Lost Disney’s Polynesian Resort revamp renderings discovered at flea market

Close friend and vintage Hawaiiana store Playground Zero owner Jon Pez recently went to his local flea market and returned with an amazing piece of artwork that will be of particular interest to Walt Disney Word fans and especially those that love the Polynesian Resort.

It seems Jon met an artist that made a living creating renderings for architectural firms in the 1980s. Among the cast-off paintings was this rendering of a proposed redesign of the Polynesian Resort's entrance and monorail station (click the image to enlarge).

To the artist's best recollection, the work was done for a Houston, Texas based firm in the mid-1980s that was bidding on a contract to renovate the Polynesian. The artist did 5-6 renderings of different views of the proposed changes, including interiors, but this may be the only one of the renderings that survived. There were a number of firms competing for the business and his company's was not selected.

The entrance to the Polynesian today is a quick right turn into a driveway situated between greenery. This entrance would have had a much more vibrant and open feel, taking visitors across a wooden bridge over a waterfall-fed river past Moai increasing in size down the road to the guard shack. The firm also proposed radically reworking the monorail station from the existing box-like design to a sweeping thatch-covered A frame.

Would have it been better? It's hard to say. If anyone one has any further information about this rendering or the company that created it, or any of the competing designs of the time, we'd love to hear about it!

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