts opened since 2018. There’s the aforementioned Riviera Resort for one, but we also have ended up loving Gran Destino Tower. Hideous as it might be from the outside, we’ve enjoyed Island Tower far more than expected.
Disney Lakeshore Lodge looks much more ambitious, fully-featured, and better looking than any of those. It’s a shame the resort towers over the Settlement, as opposed to being centered between Fort Wilderness and Wilderness Lodge, but it should still be an asset to this resort ‘region,’ as well as the DVC portfolio and Walt Disney World as a whole. We can’t wait to stay at Lakeshore Lodge…I’m hoping that first stay will happen at Christmas 2026, and am guessing the odds are about 50/50 that it will.
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of the construction on Disney Lakeshore Lodge? Surprised at just how massive this new Magic Kingdom resort looks from above? Have you seen it from on the ground at the Fort Wilderness Settlement? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
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