PI Update: Pleasure Island VS CityWalk (Part 1)

Pleasure Island vs Universal CityWalk is the subject of our article today and today we begin with Pleasure Island. PI consisted of 5 dance clubs and 2 comedy clubs but we're only going to concern ourselves with the dance clubs. PI's primary and most-famous dance club was Mannequins Dance Palace. It's most-famous because it had a large rotating dance floor. In an era before laser lights, Mannequins had an amazing light system that had few competitors, certainly not in Orlando. After PI closed, it was renovated to become Morimoto Asia restaurant.

8TRAX was Pleasure Island's retro club featuring 70's & 80's hits including a lot of Disco. It had multiple levels within but the dance floor was downstairs in a sunken area with a lot of vantage points on the levels above. During the post-PI construction, the front of 8TRAX was shaved-off to become future shops facing Hill Street while the rear section became part of the kitchen of Morimoto. In the middle, we're told there is a no-mans land of sorts that is part of the old 8TRAX standing still in time.

Soundstage Club was the final name for the club fully known as BET Soundstage Club. The original name came from their contract with Black Entertainment Television but the name reverted when the contract expired. This was the club for Soul, Funk and Hip Hop. During the 90's when Hip Hop was the dominate music in the United States, BET would be absolutely jammed with people standing all over the place watching the dancers down on the lower level dance floor. In the final couple years the club stayed kind of empty because everyone had migrated to the club below. During the post-PI renovations, Soundstage was razed.

In the later years of Pleasure Island club Motion had taken over for Soundstage as the place for hit music. Since Motion was a Top 40 club and most of American Top 40 had become Hip Hop, the crowd migrated here. One could over count on the "Cupid Shuffle" at midnight here. After the club closures, the Motion building was demolished.

When Pleasure Island closed, Rock'n'Roll Beach Club had already been closed over 7 months earlier. This was the place to find live Rock bands playing nightly. When PI closed, this building was also razed. Tomorrow we'll take a look at the dance clubs over at CityWalk.