Fox 13 Now:
A hotel on Walt Disney World property that took a beating from the 2004 hurricanes and never reopened is finally getting a complete makeover.
The new owners of the Holiday Inn on Hotel Plaza Boulevard say they are spending $35 million remodeling the property, which is within walking distance of Downtown Disney.
The 14-story hotel is now booking guests for stays starting Nov. 15.
“I don’t call this ‘renovation’ because it isn’t,” said Doug Smith, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. “It’s ‘start from scratch.'”
When built in 1972, the hotel was a Howard Johnson’s. At the time, HoJo’s was an iconic American brand, and the Lake Buena Vista hotel was its flagship, said Michael Terry, a professor at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management who back then ran a Howard Johnson’s hotel in Miami.
Photo: Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel.