The major LGBTQ weekend in Orlando held each year the first of June is about to make major changes. This could be the biggest wrench thrown into the Gay Disney Weekend since One Mighty Weekend left the stage for One Magical Weekend to take over. This time it’s the “GayDays” group that is making the biggest change and planning on a date two months away and a new host hotel. This could not only affect international visitors who come to the event but many who look forward to the annual tradition of the first weekend in June.

The new host hotel will move to the Wyndham Orlando Resort International Drive and the new event dates will be from August 13-19, 2019. This is somewhat shocking to the lgbtq community who frequents the event each year but we have to give them credit for telling us in advance.

In a statement from the co-owner of “Gay Days” that makes no sense to us at all   Chris Alexander-Manley was quoted as saying  ‘œWhat that offers us now, with St. Pete Pride at the end of June and San Diego Pride and L.A. Pride they are all at the end of June and in July, we can go to a lot of the early summer events to promote.” Does he not realize that Market Days in Chicago is that same weekend and that San Diego Pride is in July?

One attendee from the U.K. said “We won’t be going in August! It’s the busiest and most expensive month for us to travel from the U.K. as  it’s the school holidays peak season.” He makes a good point.

The “GayDays” group claims that moving the event to later in the summer and changing the host hotel will allow them to offer better room rates and offer better parking. In their defense they do have major parking problems at the current location.

We were around for “Gay Days Las Vegas” and “Gay Days Ft. Lauderdale” as they tested the waters. The first “Gay Days Las Vegas” was a pretty good showing but then they changed the dates to the week AFTER gay pride in Las Vegas. Maybe they did that to offer cheaper rooms but we can see where that ended up and it was not good. The same will most likely happen with an August date for the hotel events.

Keep in mind this is the only group pulling out of the big gay weekend in June. The overall success of “Gay Days Orlando” is from many events going on at the same time including:
#1 The Parliament House Orlando hosts concerts and has some of the best entertainment during the busy weekend. They plan on having a concert this year with Deborah Cox. Last year they had Macy Gray.
#2 Riptide at Typhoon Lagoon and the circuit events such as One Magical Weekend and past promoters such as Johnny Chisholm and One Mighty Weekend.
#3 The parks such as Walt Disney World, Seaworld and Epcot Center where LGBTQ can be seen wearing red shirts as unity.
#4 The local bars in Orlando all take part in what is one of the biggest internationally-known weekends of the year.

Girls in Wonderland and One Magical Weekend are committed to keeping their events during the first weekend of June for 2019. One Magical Weekend co-owner Tom Christ says it has been the same weekend for 28 years and the date is the date which was chosen in 1991.

He has a point that coming to Orlando to celebrate and express our Pride at Disney has held for many years. It’s Pride month in June and August is more of a time to travel somewhere such as Europe or a cooler climate such as Chicago.

The Parliament House and Orlando bars such as Southern Nights will probably welcome the idea of all of these events taking places because it’s more business for them at different times. The only bigger problem could be a backlash causing the entire tradition to end.

We have also seen comments raising an issue that a new hotel management group has taken over this DoubleTree at Seaworld and that could be the reason behind the change. While Hilton Hotels is the brand behind the DoubleTree hotel chain the management company recently changed hands to Spire Hospitality. They’ve recently won awards at this hotel and are most likely wanting to raise the price but we’ve also heard someone else could be booked already for 2019.

If you head over to the Spire Hospitality site it has a news post “DoubleTree by Hilton Orlando at SeaWorld Recognized With Prestigious ‘˜Best of Meetings Today 2017’ Award.” We should all be on the lookout to see what conference is booked during June of 2019. We’ve been told that they already booked a group at the DoubleTree and didn’t contact “GayDays” beforehand if this is the case it’s a pretty horrible thing to do. We reached out to the hotel group to find out any more information and will update.