Walt Disney World has ongoing hotel construction projects at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts through 2027, and the work has really kicked into high gear recently. While staying on the Skyliner route recently, we made a quick detour to Crescent Lake check on the work.
Let’s start with the good news about Disney’s Yacht Club Resort, which is that all of this work is part of a bigger-picture overhaul that has involved everything from guest rooms to the porte cochere to Stormalong Bay. All of that work already wrapped up last year, and the results are excellent.
In particular, we love the new guest rooms at Yacht Club. “New” is probably an overstatement since it was only a soft goods refresh, but the results are excellent. Lots of little improvements, more pops of color, and a great balance of modern luxury and Disney details. These are among our favorite rooms in all of Walt Disney World. Check out our Review: Refined Redone Rooms at WDW’s Most Sophisticated Resort for tons of photos and comprehensive thoughts.
During our stays and visits to Yacht Club late last year, we remarked in multiple posts that the construction impact to the exterior was minimal and unobtrusive at the time. Well, that has changed, which is precisely why we’re revisiting this topic with fresh photos from April 2026.
Before digging in, let’s cover Walt Disney World’s official ‘construction bulletin’ regarding Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts:
Disney’s Yacht Club Resort is undergoing visible exterior maintenance through late 2026, which will impact views from various locations throughout the resort, and at times, require alternate paths of travel. As part of this work, from mid-January 2026 through early May, the Admiral leisure pool will be closed for routine maintenance. Guests may see or hear work in the area during daytime hours until the refurbishment is complete.
Disney’s Beach Club Resort is undergoing visible exterior maintenance through late 2027, which will impact views from various locations throughout the Resort hotel and, at times, require alternate paths of travel. As part of this work, from mid-January 2026 through early May, the Tidal leisure pool will be closed for routine maintenance. Guests may see or hear work in the area during daytime hours until the refurbishment is complete.
In addition to this, Yachtsman Steakhouse will also receive a refurbishment during this multi-year, multi-phase overhaul. Yachtsman Steakhouse will close in May 2026 for a refresh, with reopening expected by August 2026. Guests may see or hear daytime work until the refurbishment is complete.
An exact closure date has not yet been announced for Yachtsman Steakhouse. However, the restaurant has no hours posted or dining reservations available starting May 11, 2026. Given that, it’s highly likely that May 10th will be the last day the restaurant is open until August, although that’s subject to change (and the calendar is sometimes wrong).
Currently, Crew’s Cup Lounge is closed, with reopening expected in May 2026. No specific date has been announced, but the lounge has hours posted starting June 1, 2026. That could just be boilerplate, so we wouldn’t put too much weight in it. In all likelihood, Crew’s Cup will reopen right around when Yachtsman Steakhouse closes.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at current exterior work at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts:
This facade project started last summer, and was barely visible during stops and stays at Crescent Lake then.
We didn’t notice any work at all during our Christmas-time stay at Yacht Club. It’s possible we just missed it, but we drove and parked at Yacht Club and spent extensive time around the hotel, and didn’t once see anything. What we did notice was the two times in one night that the hotel was evacuated because the fire alarm went off, but that’s another topic entirely (see Our Two Hotel Horror Stories at Walt Disney World).
That’s precisely why I’m circling back to this construction now–because we called this a non-issue in a few updates last year, and that’s no longer an accurate assessment. I was honestly a bit taken aback by just how much scaffolding there was around both resorts. The work was very visible, and not as staggered as I would’ve expected to minimize the appearance of these resorts being active construction zones.
One thing we want to preemptively address is the yellow appearance of Beach Club. This is making the rounds on social media, with some fans questioning whether Walt Disney World is preparing to give the resort a new, pastel palette. That yellow paint is primer, not the finished product.
I guess it’s always possible for a Caribbean Beach-style multi-color appearance, but I highly doubt it. (Even though yellow and red are in the hotel’s logo.) Beach Club’s light blue color is iconic, and part of the resort’s visual identity. I’d be absolutely shocked if Beach Club was repainted from light blue to yellow, and it’s pretty obvious this is just primer once you see it up close and in-person.
As noted above, the Tidal quiet pool at Beach Club is currently closed, and has been since mid-January. This is supposed to wrap up by early May 2026, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets extended a bit longer. That leisure pool is located in the garden over here facing Crescent Lake, and that courtyard is entirely walled-off. It does look like this portion of Beach Club is further along than Yacht Club, but I still wouldn’t be surprised if this facade work over here takes more than another month.
In terms of the impact to guests staying at Yacht & Beach Club, what you see is what you get. As the photos should illustrate, scaffolding stands out while walking around Crescent Lake, as there’s a lot of it! Presumably, this will shift around over the next year or so as different sections of the Y&BC facade are repaired and replaced.
The extent to which that visual blight is noticeable or disruptive will depend on the guest and location of the work. We’ve been around Yacht & Beach Club countless times in the last ~5 years when there was exterior work happening, and I wouldn’t say it really stuck out from the outside on any of those trips. It was visible, sure, but it didn’t negatively impact our experience in the past.
I’m not so sure I still feel that way. When I saw all this work, my first thought was that I was glad we stayed at Yacht Club last Christmas as opposed to right now. (Riviera or BoardWalk are good alternatives that are largely construction free, although BoardWalk may not stay that way.)
All the scaffolding isn’t the end of the world, but I personally wouldn’t want to pay Yacht & Beach Club rates this summer to encounter all of that, plus the closure of Yachtsman Steakhouse. That’s doubly true given how many resorts recently wrapped up projects and are currently construction-free.
To each their own, though. If you want to enjoy Stormalong Bay or are just a big fan of Yacht & Beach Club, all of this may not matter, or the upside might outweigh the downside of the construction. The above photos should pretty much speak for themselves, so you can judge accordingly and come to your own conclusions.
I can’t speak to whether the rooms behind the scaffolding have been taken out of guest inventory, but I would hope so. The exterior work is incredibly impactful to those particular rooms, as it makes the balcony completely off limits and unusable. It’s highly unlikely that Disney is placing guests in the rooms behind the scaffolding, and would be disappointing if they are.
With that said, I will note that we had a Yacht Club a few years ago when we arrived in our room, and construction crews were actually on our balcony, which was out of commission. That was relatively brief, and perhaps was only occurring during what they thought was the housekeeping turnover period.
Construction equipment was parked outside and below our window for the duration of the stay and in use during daytime hours. The distinction between then and now is that there was no scaffolding outside our room; just cherry pickers that were lowered for most of our stay after that initial arrival.
If we were regular guests or planned on using our balcony, we probably would’ve gone down to the front desk and requested a different room. The impacted area of Yacht Club was fairly small and the crews were right there, so being relocated probably wouldn’t have been an issue. Even so, the work didn’t end up bothering us too much.
Point being, we’d recommend erring on the side of caution and placing a room request to be in a location away from the exterior construction at Yacht & Beach Club if you have a trip this summer. It may be unnecessary overkill since, again, we’d assume these rooms have been taken out of inventory. But it’s better to be safe than sorry.
This is a scenario where I’d make the room request prior to arrival, and then stop by the front desk before entering the room to confirm that the room assignment is away from the exterior refurbishment. Making change requests before entering the room is always a better safe than sorry best practice, even if not strictly necessary in a scenario such as this.
Another option is booking a stay over at BoardWalk as opposed to Yacht & Beach Club, but that isn’t really a viable recommendation if you’re staying at Y&BC for Stormalong Bay. It’s also worth noting that BoardWalk has its own construction warning for now through late 2026. That doesn’t specify the exact nature of the work (hopefully filling the restaurant vacancies!), but we didn’t spot any construction over there (…yet?).
One thing I keep coming back to when watching the work at Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resorts is just how common it is for construction and maintenance to be occurring at these resorts. It seems like there have been nearly perpetual projects at Yacht & Beach Club for the last ~5 years. I cannot fathom how many tens of millions of dollars Disney has spent on the exteriors of just Yacht & Beach Club Resorts in the last several years.
Fans bemoan the boxy style of Walt Disney World’s newer resorts, but I wonder whether skyrocketing maintenance and labor costs are a big factor in that decision. Ditto Universal opting to build its in-park hotel at Epic Universe on the cheap, as opposing to making it a flagship luxury resort. It’s telling that even the freer-spending OLC opted to build the more basic and boring Fantasy Springs Hotel overlooking Tokyo DisneySea as opposed to outdoing Hotel MiraCosta.
Sadly, I suspect rising refurbishment costs–due to materials and construction crews–mean we’ll never see anything that ornate and labor-intensive again. That’s a real shame for fans of themed design, but I get the practicalities of the decision. There’s definitely something to be said for a hotel not needing facade work every few years, and the guest impact and expense that entails!
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Your Thoughts
What do you think of the exterior refurbishment at Yacht & Beach Resorts? Have you experienced construction impacts at either of these resorts in 2026? How impactful was the work on your stay? Gotten one of the new rooms at Yacht Club? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? 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!
