April 4 - Rock 'n' Roll Beach Club

On this day, in 1990, the Rock 'n' Roll Beach Club began welcoming revelers at Pleasure Island in Walt Disney World. Beach Club was the first new club to appear after Pleasure Island opened its doors on May 1, 1989. Ever since Michael Eisner had taken over leadership of the Walt Disney Company several years before, he had been looking for ways to boost revenue in the parks. For Walt Disney World, an on-property, nighttime entertainment venue was high on his list. If it was more convenient for guests to stick around when the theme parks closed instead of having to travel to clubs in downtown Orlando, Disney should get a bigger percentage of their wallets. Expanding the size of the Walt Disney World Village shopping area and opening a multi-club venue right next door went a long ways toward making that dream a reality.

Image courtesy waymarking.com

When Pleasure Island opened, it contained six clubs: Videopolis East (new wave music), the Neon Armadillo (live country), the Adventurer’s Club (a quirky mix of improve comedy and set show pieces, one of my favorites), the Comedy Club (which started out with a set show but evolved into all improv), Mannequins Dance Palace (techno-trance) and the XZFR Rockin’ Rollerdrome. Yes, you read that right. A rollerdrome. Someone thought that mixing alcohol and roller skating was a good idea. Until of course the club actually opened for business. Then it became painfully obvious what a huge liability that was. The doors were rather quickly closed, the club given a cursory makeover and reopened as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Beach Club, which it would remain until closing several months before the rest of Pleasure Island in 2008. If you ever visited the Beach Club and wondered why there was a chest high wall surrounding a hardwood oval in the middle of the first floor, now you know.

Over the years several other clubs came and went with the confines of Pleasure Island. Videopolis East was renamed Cage before becoming 8Trax, featuring Seventies and Eighties music, in 1992. The Pleasure Island Jazz Company came along in 1993, showcasing live musicians, before becoming the Raglan Road Irish pub in 2005. The Neon Armadillo became the BET Soundstage in 1998, changing from country to hip-hop and R&B. The Firework’s Factory, a restaurant on the eastern edge of Pleasure Island became the Wildhorse Saloon at the same time, keeping Country music on the Island for a few more years, before ending up as Motion, a top 40 video club, in 2001.

Image copyright Disney

By the mid Aughts, though, attendance at Pleasure Island was flagging badly. Change was in the air for nightclub culture that had been thumping through the nights for almost two decades. The entrance fee for the area was the first thing to go, as each of the remaining clubs became its own venue. Plans were made to retheme Pleasure Island into a more family friendly area called Hyperion Wharf, but as the bigger plan of Disney Springs began to emerge, that never happened. On September 27, 2008, New Year’s Eve was celebrated for the last time and the Island ceased to exist. Buildings were demolished or extensively renovated starting the very next day and there are few remnants of the place left.  Which, honestly, isn’t a bad thing.

Image courtesy me

Full disclosure time: I worked in Admissions and Guest Services at Pleasure Island for over a year in the late Nineties. While I enjoyed the people I worked with, PI literally brought out the worst in guests. It wasn’t a Friday or Saturday night if someone wasn’t getting arrested and hauled off to Orange County Jail. And all I have to say to make one of my former co-workers shudder are the words Vibe Live (it was really ugly). The things I’ve seen are not sights that should be regularly occurring on Disney property. PI might have served a purpose in the beginning, by the time I came along several years later, it was already pretty seamy and it went downhill after I left. The Island’s current incarnation as the Landing area of Disney Springs still fulfills its original purpose of keeping guests on property, is still a lot of fun to go hang out in but is now, thankfully, minus the creepy parts.