Walt Disney Imagineering has installed the first of two giant otter figures at Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge, and the new video showing it go in also gives us our best look yet at Otter Springs, the water play area taking shape at the resort’s Wetlands pool complex. The reveal comes in the newest episode of Imagineering’s YouTube series Pardon Our Pixie Dust, and it builds directly on the ground we covered in our first look at Lakeshore Lodge back in April and our insider preview on Bay Lake in May.
Otter Springs is the water play area inside The Wetlands, paired with a dry play space called Heron Shores. Both draw from a specific lyric in Pocahontas’s “Colors of the Wind,” the line where Pocahontas counts the heron and the otter among the animals she considers her friends. When Imagineering walked us through the resort’s inspiration in May, they pointed to Pocahontas as one of the nature-focused Disney films shaping the design, alongside Bambi and Brother Bear. Seeing that connection show up directly in the names of these two play areas confirms it was more than a mood board reference.
The otter installed during filming is named Addy. She lies on her back, holds a giant carved scallop in her paws, and sits next to a blue water slide guests will use to splash down into Otter Springs. A second otter named Bonnie is planned for the space as well, though she had not gone in yet at the time of filming. Despite the deeply grained, hand-carved wood look, Addy is not made of wood at all. Associate Show Set Designer Daniel Trent walked the cameras through the material on site: fiberglass-reinforced plastic panels, or FRP, shaped and painted to read as timber from a few feet away.
Lakeshore Lodge sits under Chris Beatty, Portfolio Executive Creative Director for Walt Disney Imagineering, who has led the resort’s reveals throughout the year, including the Lake Houses concept art shown at D23. Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, the architecture firm behind the original Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, is the lead designer on the building itself. Imagineer Dean Huspen has also spoken publicly about the resort’s construction progress earlier this year. Daniel Trent’s work on Addy is a good example of how many hands, from architects to show set designers, are shaping this resort at once.
Our take: We called this one in May without fully realizing it. When Imagineering told us Pocahontas was part of the creative foundation for Lakeshore Lodge, we assumed that meant a color palette or a general mood, not a play area named directly after a lyric from the film. That is the kind of specific, considered reference we said we would be watching for.
This is the same Pardon Our Pixie Dust episode that gave us our first look at the Atrium Courtyard entrance to The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge remains on track for a summer 2027 opening with 967 rooms along the shores of Bay Lake.
Meet Addy and Bonnie, the New Otter Figures Coming to Disney’s Lakeshore Lodge
