War and Cholera: Why Disney’s Original Concept for Pop Century Hotel Would Have Been a Disaster

The Pop Century Resort is one of my absolute favorites on Disney property. I’ve made no secret in the past about how much I enjoy the hotel for its celebration of the pop culture kitsch and ephemera of the second half of the 20th century (the 1950s through the 1990s), including many intellectual properties that aren’t owned by Disney.

Yo-Yo

In addition to its unique theme, Pop Century also has one of the most interesting development histories of any Disney World Resort. Originally, the resort was to be DOUBLE the size of its current footprint, with 5 additional sections celebrating the 1900s through the 1940s (the “Legendary Years”) which would match the aforementioned 50s-90s sections (the “Classic Years”). Construction actually began on the “Legendary Years”, however, due to the tourism downturn after the September 11th attacks as well as shifting priorities at Disney, the resort was never finished. Instead, the bones of what had been built sat abandoned for years before it was redeveloped into the separate Art of Animation Resort.

For years, many have lamented the fact that the “Legendary Years” portion of Pop Century was never completed, leaving the resort “unfinished.” However, I would argue this was actually for the best.

Source: World Abandoned

Part of what makes Pop Century work is the right there in the name: the resort is focused on POP culture. Whether it’s the flowery hippy aesthetics of the 1960s section, or the “rad” graphics and characters of the 1980s, the hotel’s design aesthetics focus on these iconic cultural trends of their given decades, eschewing the reality of those times (and any of the tumultuous real-world events that happened during them).

Pop Century Pool

However, this approach would be much harder to successfully achieve with the 1900s through the 1940s. Now, that’s not to say there wasn’t popular culture as we think of it today during those decades, as there most definitely was (pop culture as we currently define it has existed at least since the mid-1800s, arguably earlier). However, because recording technologies barely existed (comparatively) for the majority of the first half of the 20th century, much of this ephemera isn’t as clear in our current cultural consciousness as say the Disco of the 1970s or the the internet revolution of the 1990s (to use a couple of examples from Pop Century).

1970s Pop Century

Instead, many of the events that modern guests would know about the first five decades of the 20th century are somewhat negative. Be it the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the 1918 influenza epidemic, the First World War of the 1910s, the Second World War of the 1940s, or the Great Depression that was sandwiched between them, all of these are obviously important historical events, but not exactly the subject matter for a big bright Disney hotel (though as the plans for Disney’s America showed, the Michael Eisner-era of the company did consider these types of concepts).

A planned section of Disney’s America was to feature a section devoted to World War II and its veterans. [The Walt Disney Company]

Now, that’s not to say there aren’t some subjects Disney could have nailed – – Off the top of my head old-time baseball for the first decade of the century, a toned-down Mickey Mouse take on roaring 20s for the 1920s, and possibly old Hollywood or old time radio for the 1930s or 40s stick out – – but even those may have been a hard sell for modern audiences.

Steamboat Willie

While some will always lament that the Pop Century Resort is only half complete, I would argue that it actually benefits the hotel’s pop cultural resonance to only focus on the second half of the 20th century. Stay tuned to AllEars for more on Disney’s history and place in pop culture.