Walt Disney World has several construction alerts for Contemporary Resort and Bay Lake Tower, including a new one that extends the ongoing refurbishment by another ~16 months to 2027. This is the second year-plus extension of this mystery project. This covers the latest updates to the hotel, plus our commentary about what we hope to see happen during this lengthy project.
Over the last few years, Disney’s Contemporary Resort has become one of our preferred places to stay at Walt Disney World–we discussed the reasons for this in Our Favorite Hotel for Disney World Trips as Parents with a Toddler. That covers the many selling points of the Contemporary and BLT, with the most notable being its proximity to Magic Kingdom.
More recently, we shared our Reimagined Bay Lake Tower Review: Marvelous New Rooms at WDW’s Closest Resort to Magic Kingdom! As the title suggests, this covers why we love the redone rooms at BLT. The “TL;DR” of both reviews is that these resorts feature a fantastic location and mostly great amenities. They also offer great budget-friendly rooms; some of which are ugly-but-large, whereas others of which are small but stylish and utilize space well.
We now stay at the Contemporary fairly frequently and BLT is once again entering our regular rotation on the Disney Vacation Club side (even if you’re not a member, it’s a fantastic option for renting DVC points to save money). This is despite serious misgivings with the hotel, which has a number of glaring weaknesses that I’d really love to see corrected.
This is precisely why we’re watching the Contemporary Resort ‘mystery’ construction project, which Walt Disney World has just extended by another full year. Let’s take a look at the construction bulletins, starting with the current ones that are accurate as of November 29, 2025, followed by the old/original ones that have since been superseded…
Current Contemporary Construction Alerts
January 26, 2026 Through Early May 2026 (NOT NEW, BUT STILL ACCURATE) – The Bay Cove Pool, the Cove Bar, the water play area and the whirlpool spa at Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort will temporarily be closed for maintenance. The Bay Lake Pool, the feature pool, the water play area and the whirlpool spa at Disney’s Contemporary Resort will remain open for Guests to enjoy.
September 2024 Through Late 2027 (NEW) – Refurbishments will occur in phases throughout select areas of Disney’s Contemporary Resort, including the atrium and Bay Lake Tower. Guests may also see and hear construction during their stay.
The big change here is that the phased refurbishments throughout Disney’s Contemporary Resort have been extended by 16+ months to Late 2027. This is now the second extension for that project, which has also seen it’s scope of work tweaked slightly. Contrast the above updated construction warning with the original/old ones below…
Old Contemporary Construction Alerts
September 2024 Through Summer 2025 (ORIGINAL) – Refurbishments will occur in select areas of Disney’s Contemporary Resort—including Bay Lake Tower and the Convention Center. Please allow for extra travel time. Guests may also see and hear construction during their stay.
September 2024 Through July 2026 (OLD) – Refurbishments will occur in select areas of Disney’s Contemporary Resort—including Bay Lake Tower. Please allow for extra travel time. Guests may also see and hear construction during their stay.
September 2024 to September 2025 (COMPLETED) – Room refurbishment work will take place in Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. During this time, Guests will see and hear construction work throughout Bay Lake Tower. Please allow extra time for travel as alternate paths may be utilized.
The challenge here is figuring out what this new notice from Walt Disney World is even referencing. By process of elimination, we can rule out a few things. The first is a pool project, since that’s listed separately and ends in May 2026. Otherwise, this would be the most likely candidate for a resort-wide notice impacting both the hotel side and DVC wing.
Second is the year-long Bay Lake Tower refurbishment, which wrapped up very recently. Or at least, so we think. The interesting wrinkle here is that the bulletin specifically says “and Bay Lake Tower.” Our best guess is that this is a remnant from when there was work at BLT, and it just hasn’t been dropped.
It’s also possible that some refurbishment to the common areas of BLT was pushed off, and it simply seemed finished during our recent stay. Or it could be work on the grounds or areas of the Contemporary that will impact Bay Lake Tower guests, even without being inside that wing of the resort.
It’s also highly unlikely that this is a room refurbishment project on the hotel side of Disney’s Contemporary Resort. The ‘Incredibles Injection’ happened in 2020-2021 in the main building, and the following year in the Garden Wing. Those rooms have garnered mixed reviews, but it’d be premature for even a soft goods refurbishment.
It could be something that impacts the waterfront, walking paths, or other common area amenities shared by BLT and the Contempo. The least interesting or exciting explanation is infrastructure work that results in a bit of noise or visual blight in the parking lot, but doesn’t amount to much difference in the guest experience or yield any tangible improvement when it’s done in 2027.
It’s probably worth noting that Disney’s Contemporary Resort is over 50 years old, and the building itself might need structural work or “invisible” maintenance. Air quotes around invisible because guests wouldn’t be able to see the fruits of that in a before vs. after comparison, but the construction crews for such a project would very much be visible for the next two years.
Finally, there’s the possibility that this is long overdue aesthetic work to the Grand Canyon Concourse. This is the A-frame atrium, meaning it’s the common area that’s home to restaurants, retail and other shared amenities for both Bay Lake Tower and Disney’s Contemporary Resort.
There’s a realistic possibility that this is the mystery project. Astute eyes will notice the addition of the atrium to the newest construction warning, which was not in previous versions of the bulletin. Although it’s possible that this is just the type of invisible work discussed above, I’m skeptical that Walt Disney World would undertake a 2+ year construction project that impacts guests in the atrium, but without any tangible or visible aesthetic improvements. That’s implausible.
You might be skeptical that Walt Disney World would revisit the Contemporary after “finishing” the overhaul back in Fall 2021. But did they really finish? That project was slated to be done in time for Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary, and ended up being a race against the clock. Our on-the-ground observation was that they finished pretty hastily in order to avoid working on the Contemporary during the 50th.
This wouldn’t be the first time Walt Disney World has hit pause on projects at the hotels for prolonged periods of time. Most notably, there’s the Grand Floridian lobby, which is now wrapping up after the rest of the resort was finished. There was an almost 18-month gap from the completion of the rooms to start of work on the lobby.
We recently shared our take on the Grand Floridian’s overhaul in our Review: Walt Disney World’s Flagship Hotel Finally Fits Its Status & Sky-High Prices. The title there more or less says it all–that the Grand Floridian main building overhaul is a huge upgrade that makes it feel like a bona fide luxury resort. There’s a lot more to the story than that, but suffice to say, we hope the Contemporary gets its own version of that project.
That would make sense! There’s still a bit of work being completed at Grand Floridian, but once the holiday season is over, it would be logical for those same construction crews to move over to the Contemporary. Walt Disney World often reallocates resources from one resort refurbishment to another in almost exactly this manner.
I hope this is what it is. This blog has been bemoaning the datedness and just general ugliness of the Grand Canyon Concourse for years. Long before the Incredibles Injection even began, and we’ve continued complaining about this as the lobby overhaul that’s been sorely needed. In fact, if you’re a regular reader, you can probably skip the rest of this post–it’s nothing we haven’t said before.
The Grand Canyon Concourse is just embarrassing at this point. It’s easily the worst atrium among the flagship Deluxe Resorts. There’s no excuse for Walt Disney World not redoing it back in 2020-2021 when occupancy was low and they had the opportunity before Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary. It had been looking rough for a full decade at that point.
Nothing better encapsulates the visual hodgepodge of the Contemporary better than the above photo (excuse the scrims–they’re old photos, but still completely representative of how the Grand Canyon Concourse currently looks).
In this shot, there are 5 different styles of carpet and 4 different types of tiles–and that’s not counting the deliberate pattern choices around the buffet at Chef Mickey’s. All presumably installed during different projects over the years.
If you were to stand in the center of the hallway above Grand Canyon Concourse, you could count even more disparate styles, as the various gift shops on the other side have their own styles, as does the center of the atrium.
Add those to the different varieties in the hallways around the guest rooms, and you have about a dozen carpet patterns. I’m a big fan of patterns and textures, but not like this. Then there’s the Fantasia gift shop, which was just plopped into the center to increase revenue per square foot, and needs to go.
The restaurants on the other side aren’t much better. Although Contempo Cafe is one of our favorite quick service restaurants at Walt Disney World, the design of the restaurant is nothing special–it looks tired and its only redeeming qualities are the monorail and Mary Blair mural overhead. It’s a similar story with Chef Mickey’s; that is the most iconic character dining experience at Walt Disney World, but one that time has passed by.
The Grand Canyon Concourse looks tired, dated, and visually chaotic. It’s an ugly patchwork of eras, with its style continuing to age and clutter continually added. Ironically, it’s probably the least contemporary resort at Walt Disney World, with very little modernity in its style.
There is no coherent aesthetic to the Grand Canyon Concourse. Its current “style” is the result of Disney’s Contemporary Resort having visual clutter added over the decades, with more and more stuff (PG term) accumulating over the years without any overarching vision.
It’s actually a bit ironic that it’s called the Grand Canyon Concourse, because the layers of clutter are very much like the sedimentary rock layers in the Grand Canyon. Except ugly instead of awe-inspiring. Minor detail.
Many Walt Disney World fans view the Contemporary through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. I cannot imagine being a first-timer with little knowledge of or history with this resort, booking it based on the “Contemporary” name and paying over $1,000 per night to stay in the A-frame. To say I’d be probably be disappointed would be a colossal understatement.
The good news is that the blueprint for an overhaul to the Grand Canyon Concourse already exists! Back ahead of the 50th Anniversary, Walt Disney World redid the main lobby and check-in area and it is gorgeous.
The new-look looby takes a timeless mid-century modern style and combines that with a collection of modern art pieces, Mary Blair-inspired design, and historical, behind-the-scenes photographs of Disney’s Contemporary Resort in development and under construction. It wasn’t that ambitious of an overhaul–it was accomplished pretty quickly–and yet, it made a world of difference.
The Contemporary’s new lobby looks exceptional. It emulates Disneyland Hotel with a pitch-perfect mix of nostalgia and sleek stylization. The Contemporary Resort’s lobby now has personality. Instead of looking like a vaguely modern design from the 2000s, it is imbued with a sharp mid-century modern style. It’s distinctly Disney and will age far better than chasing current trends.
This marriage of a timeless modern aesthetic along with distinctly Disney art and decor makes for a winning combination. This is the perfect rebuttal to all of the talk about how the Contemporary is a conceptually-flawed hotel (a variation of the Tomorrowland problem) that cannot be “fixed.” Yes, it can–and here’s how!
I cannot say enough positive things about what Disney did here. I love the lobby as much as I dislike the Grand Canyon Concourse, and the former is proof-positive that modern Disney could redo the latter and hit it out of the park.
They were standing on the precipice of greatness with the hotel overhaul back in 2021, and I really think what prevented the Grand Canyon Concourse from being part of that was a lack of time. Or perhaps in-fighting about whether it should be another Incredibles-injection or Disneyland Hotel-inspired?
I do find it very interesting that the much more recent Bay Lake Tower room refurbishment (above) pulls from the playbook of the lobby overhaul as opposed to extending the Incredibles Injection. Our strong suspicion is that, although they were completed around the same time, the lobby concept came later.
Walt Disney World first built test rooms for the Incredibles overhaul back in Summer 2019, before that project was delayed a couple of times. It’s entirely possible that the decision to do the Incredibles rooms on the hotel side was made by one regime, and a subsequent one opted for the Mary Blair style in the lobby.
This would explain why a similar style was used in BLT, and also why the atrium wasn’t redone back in 2021. The lobby redo was a shockingly speedy project, but the Grand Canyon Concourse couldn’t have been overhauled in the span of a couple months. So instead, perhaps the project was pushed off until after the Polynesian and Grand Floridian.
To be clear, this is all theorizing on my part. But it’s the type of thing that passes the smell test just in knowing how Walt Disney World plans these projects, the in-fighting that can occur, etc. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, though!
Ultimately, my sincere hope is that the lobby was simply a trial run for grandiose plans for the Grand Canyon Concourse and that is what’s planned for construction lasting through Late 2027. It’s pretty much that, grounds improvements or entrance infrastructure work. While the latter probably needs to happen, so too does a Grand Canyon Concourse overhaul.
We should know more details fairly soon. It’s common for Walt Disney World to do scheduling like this at the end of the year, and we’ve already seen major additions to the 2026-2027 Resort Refurbishments & Hotel Construction Calendar at Walt Disney World. The purpose of doing the scheduling now is giving guests a heads up before booking trips next year.
This actually includes another mystery project, over at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn. Both of these projects have tremendous upside and are coming as resources could conceivably shift from other nearby resort projects that are wrapping up. The big difference is that there’s downside risk with BoardWalk, which already has a perfect lobby. By contrast, I don’t really see Walt Disney World “messing up” anything at the Contemporary. Aside from the construction blight, this project is all upside.
Disney’s Contemporary Resort already has unique architecture and the monorail gliding through the atrium–if it became a love letter to the Vacation Kingdom of the World with a timeless mid-century modern aesthetic, it would be a Walt Disney World fan-favorite–just as is the case with Disneyland Hotel in California!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the construction alert through Late 2027 at Disney’s Contemporary Resort? Any guesses as to what this mystery project could be? Hopeful that the Grand Canyon Concourse will receive an overhaul akin to the lobby? Do you think the resort is dated and tired, or still has a contemporary atmosphere? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Other thoughts or concerns? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!