Adventurer’s Club: Surprising Fun at Disney’s Pleasure Island

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