Walt Disney World, December 1971
Here are the last three scans from a lot of slides from December, 1971, featuring scenes from the Polynesian Village Resort at Walt Disney World - this is kind of a continuation of THIS POST from June.
This is another angle showing a few watercraft that guests could use - sailboats, outrigger canoes, and in the foreground, a funny little Bob-A-Round Boat. It is my goal to someday be the first person to take a Bob-A-Round Boat around the world. Maybe I'll even sail through the Panama Canal! Or should I just go 'Round the Horn?
I presume that this is part of the hotel complex - not exactly the most lovely structure ever, but perhaps a nice variation on the super modern Contemporary Hotel. I'd like to believe that the young plants are taro roots, so that guests could make their own poi.
And finally, one last (really!) look at the sailboats, with Tigger as your spirit guide. Clearly the Polynesian consisted of a cluster of various buildings. These days most people don't realize that guests - even the pale, trembling visitors from the frozen north - were required to wear accurate Polynesian native garb. It wasn't pretty.
7 comments:
Major-
And just think, you could rent a Bob-A-Round boat for $8.00/hour - complete with stereo system-!
Thanks, Major.
But Piglet is my spirit guide. Where is he? Help! I'm lost!
I like how the Cinderella Castle and monorail track is visible in the distance in the Bob-A-Round boat pic. Thanks, Major.
I want to know if the Bob-A-Round boats could be spun wildly like a tea cup from the Mad Tea Party attraction? I hope so.
I also want to know how they keep the alligators from coming up onto those lakeside docks and walking paths today? The Polynesian Resort looks like it would be a fairly dangerous place to stay now.
Ahh - that's Tigger's head! In the previous post, I had a hard time figuring out what I was looking at, and after you ID's the character as Tigger, I took the indistinct shape and interpreted it as a full-body image of Tigger with his arms outstretched and jumping. This makes much more sense. (I still wish it were Spike the Bee, though.)
Based on the angle of the monorail track in the background, I'd guess the second photo is of what was then known as the Tahiti longhouse (renamed "Aoteoroa" in 1999), located in the SW corner of the resort. We are at the NE corner of the building looking west. The odd angle almost totally obscures the distinctive, sharply-peaked roof and unmasks the structure for what it really is - a rectangular, modularly-constructed modern hotel building.
TM!, actually, the boat stood still and the world spun wildly about you.
Nanook, according to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $8 an hour works out to around $48 an hour in today’s dough. YIKES.
K. Martinez, Piglet is cute, but he is kind of hopeless as a spirit guide. You should switch the Shere Khan!
TokyoMagic!, the Bob-A-Round boats did spin wildly, whether you wanted them to or not. 100 RPM! After that tragic even from last year, I’ve been wondering if they had regular sweeps for gators? If so I’ve never heard of them.
Chuck, yep, it seems like all of the sails featured just the heads of characters. I wonder if this was partly to make it easier to ID them at a distance, in case a security person saw that “Tigger is capsizing, get out there with a motor boat right away!”. “Aoteoroa” has way too many vowels for my liking. Two vowels: OK. Three: I’ll allow it. Four: Now you’re pushing it. But SIX? I'm writing to my congressperson. Somehow I am not very surprised that the longhouse is a modularly-constructed building - it reminds me of the Fantasyland structures, which are all big industrial sheds, cleverly dressed.
The "longhouses" were actually built offsite like the Contemporary, except the units were stacked up on site, rather than slid into the A-Frame structure. The "garden wing" of the Contemporary was assembled in the same way.
TM! --
There are rope fences around the Seven Seas Lagoon now. They're not well-themed, but they're not particularly intrusive, and we all know they're deeply important.
http://www.insidethemagic.net/2016/09/video-get-an-up-close-look-at-the-new-anti-gator-fences-at-walt-disney-world/
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