A collector tasked the Lake Buena Vista Historical Society with digitizing a collection of 53 slides recovered from the cleanout of the estate of Aunty Kau’I, a fixture at the Polynesian Resort since its opening, who passed away three years ago today.
The photos are mostly of performances at the International Market Place which opened in 1956 in Honolulu to serve the booming postwar travel and tourism visitors. Aunty’s photos from this location are dated 1965 and 1968 when she was a woman in her late 20s performing luaus.
The last undated set of slides are from the summer of 1971 when she performed at Disneyland’s Tahitian Terrace. The following October she moved to Florida to open the Polynesian Resort. She never left, working at the resort until she passed away in January 2020, missing the 50th Anniversary by little more than a year.
We remember her today by sharing these photos from her collection with all of you.
Numbers 11, 37, 39, 40, 43-53 all appear to be from Aunty Kau’i’s stint at the Tahitian Terrace in Disneyland during the summer of 1971.