Crews are hard at work putting the finishing touches on the new Island Tower hotel at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, and we stopped by recently to take a look at the front of the structure. Crews started painting the tattoo-inspired murals on the exterior of the building back in October, but now the majority of the front of the hotel has been painted.
Tattoo-Inspired Murals at the Island Tower
Our previous update saw the start of two full-length murals on the front of the main tower. While riding on the monorail to Magic Kingdom recently, we saw that not only were those two murals effectively complete, but a third mural on the north wing of the building was also almost complete. Here’s a look around!
We’ll move past the site from south to north on the resort monorail. We start with a mural that has been completed for some time now, but we can start to see the other murals as well!
Walt Disney Imagineering says that the Island Tower is the long-awaited realization of a 1960s-era idea to include a multi-story building at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. The concept art below shows what Imagineering had in mind for the building during the early years of planning for Walt Disney World, but the structure was never built.
The structure design at the time would’ve been reminiscent of the luxury hotels found on Waikiki Beach in the 1970s. Now, Imagineering says that they’re still aiming to create a luxury hotel that you would find in Hawaii, but instead of being stuck in the 1970s, they went back to the drawing board to create something that would be modern. Imagineering says that developing the Island Tower addition now has given Imagineers an opportunity to celebrate past and present Polynesian visual culture, including the use of natural materials, intricately designed patterns inspired by Polynesian tattoos, and a color scheme that is modern and complementary to the adjacent Longhouses.
The Island Tower opens on December 17th at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!