Crews at Walt Disney World Resort are busy bringing to life The Cabins at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort*, a new Disney Vacation Club Resort projected to open its first new proposed cabins in July. Look for a photographic tour of your neighborhood’s new addition in the summer edition of Disney Files Magazine. In the meantime, Disney Files staffers took a sneak peek inside a model cabin and are here to share some of the Disney details adding “character” to your new forest oasis. Like the resort itself, these details are steeped in Disney history. Let’s take a look...
As chipmunks call the wilderness home, it’s natural that Chip and Dale would make themselves comfortable in numerous details throughout the cabin. You’ll find the cheeky chipmunks sketched onto what appear to be log slices (pictured above) artfully affixed to the bedroom wall, silhouetted on curtains that cover the cabin’s floor-to-ceiling windows and in this playful print that finds the competitive critters trying their tiny hands at archery, one of the many activities Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort offers in the great outdoors. You’ll also find them in a mural behind the bedroom’s bunk beds, but more on that in a moment.
*Not an offer where registration or other legal requirements for timeshare solicitation have not been met.
Like the archery poster starring Chip and Dale, the painting above draws inspiration from vintage U.S. National Parks posters. You’ll find it positioned on the outside of the living room’s queen-size, foldaway bed, which, like similarly designed beds at several new and recently renovated resorts around the neighborhood, cleverly folds into the wall behind the sofa.
The painting finds Mickey and his pal Pluto arriving at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort with a trailer in tow. If Mickey’s car and trailer look familiar, you may recognize them from the 1938 animated short “Mickey’s Trailer.” That short was directed by Disney Legend Ben
Sharpsteen, a Pacific Northwest native who directed a sterling array of Disney features, including such classics as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Dumbo. Ever drawn to the magic of nature, Sharpsteen earned two Academy Awards for his work on Walt Disney’s “True-Life Adventures” films.
Among the postcards you’ll find in a collage framed in the cabin’s bedroom is the one seen above, sent from “River Country.” It’s a reference to a pioneering water park, reminiscent of an old-fashioned swimmin’ hole, that operated alongside Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort from 1976-2001. Disney’s River Country Water Park, pictured in the archival photo below, inspired Imagineers to develop the modern Disney Water Parks we enjoy today – with Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park storming ashore in 1989 and Disney’s Blizzard Beach Water Park opening with a flurry in 1995.
Alright, back to our chipmunk friends and that mural behind the bunk beds. From the bottom bunk, you’ll see Chip snoozing on a branch, and from the top, you’ll spot Dale sleeping in a tree. The calendar page above Dale is a reference to the 1949 animated short “Winter Storage,” in which Chip and Dale scramble in the fall to gather enough acorns to get them through the winter. As for the “Nov. 19” date chosen for the calendar page in the mural? Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort opened on Nov. 19, 1971.
With canoe rentals offered as part of the resort’s recreational activities* (joining horseback riding, outdoor movies, bicycle rentals, the aforementioned archery and more), Imagineers added canoe paddles as design details outside the cabins’ bunk beds. But they aren’t just any canoe paddles. Each is custom colored in reference to Mickey Mouse or one of his pals, from Minnie’s red and white to Goofy’s green and orange. Pictured here are paddles painted with Mickey’s red and yellow, and Donald’s blue and yellow.
*References to certain activities may not be part of the ownership interest
and may require an additional fee.
Scan this QR code to explore these and other details in the latest episode of the Disney Vacation Club video series “Details We Dig.”
