Originally Posted By Christi22222 Maybe we should buy it a Corvette and send it to Vegas and then in will come back with a little perspective on aging! Even buildings can have a mid-life crisis, right?
Originally Posted By disneykid90 Carpet is tired, walls are tired, overall theming and hodge podged and tired. All the shops on the concourse as stated make it like a bad shopping mall that is disney only product. The arcade's location does NOT help that view of it in the slightest. The mixture of restaurants are random. However I have always loved that resort as I have grown up riding the monorail through it. With the right touches it could be the best errr....under the GF in my book. This one is all going to fall under the opinion and taste
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer All of Disney is having a identity crisis. They are trying to be too much of themselves, without being unique, which is, inherently Disney.
Originally Posted By Christi22222 >>They are trying to be too much of themselves, without being unique, which is, inherently Disney. << Lol! Okay EE, I actually don't know what you mean, and really want to. Please explain to me.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I've always wanted to stay at the Contemporary and still do. WDW would not be WDW without it.
Originally Posted By tonyanton they seemed to be moving in the right direction with the refurb a few years back, and then they seemed to get it all wrong with that shop right in the middle of the concourse. (not to mention the new tower, which I still don't like in relation to the rest of the bldgs).
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer >>>I've always wanted to stay at the Contemporary and still do. WDW would not be WDW without it.<<< Why, though? What does it do for you that another Hotel can't?
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer >>>Lol! Okay EE, I actually don't know what you mean, and really want to. Please explain to me.<<< They are trying to shove the Disney brand down our throats because they thing we are receptive to that, when in reality, Disney's true "magic" is the level of quality and level of DIFFERENT stories they can tell us, rather than the same old stuff and franchises.
Originally Posted By Bob Paris 1 "I've always wanted to stay at the Contemporary and still do. WDW would not be WDW without it." Me too. It's just that the Contemporary has ALWAYS been the iconic hotel for me at wdw. EE - you may be too young to remember when WDW was basically the MK, TCH and the Poly(I don't include the other hotel as this really didn't factor into most people's consciousness). TCH was just this AMAZING structure that THE MONORAIL ACTUALLY WENT THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF!!! It was always my fantasy to stay there as a kid and I guess childhood fantasies remain very strong.
Originally Posted By brotherdave Indeed, Bob! The Contemporary was the flagship hotel for Walt Disney World when it opened, and it still has a grand mystique simply because of the monorail gliding through it. Ever notice when riding the monorail through the hotel that most everyone in the cab begins to get excited? I know my family always does! It is just so unique to the rest of the Disney empire. There are no other hotels that even remotely compare to it. Yes, others are connected by monorail, but only ONE has a monorail going THROUGH it. This is a beautiful example of the forward thinking that was alive during the early years of development of WDW. EPCOT, the city, was still a possibility when the Contemporary was built. It's stylized structure was supposed to be a "pre-cursor" of what was supposed to come later. Of course, it did come, but not as a city, but what would become EPCOT Center. But at least the monorail was a part of that project unlike the rest of today's WDW development.
Originally Posted By MousDad I too confess, that if I were to pick one of the monorail hotels to stay at, it would be the Contemporary. And EE, if you ask me why, I'll just say "Why do you go to bed at night clutching your plush, thinking of Wishes, with a tear running down your cheek?", so don't bother. [Actually, the real reason is that I want to sneak in to the Bay Lake Temple and breathe the air on the inside. Life goal of mine, sorry.]
Originally Posted By leemac <<I've always wanted to stay at the Contemporary and still do. WDW would not be WDW without it.>> Not sure how many other folks have stayed in the Tower itself but it is the monorail and the Grand Canyon Concourse that make it a hugely disruptive experience. The noise that swells in the A-frame is very annoying on the lower level rooms - and when MK is open until very late and you have monorails running until 1am or so it isn't much fun. That is precisely why all of the other deluxe hotels with large scale lobbies (like DAKL/WL/GC/GF) either have no rooms on the lobby itself or very few.
Originally Posted By Expo_Seeker40 I spent some time wandering around the Contemporary...and even though I'm not staying in BLT for a couple more weeks, I had to scope it out. The most impressive interior parts of the contemporary are the first three floors. Yup....not even the Grand Canyon concourse....the first three floors after their refurb a few years ago has an amazing consistent theme. It is as fresh and contemporary to us as it was to it's first guests in 1971. More importantly it is Disney without being Disney! The sloped angular walls of the first floor, the check in desk, the wave entrance...the low-level chairs and tables, large staircases, massive hallways on the second and third floor...the lighting and choice of typography...all welcomes you to a earth toned and cool themed resort as if 1971 management opened it in 2008! Then you get upstairs to the 4th floor and oh my god......hello Walt Disney World international airport! A noisy area where sweatshirt moms rant over the prices in the fantasia gift shop, where little resort merch is found at the few gift shops....the mural is lost in a clutter of stuff...and then you got the cramped outer rim, the counter service, and then chef mickey's shoved in the back...oh and let's not try to talk about the 1990s blue and pink carpeting on the monorail platform. What works: the awesome new carpeting they chose for the fantasia gift shop...it's earth toned like the mural, it's 21st century contemporary, and it just plain works. The mickey wreath is a welcome change over the gaudy poseidon adventure tree that used to be in the grand canyon in the 70s and early 80s. What needs to change: bring back the open mall look of the contemporary....keep the new carpeting, but use new booths and even trees to help bring those browns, blacks, and greens to an area that was once exorcist yellow and green. Chef Mickeys? What? no...this hotel has a THEME....a brand new restaurant taking up a ton of floor space with the same carpeting found on the fantasia side of the mural. Not harsh iron and metal...more wooden furniture, padded booths, etc. Trees, flowers, and new table lamps (remember the old ones they used to have in the 80s?) new earth toned carpeting on the monorial platform. Outer Rim gets extended and becomes the Navaho Lounge or the Seminole Lounge and uses native american prints done in a modern design. Better clothing stores...new versions of the contemporary man, woman, boy, and girl all with modern resort themed merch as well as modern merch with WDW stuff on it....then each hotel has a separate disney store within it where you can buy princess crap and god only knows what in case you got hung over and couldn't make it to the park. The arcade.....yeah there's been one in the hotel since the 70s, but really? Come on........no arcade in my proposal. Sorry kids. Bring back the 70s logo in chocolate brown with silver. Get rid of the 90s logo still found on the floormatts and concrete.
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer >>>Chef Mickeys? What? no...this hotel has a THEME....a brand new restaurant taking up a ton of floor space with the same carpeting found on the fantasia side of the mural. Not harsh iron and metal...more wooden furniture, padded booths, etc. Trees, flowers, and new table lamps (remember the old ones they used to have in the 80s?) new earth toned carpeting on the monorial platform.<<< What about those wonderful brown lucite lighting "trees" from the 70's?
Originally Posted By EPCOT Explorer >>>Chef Mickeys? What? no...this hotel has a THEME....a brand new restaurant taking up a ton of floor space with the same carpeting found on the fantasia side of the mural. Not harsh iron and metal...more wooden furniture, padded booths, etc. Trees, flowers, and new table lamps (remember the old ones they used to have in the 80s?) new earth toned carpeting on the monorial platform.<<< What about those wonderful brown lucite lighting "trees" from the 70's?
Originally Posted By TP2000 I idolized the Contemporary in the 70's and 80's. It was the epitome of slick Disney World coolness that Disneyland could never achieve in my mind back then. And then, finally, I actually stayed there in the late 1990's and I was horrified to realize the place was a dump. Once you settled in for a day or two, it looked and felt like a cheap cement 1970's Holiday Inn that had seen one too many Shriners conventions. I strolled through a couple years ago, and while the carpet had changed and the gift shop had been updated since my stay, it still felt dumpy and disjointed and rather sad. It's got a TON of potential if done right, especially if they really rethought it top to bottom and brought it up to 21st century standards in design and amenities. Keep the Blair mural and the monorail station and the skeleton of the structure, and rethink and replace everything else, from door handles to furniture to uniforms to menus. It would be fun to get a hip designer to riff on the kitshy 1970's stuff it used to have, like a 21st century remake of the lucite lobby trees. There's tons of potential there. At the very least, could someone PLEASE put the California Grill out of its misery? It's not 1996 any more. Bill Clinton isn't in the White House, Friends went off the air over a decade ago, and the Spice Girls are nearing menopause. The California Grill should be packed up piece by piece and sent to the Smithsonian as a cultural example to future Americans of "Trendy Mid-1990's Restaurant". But to keep hosting customers looking the way it does is sad and pathetic. The Contemporary overall needs help though, if not a total rethink.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Why would I still love to stay in the Contemporary? Same reason as always... it has the monorail running through it. Gliding into the Contemporary on the monorail is still one of my very favorite WDW experiences.
Originally Posted By The Duck Here's a worst-case scenario to ponder. One day, many years from now, the Contemporary is slated for demolition. How do you demolish a hotel without taking the monorail track with it? Would you re-route the track around the hotel several months before, or would dismantle it around the track? Either way, monorail service would be at least temporarily halted and the ferry would be working double and triple time. I always loved the idea of the monorail going through the hotel but sometimes I wonder about the long term practicality of it.
Originally Posted By Goofyernmost With the rate of disrepair on the Monorail's that so many of you have been reporting, having them running through probably will not be a problem. By then it will be all hovercraft like depicted in Spaceship Earth. Jetson like vehicles the zoom on by.
