Bridge to Pleasure Island
Pleasure Island is Walt Disney World's nighttime entertainment district which originally opened up with the Disney Village Marketplace. Imagineers came up with a detailed story about the island which was founded by Merriweather Adam Pleasure. The buildings on the island were themed to look like buildings and warehouses originally used by Pleasure. When the island originally opened up, there were plaques placed around the property detailing the story of Merriweather Pleasure and his island. The story ends with a great storm destroying the businesses Mr. Pleasure started and with him disappearing until Disney renovated his old warehouses.
Pleasure Island was Disney's attempt to pull guests away from Orlando's Church Street area.
For 15 years Pleasure Island celebrated New Year's Eve with a fireworks show every night at midnight from 1990 through New Year's Eve 2005.
2006 Rehab
In 2005 and 2006, Pleasure Island went through some major changes in its structure allowing guests to walk through the area without having to purchase a ticket. Originally guests would have to walk around Pleasure Island to get from the West Side to Marketplace. Guests now have to show a ticket to get inside the clubs making it easier to walk from one side of the Island to the other at night. During the day, guests must still walk around.
With the rehab, a boat dock was created allowing guests to get to Marketplace, West Side, and the Disney Resorts located across the lagoon (Saratoga Springs) and up the Sassagoula River (Port Orleans and Old Key West).
Original Plaque
Below is the text from the original plaques hung from both of the Pleasure Island ticket booths
PLEASURE ISLAND Founded 1911
An unverifiable, anecdotal, purely subjective, theoretical alleged purported history. Also, ersatz.
A living monument to "the wise fool, the mad visionary, the scoundrel, the scalawag, and the seeker of enjoyment", Merriweather Adam Pleasure, who purchased the island in 1911.
Pleasure's profitable canvas manufacturing/sail fabricating empire, founded on this site, provided him with the capital to indulge his lifelong interest in the exotic, the experimental, and the unexplainable.
Known as the Grand Funmeister, Pleasure disappeared during his 1941 circumnavigation of the Antarctic. His sons, Henry and Stewart, took over the island and the Pleasure enterprises. Their mismanagement led to bankruptcy in 1955; Hurricane Connie hit that same year, and Pleasure Island was abandoned.
In 1987, Archaeologists uncovered the site and its remains, and a large scale reclamation project was begun. In 1989, the new Pleasure Island was re-opened and dedicated to the legacy of Merriweather Adam Pleasure: "Fun for all, and All for fun!"
Placed here by the Pleasure Island Histerical Society.