DNYaMind Creations

Tag: travel

  • 25TH Anniversary Disney World Trip – Part One: Our Hotel

    In May of 2026, my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. This particular trip was the third trip we have taken to Disney World since 2022, and we decided to splurge a little because it was also our celebration for our 25th anniversary. Yes, you read that correctly, this was our third trip in four years, and yes my wife and I do consider ourselves “Disney Adults”. Say whatever you want about “Disney Adults”, but we enjoy our trips to Disney, and that is all that matters. Period.

    Ahem…

    As I was saying, because this was our 25th anniversary and we decided to celebrate in style, we decided to stay at one of the two original Disney Resort Hotels, the Contemporary Resort Hotel which is actually walking distance to the Magic Kingdom park. The Contemporary, along with the Polynesian and Grand Floridian hotels, is also connected to the Magic Kingdom by way of Monorail for those who don’t want to walk. The Contemporary, however is the only hotel that actually has a monorail station inside the hotel, meaning that the monorail actually passes through the hotel. I know, cool, right?

    The Contemporary and Polynesian are actually the first hotels that opened at the same time the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, and they both have a lot of history behind them. If you want to learn more details about the the history and features of the Contemporary I will include the link to the Wikipedia page for you. The rest of this essay will be about our personal experience at the Contemporary.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_Contemporary_Resort

    The Contemporary is aptly named because, in addition to having the monorail driving right through it, the design of the hotel is very modern looking (well, at least for 1971), and it is a pretty sharp looking building.

    This is the view of the hotel from the ground.

    I found the inside of the hotel quite interesting overall. The lobby, which I didn’t take any pictures of, was quite spacious, clean, and semi-fancy. The really interesting part of the hotel is the fourth floor where you can find shops, Chef Mickey’s restaurant (where character meals are hosted), a quick eat café, and, of course, the Monorail station.

    These giant windows are found on both sides of the hotel where the monorail passes throgh
    These two pictures were taken from the landing on the tenth floor, which is the floor our room was on
    This mural was on the fourth floor , and it stretched up several floors.
    Here you can see the monorail stopped at the station. The tables and chairs you see are from the quick service café on the fourth floor of the hotel. The monorail is right there, close enough to reach out and touch…almost
    Here is some video of the monorail leaving the station. I don’t know why, exactly, but I was fascinated by the fact that the monorail goes right through the middle of the hotel.
    The hotel does have a nice pool area, which we did not use, but it is also located right on Bay Lake, and they have boat rentals for going out on the lake for some fishing or other enjoyment.
    It wouldn’t be Disney without a Mickey head, right? This one was the entrance to a souvenir shop called Fantasia. Oh, and there’s the monorail again.
    Even though it is one of the oldest hotels at Disney, they have been expanding. This is a newer part of the hotel known as the Bay Lake Tower. We did not get a chance to go in there and check it out.
    Upon entering our hotel room, we were greeted with a special message on our tv screen, and a lovely Mickey head made out of folded towels. The sunglasses were our own addition of course.
    The theme of the Contemporary hotel is The Incredibles, and there was artwork featuring the Incredibles all around the hotel, including this print hanging on the wall outside our room.
    The Incredibles theme continued inside our room, including the clothes closet. It was quite clever.
    There was even an Incredibles print hanging on the wall right by the toilet. Fun fact, the toilet area had a door that could close to keep it separated from the rest of the bathroom that contained the sinks and shower.
    Our room even had a couch, though it was positioned right under the tv which was kind of odd. There was also a chair that was really low and difficult for me to get in and out of, but was surprisingly comfortable to sit in.
    The shower was huge and spacious, which was awesome! As a bonus, the showerhead in the shower was the exact same one that I have in my shower at home. So, I was loving the shower although the water pressure was significantly weaker than my shower at home.

    In all, we really enjoyed our stay at the Contemporary, even though we didn’t spend a lot of our time in our room. We also had a great balcony with a great view of the lake, but I somehow did not get a picture of that. The restaurant has really great choices for food, including a steakhouse on the lobby floor, and a fancy restaurant on the top floor, but I will have more on that in another post.

    So there is a look at the hotel we stayed at four our 25th anniversary trip to Walt Disney World. I hope you enjoyed getting a look at it. It was clean, comfortable, and fun, and that is really all you need for a great stay at Disney. Stay tuned for more posts from our trip, including our time at The Magic Kingdom coming up on my next post.

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