Empress Lilly

**The Empress Lilly** originally known as **The Floating Arts Palace** or **The Bailey-Finortner Floating Arts Palace** is a fictitious boat from Pleasure Island.

## Description

The Empress Lilly was a 19th century sternwheeler riverboat which was 220 feet long and 62 feet wide.

### Features

#### Main Deck

* **Baton Rouge Lounge**

* **Steerman's Quarters**

#### Promenade deck

* **Fisherman's Deck**

* **Empress Room**

## History

The sternwheeler riverboat known as The Floating Arts Palace was launched and christened in the year 1886. The boat originally was used to traverse the Mississippi River which it did for twenty-five years. In the October of 1909, the vessel transported William Howard Taft from Yazoo City to New Orleans. In 1911 it was purchased by the wealthy Merriweather Adam Pleasure, founder of the *Adventurers Club* and member of the *Society of Explorers and Adventurers*.

While Merriweather began settling the isle of Ferderber Peninsula in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, he used the Floating Arts Palace as a home for himself, his family and as a place of entertainment for his guests. In the July of 1918 the Pleasure family moved into an estate on what had become Pleasure Island leaving the Floating Arts Palace to be unmoored and transformed into a summer houseboat. The Pleasures used the boat to traverse the waterways of Central Florida until Merriweather Adam Pleasure's death in 1941.

In 1971, the boat was restored and obtained by the *Walt Disney Company* who renamed her to *The Empress Lilly* for Walt Disney's wife Lillian Disney. In 1987, the remains of Pleasure Island were uncovered by archaeologists with the Walt Disney Company going on to restore the island between 1988 and 1989. The Empress Lilly would be docked at the reopened Pleasure Island where it held many restaurants.

### Development history

The Empress Lilly was not a true boat, instead being a boat-shaped building built in the concrete of Bay Lake with a moving paddlewheel designed to make it look authentic. The Lilly was actually a feature of Downtown Disney which predated Pleasure Island and was later retconned into its history. As in the ship's backstory, the ship was named for Lillian Disney but was also in-reality christened by her. After Pleasure Island's closure and the transformation into Disney Springs, it was repurposed into *The Paddlefish*.

## Appearances and allusions

### The Boathouse

There is a wooden carving depicting to sailors unloading the Empress Lilly in this Disney Springs restaurant.

### Pleasure Island

The Empress Lilly was an element from the original Walt Disney World Village Marketplace that was incorporated into the new Pleasure Island storyline that originally opened in 1976. It originally housed four different restaurants on its decks until a major refurbishment began in 1995 when Levy's Restaurants turned the entire ship into a Fulton's Crab House restaurant.

## Connections

### Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

In the park mythos, ship namesake Lillian Disney's father Willard Pehall Bounds served as U.S. Marshall in Rainbow Ridge, Arizona where he provided the *Big Thunder Mining Company* with their licence to operate their railroads. Said mining company also happened to be run by one Barnabas T. Bullion, another member of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers.

## References

1. ↑ http://www.mainstgazette.com/2009/08/estate-suitable-for-someone-of-their.html
2. ↑ http://www.fromscreentotheme.com/FunFindFridayLanding1.aspx
3. ↑ https://wanderingindisney.com/2020/03/27/the-story-of-big-thunder-mountain-railroad/