Some claimed that there were challenges with the engines that required constant refilling with water. Some claimed that it was just too expensive to operate and could never recover its costs. The bottom line is that since the track was not laid correctly in the first place that even with attempts to make adjustments, the basic problem still existed that could not be overcome. Literally, the entire length of track needed to be re-laid correctly and the estimated price tag was over three million dollars.
At one point, the Disney Company looked to General Electric as a possible corporate sponsor to help defray all or most of the estimated cost. Connecting the two resorts was the proposed new train tracks.
Wilderness Junction, also known as Buffalo Junction, was another resort that was supposed to have been built around on land between the Ft. Wilderness Campgrounds and where the Wilderness Lodge Resort is today. This room resort, according to Jim Hill, was to have been a moderate resort, with an Old West theme complete with horses on sawdust-strewn street and a Buffalo Bill Wild West Show as in Disneyland Paris. The complex of shops, dining and entertainment would have been reminiscent of a western town.
A new version of the Fort Wilderness Railroad would have been built connecting the existing campgrounds, Wilderness Junction and the Wilderness Lodge. Although never built, the concept was re-purposed a few years later at the Boardwalk Resort.
In , construction for EPCOT Center was moving along and Dick Nunis, who was the executive vice president for Disneyland and Walt Disney World at the time, came to the realization that once the second park was open attendance would increase and so will the demand for more on-property hotel rooms.
The Cypress Point Lodge was to be a moderate resort with guest rooms and an additional lakeshore cabins. During , although there was no mention of the Lodge there are aerial photos from showing land cleared from the planned site. However, around the time of the opening of EPCOT Center, any mention of the Lodge disappeared as funds were being diverted to the second park due to its cost overruns.
That brings us to the Wilderness Lodge. When Eisner took over the reins at The Walt Disney Company he made major changes in all divisions — including architecture. When Eisner decided to start building new hotels for the Disney Resorts he turned to top-notch architects and not Disney Imagineering to make his vision a reality. Eisner chose his architects carefully.
Depending on what Eisner envisioned he found an architect whose skill, talent and portfolio best suited the job. Wilderness Lodge Resort. Our architecture is part of the show. Peter H.
Dominick, Jr. Randal Johnson Design and Ronald D. Armstrong Management were other Principals. Growing up in Colorado, Dominick was an avid outdoors man and noted fisherman. Dominick deftly translated his love, passion and deep understanding of the west into his architecture. A senior staff member at Disney came across the article just when they were looking for potential architects for the lodge and invited Urban Design Group to submit.
As you ascend the levels of the lobby, you travel upward to modern times. To see evidence of the first creatures to squirm over and under the surface of the earth, guests should go to the fourth floor and search the layers of Tapeats Sandstone for worm borrows and trilobite trails.
Paleontologist Robert Reid who was also an artist was sent to study the actual walls of the Grand Canyon. His studies were reproduced in a detailed book that was used to help contractors create the fireplace replete with a kaleidoscope of colors, rocks and fossils—many of which are real. Some of the fossils of prehistoric plant and animal life are several hundred millions years old and are carefully embedded in the correct stratus for a historically accurate view. They pre-date the dinosaur era.
More than colors in hues of green, magenta, buff, red, black and brown are visible. The variations are recreated in the same proportions as those that appear in the real Grand Canyon that range from feet thick. The fireplace is built to scale with the geologic layout of the Grand Canyon, complete with geologic disconformities periods of deposition, erosion, tilting and renewed deposition on top of the older rocks. The detail is nearly perfect with the textbook diagrams documenting the geology of the Grand Canyon.
Samples of elements from each strata are housed in glass display cases near the fireplace on each floor level. These displays describe the epoch that section of the fireplace rock represented. One of the things that does not exist in the real Grand Canyon is a Hidden Mickey, but it does in the Wilderness Lodge fireplace.
Directly facing the fireplace, on the right hand side of the three-sided fireplace, where a lodge pole on the left is jutting out before the start of the next floor in the reddish rock is the famous three-circled Mickey Mouse head. At the Guest Services front desk, guests can get a riddle clue sheet to help them locate the more than two-dozen Hidden Mickeys at the Wilderness Lodge Resort. The Wilderness Lodge fireplace is a real working fireplace. Originally, it burned wood, which caused several challenges over the early years including, raising the humidity level in the lobby that caused problems, like cracking the wood used in the massive totem poles.
It was converted to a gas burning fireplace for a number of reasons, including the fact that gas is safer and can be more easily controlled. A variety of Native American tribes, including Cheyenne, Crow, Sioux, and Blackfoot are represented in the lobby and throughout the lodge, including the guest rooms that feature fabrics representing different tribes.
Hanging above the lobby are four massive, pound floating tepee chandeliers. Made from actual rawhide that was stretched over the framework, each of the tepee shades are hand-painted with geometric Native American symbols in red and black. Inside each tepee is a bulb fixture which provides 2, watts needed to illuminate the entire lobby.
The tepees are approximately 10 feet in diameter at the base and 10 feet high at the peak. Additionally, they are framed with a bronze and steel ring with an aged finish of silhouetted buffaloes and Native Americans on horseback. The images were inspired by photographs and the work of artist Thomas Molesworth.
Behind the front desk is a beautiful collection of reproductions of cradleboards, a wooden frame and a soft skin pouch used for the protection of a baby or "papoose" to prevent it from falling.
Within the first few weeks after a baby was born, the mother would begin to lace the baby into the cradleboard so that it could be carried on the woman's back or hooked onto a saddle. A striking and unique garment is the Elk Tooth Dress located near the lobby elevators. It is made of red wool blanket or Stroud Cloth, which was considered a desirable decorative fabric. This type of dress was typical of one that might be worn by the Kiowa and Arapaho Plains tribeswomen.
This particular dress was obviously the possession of a great hunter's wife since elk teeth are a great display of wealth. An elk only has two teeth and a dress might take hundreds of them.
Most hunters saved the teeth as a memento of the hunt or traded for them with other warriors. This rare dress, which has been determined to be from around , was worn for special ceremonial occasions like a wedding, a special dance or a young girl entering womanhood. An authentic display of moccasins made by the Plains Indians is at the far end of the lobby near the fireplace along with other displays that bring a sense of reality and history to the lobby.
Headdresses are displayed in the lobby. Some Native Americans believed that by wearing the feathers of the eagle, one of the most respected and revered birds, it was possible to impart the characteristics and power of the eagle to the wearer. Today, it is illegal to use eagle feathers, so the WDW Imagineers had to adapt turkey feathers when they recreated headdresses for display.
A Disney pin trading booth is located across the lobby from the store. Teton Boat and Bike Rentals rents boats for guests to use on Bay Lake, and bikes to use on the trails around the resort.
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