| |
|
at Yesterland.com
|
Ronald’s Fun House
McDonald’s at Downtown Disney
|
|
This is no ordinary McDonald’s Restaurant.
This is “Ronald’s Fun House.”
Take a look!
|
McDonald’s playful clock tower, with Golden Arches
|
Hamburglar in the landscaping
|
And Grimace too
|
High-capacity, two-step order and pickup
|
McArt in the order area
|
Happy Meal box overhead “monorail”
|
Magician Ronald
|
Self-serve beverage station
|
French fry stripes on the ceiling
|
McLamp
|
Grimace’s Game Room
|
Birdie’s Music Room
|
Not just regular dessert, but premium dessert!
|
Grab ’n’ Go at the Snack Center, just for beverages and desserts
|
|
|
The Downtown Disney McDonald’s Restaurant opened December 1997 in a newly-built building in the Marketplace section of Walt Disney World’s shopping and dining area.
The restaurant was one of the results of a 10-year global marketing alliance between McDonald’s Corporation and The Walt Disney Company, announced May 23, 1996.
(For more about the alliance, see McDonald’s Food at Walt Disney World).
Around two months before the new McDonald’s opened, the Orlando Sentinel ran an article (“McDonald’s plans to open a restaurant, complete with themed rooms, at Downtown Disney this December,” September 27, 1997) that included this description of what was planned:
Themed “Ronald’s Fun House,” the restaurant features specially designed rooms and decor inspired by Ronald McDonald and other McDonaldland characters.
Ronald’s Fun House will feature “Ronald’s Dining Room,” with a formal 20-foot serpentine dining table, “Birdie’s Music Room,” featuring a giant french fry organ, and “Grimace’s Game Room,” with an interactive video/game wall.
Located on the east side of Downtown Disney, the new restaurant will be open for business 365 days a year. “We are excited about the opportunity to bring the food, folks and fun of McDonald’s to guests at Walt Disney World Resort,” said Brad Ball, McDonald’s senior vice president, U.S. marketing.
The restaurant was a success.
At the mid-point of the 10-year McDonald’s-Disney alliance, the trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News (January 22, 2001) discussed the “mega-marketing alliance.”
In the article, Jack Greenberg, who was then Chairman and CEO of McDonald’s, pointed out that the McDonald’s in Downtown Disney “is among the top five McDonald’s restaurants in the United States and in the top 1 percent in the world in sales volume.”
When the 10 years were up, the two corporations did not renew.
For a while, it seemed that the popular Golden Arches would survive at Downtown Disney anyway.
But in early February 2010, Disney announced that the location would close forever at the end of April, to be replaced in fall 2010 by a new restaurant combining two brands under the same roof.
One would be Pollo Campero, a Latin American chicken chain that most Americans had never heard of.
The other would be a new restaurant concept—so new that didn’t even have a name yet—featuring “fresh, healthy food.”
|
Transformation of McDonald’s into new eateries (November 2010 photo)
|
|
Pollo Campero, founded and based in Guatamala, sells Latin-flavored chicken—fried chicken, grilled chicken, sandwiches, bowls, and burritos.
Side dishes include yuca fries and sweet plantains.
For dessert, there’s flan and tres leches cake.
The first Pollo Campero location opened in 1971, coincidentally the same year that Walt Disney World opened.
By the time that Disney announced that Pollo Campero was coming to Downtown Disney, Pollo Campero had grown into the world’s largest Latin chicken restaurant chain, serving more than 85 million customers each year.
As of November 5, 2010, Pollo Campero has 334 restaurants in 13 countries.
These restaurants are not just in the Americas.
Pollo Campero is even in Indonesia, China, Bahrain, and India.
In comparison, McDonald’s has more that 32,000 restaurants in 117 countries, serving more than 60 million customers each day.
The name for the fresh food concept is Fresh A-Peel, “featuring fresh salads, sandwiches, fruits and healthy snacks,” as well as “vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, low-sodium or organic offerings.”
The Downtown Disney location is the first Fresh A-Peel.
The exact opening date for the Fresh A-Peel and Pollo Campero combination restaurant has not yet been announced.
It should open before the end of 2010, possibly even before the end of November.
|
The former McDonald’s clock tower as a sign tower
|
|
The new restaurant in the former McDonald’s at Downtown Disney is owned and operated by Levy Campero, a subsidiary of Levy Family Partners, LLC.
In 2005, Chicago-based Levy Campero bought the franchise rights to operate Pollo Campero restaurants in Florida and Illinois.
The Downtown Disney location will be Levy Campero’s sixth restaurant.
Levy is no stranger to Downtown Disney.
Another Levy company, Chicago-based Levy Restaurants, operates three table-service locations at Walt Disney World: Fulton’s Crab House, Wolfgang Puck Grand Cafe, and Portobello—all in walking distance from the new Pollo Campero.
If the McDonald’s over by the All-Star Resorts is too far away, there’s another McDonald’s outside Walt Disney World in the Crossroads at Lake Buena Vista shopping center—just a mile away from the defunct “Ronald’s Fun House.”
Have you seen these three Yesterland articles about McDonald’s and Disney?
|
Click here to discuss this page on the Yesterland Discussion Forum at MiceChat!
© 2010 Werner Weiss — Disclaimers, Copyright, and Trademarks
Updated November 5, 2010.
15 photographs of McDonald’s at Downtown Disney, Walt Disney World by Werner Weiss, March 2010.
2 photographs of Fresh A-Peel and Pollo Campero at Downtown Disney, Walt Disney World by Werner Weiss, November 2010.
|
|
