The Contemporary’s hotel rooms were made in a factory, then lifted into the A-frame by crane in 1971. One popular story says they can slide back out. They can’t.
Every day, monorails glide right through the middle of Disney’s Contemporary Resort. The rooms stacked around them have a story that’s almost as wild.
They were built in a factory.
When the Contemporary opened with Walt Disney World on Oct. 1, 1971, its guest rooms had been made on an assembly line, then hoisted into the hotel’s steel A-frame one at a time by crane, per Disney historian Jim Korkis. The hotel was designed by Los Angeles architect Welton Becket with Disney and United States Steel, per Wikipedia.
How were the Contemporary Resort rooms built?
Like giant boxes. The factory turned out about 40 rooms a week, per Korkis.
Each room measured “nine feet high, fifteen feet wide and about thirty feet long,” Korkis wrote, and weighed about nine tons. Once finished, each one was “lifted into place by massive cranes and fitted into the steel frame.”
The frame itself was made of “thirteen steel-trussed A-frames resembling a skeletal honeycomb,” per Korkis. California architect Donald Wexler designed the modular rooms, per Wikipedia.
Can the rooms at the Contemporary slide out?
No. That’s one of the most repeated Disney World myths.
The idea is that Disney could pull out an old room and slide in a fresh one, like a drawer. Korkis says it doesn’t work that way.
“To be removed, among many other challenges, they would have to be lifted up before being pulled out,” he wrote. “They were permanently enclosed in the structure by exterior walls and balconies.”
Why couldn’t the rooms be swapped out?
Part of it is the balconies and walls. Part of it is gravity.
After the rooms went in, they “settled” because of “movement in the building, gravity and other factors, so they sank just below the original slot,” Korkis wrote.
Installing them wasn’t simple either. Crews had to alternate sides as they placed rooms, per Korkis, so the frame wouldn’t get off balance and tip.
What is the five-legged goat at the Contemporary?
It’s a famous detail in the giant Mary Blair mural that climbs the walls of the Grand Canyon Concourse.
Blair, the artist behind the look of “it’s a small world,” designed the multi-story tile mosaic for the hotel’s 1971 opening. Look closely, and you’ll spot a goat with five legs.
The popular explanation is that Blair added a deliberate mistake to reflect a Southwest Native American belief that nothing made by people can be perfect, per the Disney Food Blog. It’s become one of the most photographed details in the hotel. A lot of fans treat finding it like a scavenger hunt.
When did Bay Lake Tower open at the Contemporary?
Aug. 4, 2009, per Wikipedia. The 15-story Disney Vacation Club tower sits next to the original A-frame.
The original A-frame is the one with the factory-built rooms. So if you stay in the main tower, you’re sleeping in a piece of 1971 prefab history.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Jim Korkis via Your First Visit (Dec. 4, 2015), the modular rooms, the A-frame and the removal myth
Wikipedia, opening date, architects, the monorail station and Bay Lake Tower
Disney Food Blog (May 16, 2021), the five-legged goat
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