The party's over for Disney's Pleasure Island

Dewayne Bevil | Sentinel Staff Writer

September 24, 2008

We are in the end days for the six nightclubs of Pleasure Island. Patrons and performers of the Downtown Disney entertainment complex, which opened in 1989, have been gathering for final rounds of merriment before the last-ever last calls Saturday.

Since the shutdown announcement in June, some mourners have shifted into reminiscing mode.

Mary Thompson Hunt, who has logged thousands of improv performances at P.I.'s Comedy Warehouse, recalls the excitement of the early years.

"Every night the parking lot was full, there were fireworks every night," she said. "This place was a party every night, and it stayed that way for a long time."

But rumors of imminent demise dogged the clubs for years. The slow, steady decrease of atmospheric extras on the island -- fewer street performers, the end of the New Year's Eve every night promotion, the demolition of the West End Stage, eliminated searchlights and so on -- only fed that speculation.

Many observers thought Comedy Warehouse and the Adventurers Club -- the two clubs that featured actors -- would be spared.

Hunt's hopes were dashed when she was called into an all-Island mandatory meeting. She knew it would be bad news. It was.

Playing it cool

Greg Triggs performed on the Island for 13 years before moving in 2003 to New York City, where he continues to work in the entertainment field. He wonders if more changes should have been made over the years.

"I think that in the nightclub business, it's not your job to react to what's cool, it's your job to decide what's going to be cool," he said. "Unless you keep exploring that, at some point, people are going to say, 'Well, I've been there. Where else should I go?' "

Nightlife options in the tourism corridor have increased -- not only with the arrival of Universal CityWalk in 1999, but also on Disney property. The company opened Disney's BoardWalk in 1996 and added West End, adjacent to Pleasure Island in 1997. Neither have a cover charge. When the P.I. opened, the movie theaters and Planet Hollywood didn't exist.

"One of the things that Pleasure Island had going for it, and CityWalk still will: Where else can you get that saturation of club experience? Probably in Las Vegas and CityWalk," Triggs said.

Orlando architect Jeffrey Lurie began frequenting Mannequins Dance Palace, a P.I. original, while employed at Disney in the '90s.

"As much as I have traveled and seen clubs in other cities, I've never seen anything like Mannequins," he said. "It had the rotating floor, the scenery that goes up and down out of the ceiling, the big stage."

Mannequins typically hosted a mix of cast members, locals and conventioneers.

"I think that's part of the fun of being a vacation spot," Lurie said. "You don't really care what other people are going to say or do."

He had seen Pleasure Island "scaled back," he said, so the clubs' closure wasn't a shock.

"The price didn't change, but it felt like you were getting less," he said.

This is the end

The Adventurers Club, one of the original establishments, offers distinctive entertainment. The setting is a 1930s organization of world travelers. Guests and character actors interact during playlets with off-script, slightly naughty shenanigans thrown in. There are club songs, oaths, salutes and inside jokes, which built cult-ish loyalty and a "hidden treasure" status.