Disney Travel Tip Tuesday – Pop Century Resort

Sharing weekly tips that will save you time, money or simply make life easier on your upcoming Walt Disney World vacation.

Walt Disney World Moms Panel Top Pick – Favorite Value Resort: Pop Century

Guests planning budget friendly Walt Disney World vacations often ask the Moms Panel (www.disneyworldmoms.com) which Value Resort we recommend.  Last year, the Panel was polled on our “Top Pick” and Disney’s Pop Century Resort was voted the favorite.

Overview: From the moment you arrive at Pop Century, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into a time capsule. Disney’s Pop Century Resort is a celebration of 20th century pop culture. The 2,880-room resort’s larger-than-life “time capsules” showcase the popular toys, fads, dance crazes and catch phrases of the 20th century. How people lived. How they played. How they celebrated. Guests have the opportunity to live and play inside these unique time capsules and experience popular culture that defined the century.

Resort Description: Disney’s Pop Century Resort features lodge buildings and furnishings inspired by different decades. Giant pop culture icons were constructed to celebrate the decade they were introduced in, or when they gained their greatest popularity. Some of these icons tower more than 60 feet.

Pop Century is nostalgic and a lot of fun.

My girls especially enjoyed playing on the giant Twister game…

Here are a few of the Key Icons:

1950’s Lodge Buildings (3 Total):

Center Icons:

* Jukebox

* Lady from “Lady & the Tramp”

* The Tramp from “Lady & the Tramp”

Stairwell Icon: Bowling Pin

1960’s Buildings (2 Total)

Center Icons:

* Play-Doh

* Baloo & Mowgli from “The Jungle Book”

Stairwell Icon: Duncan Yo-yo

1970’s Buildings (2 Total)
Center Icons:

* Mickey Mouse Phone

* Big Wheel

Stairwell Icon: 8-Track Tape

1980’s Lodge Buildings (2 Total)
Center Icons:

* Roger Rabbit

* Sony Walkman

Stairwell Icon: Rubik’s Cube

1990’s Lodge Building (1 Total)
Center Icon:

* Laptop Computer

Stairwell Icon: Cellular Phone

The Fun!

â– The bowling pin icons tower more than 65 feet high. A regulation bowling pin is 15 inches tall.

â– If you count the giant bowling pin icons, there are nine standing around the resort. Where’s the tenth? It’s actually the bowling pin pool in the courtyard!

â– Take a closer look at the pool deck around the bowling pin pool and you’ll spot the triangular lane markings that are seen on bowling alleys everywhere.

â– The Rubik’s Cube icons reach a peak of 41 feet off the ground. By comparison, a Rubik’s Cube puzzle toy stands nearly four inches at its tallest point.

â– The resort’s 8-track tapes are more than 35 feet tall, with “tape” that is more than one-foot in width. A real 8-track tape is a mere five-and-one-quarter inches tall, with a tape that is only one-quarter inch wide.

â– The table soccer players are more than 12 feet tall, and the “toy” ball is more than two-and-one-half feet in diameter.

â– Nearly 125,000 gallons of paint were used to create the bright colors and tie-dyed hues on the buildings’ interior and exterior walls.

â– In the 1960s area, giant “thumbprints” can be spotted on the ears of the elephant peeking out of the giant Play-Doh canister. And can you name the child depicted on the Play-Doh can? That’s Play-Doh Pete!

â– The giant Big Wheel icon can “accommodate” a child rider that weighs up to 877 pounds (or so says the sticker on the towering riding toy). That matches the stickers that were affixed to the original Big Wheel toys of the 1970s that designated a “recommended child weight.”

â– Service and equipment buildings are cleverly disguised all over the resort. At the 1950s bowling pin pool, the laundry looks like a bowling shoe storage bin. In the 1990s, an equipment building appears to be a larger-than-life stack of computer floppy disks.

â– The 1970s courtyard pays tribute to the age of disco, with a motion-based disco light mounted in the middle of the courtyard. This color-changing light sends streams of light across the ’70s-inspired outdoor “dance floor.”

To make reservations at Disney’s Pop Century Resort call 407-W-DISNEY. For help planning your magical Walt Disney World Resort vacation, visit www.disneyworldmoms.com.