Disney's Newport Bay Club refurbishment

[dagobert]

I get your point, Ed!!

I have no problems with characters, but during the last twenty years the theming was fine at the hotels and no one complained. And suddenly they start adding characters to all things. When it's done subtle, like on the Cruise Ships, at the DLH or at SL, I don't have a problem with that. Until recently nearly no Disney hotel around the globe featured so many characters.

Of course people want to meet the characters. Honestly I'm not an exception, but you can't tell me that BTM, POTC, SM, PM or TOT aren't 100% Disney, because they don't have a character connection. The same goes for many Disney rides and hotels around the globe. Creating great stories was always Disney's strength and even Walt Disney considered this as the reason for the big success. In my opinion it needs a balance between character based rides and original attractions. That's why I think Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Manor at HKDL don't use characters, because the rest of the park is heavily based on them.

[ed-uk]

And Disney don't use characters in Buena Vista Street at DCA in Cars Land they do. Walt Disney did create great stories (WDC still does ) but he told his stories on film and in the theme parks and sometimes Disney bring them together. Pirates and Haunted Mansion became films, the Tree House and Buzz Lightyear started of as films and became theme park attractions. The idea for TOT came from 1950s TV show called The Twilight Zone, originally it had nothing to do with Disney but they built a great ride out of it.

[Riebi]

And now we are entering again the "What would Walt think zone".

For me Walt isn´t a cartoon guy. It´s getting very clear at the walt disney falmily museum. He was the man behind stories. He developed Disneyland without characters in his mind. He just gave them a home at fantasyland - not at the rest of the park. And he was the man behind the wonderful rides like POTC, the haunted mansion or the tiki room. Just cause he loved to develope a story. All without characters. He even created a big city project never built but named EPCOT. That was Walt for me all the years.
And by the way dagobert is absolutly right. Also the new built disney hotels aren´t character heavy. They are high quality resorts with a incredable deep theme.

So the question is for me: Do the disney characters at NPBC develope the story? And I have to say: No. Even Duffy as character at NPBC would develope it better Let´s pray that they don´t get this idea

For the disney hotel: It isn´t the lack of a disney character that is the problem. And this isn´t the cause for people not to visit a hotel. They are very well visited. The figures are great.

But the guests aren´t that happy. Why? Not because they have no mickey bed (or duffy wallpaper). It´s more a quality problem. Started by the rooms that have not the quality of normal european hotels (thanks god they renovate them now). But also the kind of breakfast choices or the whole lake area is something that hasn´t the same quality as 20 years before. And that is why people are complaining. Never heard that someone missed a characters wallpaper.

Hotel Santa Fe had always a special problem. The europeans simply didn´t get the design of it. Pueblo isn´t beautiful without sunshine all the time

But have I said what I like at the room:

The new carpet
The new pillows
The new blankets
The style of the chairs
The idea of suitcase boards (but this variation is to much toon for me)
The bathroom

[Josh]

but this hotel is at a Disney resort so there has to be some compromise between fantasy and reality. I put the emphasis on the name Disney and then it all makes sense.

Slapping Disney characters on a wall doesn't add a fantasy element. The fantasy is that this is a fictional yacht club on a fictional harbour. It's the story of the hotel. It's not a replica of a real place. No one is saying they want to pretend they're in a real New England building; we're saying we want to be immersed in the story that the original architect wanted to tell when he designed the hotel. While the new room set-up is great, it loses some of that setting.

Surely people who book a holiday to DLP are buying a Disney holiday, not a really a holiday in New England. They want the full on Disney experience. Walt Disney after whom the resort is named was a cartoonist.

Walt Disney was also an imagineer and a technology geek. The original five lands of the original Disneyland had nothing to do with characters in his films (except Fantasyland). All of those lands tried to immerse you in a particular place based on somewhere. They try to immerse you by being strongly inspired by the architecture and landscapes of these places. That's also how the hotels work. They are like lands, too. I feel less inclined to say "I'm in New England" when Donald and Goofy are smiling at me through portholes.

As all of us on this side of the debate have said before: the new rooms are great. Just make the character influence more subtle and in a way that compliments the story, and there will be no problem.

It amazes me that Disney still uses shower curtains. You hardly find them anymore in hotels these days. I don't like them and honestly nowadays I expect glass instead of curtains in hotels of that category. I had to stay in 13 different hotels over the last two years and none of them had shower curtains.

Really? That's quite surprising. I've never been to a hotel without them. So they use nothing at all?

[ed-uk]

Disney know what sells and maybe characters in portholes will help them sell rooms. I like the new rooms and feel the use of characters has been subtle in this case.

[dagobert]

Really? That's quite surprising. I've never been to a hotel without them. So they use nothing at all?

They are using glass walls instead or shower cabins with glass walls. We have mainly been to hotels in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Czech Republic. I don't know what the standard is in France or in the UK, but in Germany or Austria the shower curtains were never that popular. I've never been to a four or five star hotel over here that used shower curtains. Maybe the glass walls are a more regional thing.

[ed-uk]

The hotels at DLP don't have shower cabins with glass. They have baths with showers in them and shower curtains, they wouldn't add glass to the bath.

[dagobert]

I know that. I have been to DLRP several times.

However over here even baths have glass walls. The cover approximately 1/2 of the bath.

[ed-uk]

In Disney hotels they don't, you can have a shower or bath and not use the shower curtain. I must admit my bath doesn't have a glass wall.

[dagobert]

I was talking about hotel baths and not private bathrooms.

[Martyn]

So is the exterior getting a refurb too?

Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my other post, I love the (not so) 'hidden Mickey' in the head board!

[Josh]

I've only ever known my house to have a glass bath cover. I just thought they were really unpopular. XD

But I must admit I quite like the pattern on the shower curtain. Was the old one just blank?

[ed-uk]

I've only ever known my house to have a glass bath cover. I just thought they were really unpopular. XD

But I must admit I quite like the pattern on the shower curtain. Was the old one just blank?

i think it had a lighthouse but I'm not sure.

[esmeralda]

I think it was the NBC logo

[ed-uk]

Briefly returning to the decoration and the use of Disney characters in the room, I can understand people wanting to be immersed in the story of the NBC, this fictional yacht club and the Disney imagineering that went behind it, and not simply pretend to be in New England, as Josh wrote. Indeed I enjoy the hotel.

But I also take the view that most people including myself, associate the characters with Disney and that they can also be apart of the story in the Disney hotels. So I don't mind the use of Disney characters in the hotel rooms provided that it is done subtly and in this case and at the Sequoia Lodge I think it has been.

[pussinboots]

There is obviously a place for Disney characters in a Disney hotel, but the question is where, how and to what degree. There is usually the character buffet (paired with a more adult-oriented table service restaurant without characters) and the children's corner where they play DVDs, and as of late they have begun to include the rooms to this category. Personally, I don't mind. While stark realism works for grand lobbies and hallways, no one wants to sleep in a stuffy, boring Victorian room and wake up looking at a portrait of Queen Victoria, or similar — just as you wouldn't want the realism to continue into Fantasyland's restrooms.

So this seems more than okay to me, and in fact it has made it more likely than ever that I will book a stay at the Newport Bay Club. Now the Santa Fe, on the other hand, that's where they went very wrong.

[Thaliel]

Are there any pictures of the renivated "bunk bed rooms"? I am curious to see what thes did with those

[Figgygirl]

Maybe Disney retain shower curtains with their baths to give guests in the bath or shower some privacy if another family member needs to use the loo. I know many families are open minded about being naked or using the loo in front of their children, but personally we aren't and I like having the shower curtain instead of just glass.
The original NBC shower curtains have the NBC logo of the lighthouse in red and blue with Newport Bay Club on. You can see photos of the bathrooms with reviews on Trip Advisor.
As far as I am aware no standard or Admirals Floor rooms in NBC have bunk beds - they may have them in the special rooms for disabled people, as they do in Sequoia Lodge.

[Figgygirl]

I also think that Character theming in the hotel rooms should remain subtle. I like the new Sequoia Lodge rooms very much - lovely warm colours with a cosy feel, with Bambi Characters on the wall border.