Did you realize that there were actually two separate theater screens in the Contemporary Hotel at Disneyworld? Need proof? We’ve got a scan of one of the tickets from the arcade theatre from Cinema II but there was also a Cinema I.

Yes the price is correct on the ticket, it really says $2.00 which wouldn’t even get you a bucket of popcorn or a soft drink these days. This ticket is also from 1983 so it’s from a different era! There were two cinemas in the Fiesta Fun Center. Does anyone have further history of the cinema or photos that they would like to share? Leave a comment and let us know about it or post it in our forums and get a discussion going about it! We would love to hear from you!

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The first two hotels that were constructed as part of Disney World from the beginning are the “Contemporary” and the “Polynesian Village.” The contemporary Hotel is an A-frame ten-story space, that has a monorail stop right inside of the hotel itself. All of the hotel rooms built were pre-fabricated by the U.S. Steel Corporation and then moved on flat-bed trucks and put into position with cranes.

The Polynesian is also an architectural marvel. The Polynesian has a roof which is constructed with a self-oxidizing steel and the buildings throughout the Polynesian are residential in scale and grouped to form landscaped courts and gardens throughout. The Polynesian was also pre-fabricated by the U.S. Steel Corporation. The total number of units created for both hotels for Disney World’s opening was 1,500, which were complete with bathrooms in place.

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On November 15, 1965, both Walt and Roy Disney launched the Walt Disney World project. Walt Disney World (WDW) covers a total of 27, 443 acres (approximately 43 square miles) making it twice as large as Manhattan and paid $5,000,000 for the property in 1965. Walt Disney purchased the property located between Orlando and Kissimmee for his “Florida Project” under several fake company names in order to keep the price of land as low as possible. As soon as the official word got out that it was Walt Disney purchasing the land the prices rose immediately just as he predicted. Walt Disney World opened by Roy O. Disney in October, 1971, after Walt Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966. In its first year it was visited by a total of 10.7 million people and the parks initial investment was $400 million.

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