Advertisement
Disney's Art of Animation Resort is a relatively new hotel on Disney property, but its construction may have taken longer than any other resort. Construction began as part of Disney's Pop Century Resort, which is located across Hourglass Lake. It was supposed to be known as the Legendary Years—those years from 1900 through 1949. As fate would have it, when Disney's Pop Century Resort opened in 2003, the Legendary Years portion sat empty and abandoned, probably because of the halt of tourism following the September 11 attacks in New York City.
In 2010, the empty buildings were re-purposed, and construction resumed on what is now a completely new resort, Disney's Art of Animation Resort. There are four areas, or four film franchises represented here: Cars, Finding Nemo, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid.
Animation Hall and Finding Nemo
You begin your journey into the art of animation when you arrive at Animation Hall, which contains the main desk, the main merchandise facility, Ink & Paint Shop, and the main food court, Landscape of Flavors. There are three swimming pools at this resort, but the main pool, The Big Blue Pool, is located directly behind Animation Hall. Since the guest rooms in this area are themed after Finding Nemo, so is the pool.
The lobby of Disney's Art of Animation Resort is colorfully lit. Photo by Donald Fink.
The Ink & Paint shop has Disney Merchandise as well as snacks and wine. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Schoolyard Sprayground is a great place for the younger set to cool off. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Mr. Ray can be found in the "Finding Nemo" section. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid section of Disney's Art of Animation is the farthest from Animation Hall. It has the third pool on property, called Flippin' Fins, and is themed after characters from The Little Mermaid movie.
This area is the only section in Disney's Art of Animation that has "standard" rooms. The other three sections are comprised mostly of family suites, which may explain why this hotel tends to be a bit more expensive than the other value hotels on Disney property. The thought must be that more people can be accommodated in the suites, so larger families will experience a slightly greater value here.
Ariel and Flounder are at the entrance to building 8. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Ursula is at the opening of building 7. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Cars
The southern-most buildings in this resort are themed after the movie, Cars. You'll find many of the Cars characters including Mater, the Sheriff, and Fillmore, the hippy VW Microbus. You'll also find the Cozy Cone Pool complete with cabanas that are shaped like, as you might guess, traffic cones.
You can take your picture with Mater. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
The Lion King
The Lion King area is the set of buildings just north of Animation Hall. There's no pool in this area, but you will find the Elephant Graveyard, which is a playground for the kiddos.
Rafiki can be found in the walkway between "The Lion King" buildings. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Mufasa proudly guards "The Lion King" section. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Pumbaa, Timon, and Simba are above the entrance to building 6. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Zazu can be found in "The Lion King" Section. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
We've stayed at many—probably most—of the hotels on Disney property over the years. Our favorite is usually just like our favorite park—it's the one we're in at the time—and Disney's Art of Animation Resort is no exception. It's a Disney Value hotel, meaning that it has a different look and ambience from a moderate or luxury hotel, but it does so at a significantly lower price. We've managed to find deals at these value resorts when they have sales and booked rooms when their pricing wasn't much different than any ordinary hotel of similar quality off property. We've always enjoyed the stay.
Do we recommend Disney's Art of Animation Resort over other hotels on Disney property? Well, no, we don't. We like pretty much all of the Disney properties, and it simply depends on your taste in hotels, and of course, your budget. Staying at Disney's Art of Animation is a legitimate Disney experience, just like any other Disney hotel, and especially if you have kids who enjoy a good Disney movie.
Like Disney's Pop Century Resort, if you have kids with you, we suggest that you do your homework and make sure the kids have recently seen at least one movie from each of the four movie franchises represented here. It will help refresh them and give them a better sense of what they're seeing when they wander the grounds.
We posted a photo tour of Disney's Pop Century Resort a while back. You can see the article here if you'd like to compare the two hotels.
Join us for a quick walk around Disney's Art of Animation Resort on property at the Walt Disney World Resort in Central Florida. Photos and videos by Donald and Bonnie Fink.
Comments
Hey Donald and Bonnie! Thank you for this tour. We have been meaning to get over there but haven't made the time yet. Looks pretty cool. I always enjoy reading your stuff and am grateful for you posting it.
We as a family have not been to this resort, but on our last trip, we were staying at Pop Century for a night. My mom doesn’t have any sense of direction, and so, when attempting to get from our room in the 1950s to the food court, she disappeared. Luckily, she had her cell phone and we managed to finally meet up. As we were eating, she was asking what the Little Mermaid and Cars had to do with the decades theme of our hotel. Somehow, she had gotten herself so lost that she actually crossed the bridge over to this complex. We got to tease her about that for the rest of the trip.
That's pretty funny! I'd wonder if she didn't just walk the whole path around the lake since she ended up seeing both LM and Cars. LM is pretty close to 50's in reality (maybe even closer than the food court for Pop, depending on which building your room was in- but I'm not sure if the northern connecting path is affected by the construction for the Gondolas).
And thanks Donald and Bonnie for posting the tour! I stayed here once in the LM section, but I was only there for a day and didn't wander as far down as the Cars and Nemo sections, so it was good to see that. I have a friend with a family of 5 and he favors the suites here as a really good option for enough beds/bathrooms.
Interesting thing on the heritage of the re-purposed buildings, if you look at Google Earth, you can tell that 2 of the LM buildings have the same roof shading as the Pop Century buildings. I'm pretty sure those 2 are the ones that were built before construction was halted on the originally planned Pop expansion. I'm guessing that's also why they kept that section in the same room format as Pop, just building a third building to complete the section when they built it as AoA.