PI Rumor Update

The D23 Convention is in progress in Anaheim, California and so far there have been no announcements pertaining to any of the Florida theme parks, Downtown Disney or Pleasure Island. Jay Rasulo has a session on Saturday which many are waiting for with anticipation that there will be announcements about new additions to the Florida parks. Many are hoping that Disney's "bold new vision" for DTD and PI will be announced as well.

Since there is that possibility, I wanted to share in advance the latest rumors I came across last weekend that I've alluded to here on the Blog. The first rumor is the negative/adverse one. As you know, many rumors have come and gone about the fate of the various club buildings on the island. They've ranged from club reopenings to compete demolition. But the Mannequins /8TRAX building is always left out. A PI employee told me the building is "off limits". Why can't it be torn down? The source tells me that the power grid to the entire island is located inside the building on the 2nd/3rd floors. Someone on a Disney bulletin board confirmed that such a power grid exists and it's located behind the stage. Supposedly if they shut this down the entire island would be without electricity for weeks before it could be reestablished. Obviously that can't happen. So why not simply reopen the clubs there? Well supposedly because the building is 20-yrs old it is no longer up to code and they would have to do serious renovations in order to bring it back. I questioned the source about this because the city of Lake Buena Vista is its own entity controlled by the Reedy Creek Improvement District which is Disney itself. Source said there are some things that are controlled by government outside the District such as water & sewage, electricity, etc. So supposedly THAT is why Mannequins/8TRAX can't reopen yet they can't tear it down either. I don't buy the latter part. I think it could be brought to code and reopened. Source also said that when RRBC closed earlier in 2008 before the recession hit, the outsource contract on it sold almost immediately. Disney saw how quickly that happened so they reasoned they could do that with all the clubs so they arranged for all the clubs to close. Unfortunately the recession really kicked-in and by late 2008 there were no takers, the deals that were in the works collapsed (including RRBC) and they were left with no options.

Now the positive news. A couple days later I ran into another source who said he/she personally knew the person who bought the contracts to operate 3 clubs on the island! And you would see some reopening activity by October! I have no reason to doubt this person but I doubt nonetheless!

So that's what I've picked up on this past week. Anything announced tomorrow at D23 trumps this information. I can't stress enough: THESE ARE JUST RUMORS!