Adventurer’s Club: Surprising Fun at Disney’s Pleasure Island
Published by Joel December 27th, 2006 in Beer, Booze, Destinations. Share This
Despite continued admonishment about the power of imagination, Walt Disney World is mostly an assembly line of identical experiences. Not so the Adventurer’s Club, a faux association of early 19th-century explorers, aviators, vaudevillians, and their treasures from a thousand exploits.
The Adventurer’s Club is on Pleasure Island, Disney World’s “adult” section of the park complex, filled with nightclubs and bars, all of which have a theme, like “’80s dance party” or “black people.” We actually hadn’t intended to go to Pleasure Island, as the only thing less appealing than a Florida nightclub is a place in the theme of a Florida nightclub. However, my girlfriend and I hooked up with some friends earlier that day, who said we’d regret it if we didn’t make it to the Club. (Bless them, they were right.)
The Salon, which serves as the hub from which different theme rooms radiate, holds the primary bar and a selection of chairs and couches. The walls, which rise up three stories into different mezzanines, are covered in trophies and souvenirs brought back by members of the Club with a humorous placard describing their origin. There is also an animatronic stone mask nearly four feet tall, from which a woman’s voice calls out to patrons, inducting them into membership in the Club via public humiliation.
Every staff member walks about in costume, ham to full, performing little skits in character. It’s the sort of experience that should comprise the entirety of Disney World, enthusiastic and talented people enticing patrons into private moments of fantasy, rather than the mechanized dispassion of one-size-fits-all experiences.
I don’t know what it costs to get into Pleasure Island—I’m pretty sure you don’t have to have a park ticket, but we sort of just drunkenly wandered in—but the next time I’m in Orlando, I’ll definitely be slipping in the back door, dressed in my period best, for a night swapping tales of adventure.
All Ear’s Adventurer’s Club Description [AllEarsNet]
Photo courtesy Richard Giles’ flickr stream
Kungaloosh.
surveillance cameras everywhere?
I freakin LOVE the adventurer’s club. My family does this giant trip every other year to Dizzyworld, and I look forward to the club more than anything else. If you go at 8:30, there is a different ’show’ every hour on the hour, culminating with the grand revue in the library at the end of the night (which is just before midnight so you can go out and watch the fireworks). They take bits and running gags from the whole evening, including quips on people’s outfits, etc. and work them into the show. Last time I went my sister’s hairdo was worked into three separate numbers. When the cast realized that I was her brother, and was laughing hysterically every time they brought up her hair, one of them fixed her hair the same way so I’d laugh at her too. It was incredible.
This Dethroner thing ain’t gonna work unless you actually post many times a day…
We’re on vacation for the holidays this week, chief.
The problem with the Adventurer’s Club is that after the first, oh, 2 or 3 visits, you come to realize that the jokes and adlib behavior are basically always the same. Then the corniness really gets to you, and makes you want to sink down below the floor on your elephant foot chair. Usually, instead of leaving you end up buying more and more of those ridiculous drinks. Then, of course, all is well again and boy is that Colonel hilarious, what?
I’ll take two or three good visits over the barely-worth-going-once that comprises most of Disney World. But point taken.