Disney to close hotel for restaurant renovation
By Robert Johnson
Sentinel Staff Writer
August 6, 2002
In a first for Walt Disney World, an entire hotel will be closed while the resort's restaurant area is renovated.
The 2,112-room Caribbean Beach Resort will close from Sept. 8 until the Christmas holidays.
All 700 employees will have a chance to apply for other jobs, temporary or permanent, at Disney World's theme parks and other resorts while the Caribbean Beach is dark, spokeswoman Rena Callahan said.
There's no guarantee that all employees will be able to find jobs comparable with the ones they have at Caribbean Beach, she said.
"They will be expected to come back to the Caribbean Beach in December," she said.
Disney World has never closed a hotel while it renovated a restaurant, Callahan said, but in the case of Caribbean Beach, the same kitchen serves room service, too, so guests would have to go off property to get food.
"Our guests are accustomed to a certain level of service, and we can't have a resort open without a restaurant," she said.
Caribbean Beach, which opened in 1988, is a midpriced hotel similar to Disney's Port Orleans, which closed for several months last fall after the post-Sept. 11 travel slump. That was a cost-cutting move, but Callahan said that the closing of Caribbean Beach is "the opposite of cost-cutting."
She described the renovation as an investment but would not say how much would be spent.
"We're putting a lot of money into the new restaurant."
The new eatery, called Shutter's at Old Port Royale, will seat 128 customers for table service. It will be carved out of the existing restaurant area, which includes a 308-seat food court, similar to the counter establishments in shopping malls. But Callahan said it's necessary to close the food court, too, during the table-service work.
"It sounds like they just don't want guests to be disturbed by all the work going on," said Gary Slade, publisher of Amusement Today in Fort Worth, Texas.
But Duane Vinson, research analyst at Smith Travel Research in Nashville, Tenn., said he has never heard of any major hotel property closing entirely during a restaurant renovation. "It sounds extreme," he said.
Disney World has a total of about 22,000 hotel rooms, and Callahan said that closing Caribbean Beach may make things cramped before it reopens. "We know there will be times when demand will exceed capacity," she said.
Robert Johnson can be reached at 407-420-5664 or
rwjohnson@orlandosentinel.com.
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