Listen to the Episode:
Welcome to Episode 58 of the RetroWDW Podcast: “Retro Menus” – We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows!
Listener Mail
Right to the mailbag this month! The bag is full and we love that! Every month, you can possibly get on the show, so be sure to write to us at podcast@retrowdw.com.
- Mark is our first listener who wrote in, saying he found our podcast and is slowly working to catch up. His question is all about the WedWay Peoplemover and where it is stored. We kick you off with a super deep dive on this and give you our thoughts.
- Holly writes us next from Missouri – She just found us and listens to us while sewing masks for a local hospital. Holly is a former Disneyland employee and her first visit to WDW was in 2007.
- William Walker wants to know about Mickey’s Retreat on Little Lake Bryan. Brian & How get into this one to discuss and explain what this is.
- Art has been contacting us about Teen Magazine from 1972. There is a great set of photos in this magazine, including the Bob-A-Round Boat. We discuss this magazine and look through it a bit together.
- Jason wrote in about his latest fireworks & backstage tour. He tells us a great Bob Gurr story, which sounds so crazy it almost has to be true. What are your thoughts on this? Let us know if you find out from Bob…
Questions, Comments & Concerns
We love feedback and hearing your memories!
Drop us a line at podcast@retrowdw.com or call us and leave a voice mail at 978-71-RETRO. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Audio Rewind
Our audio rewind this month is The Blob from the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater – Thank you for all the guesses and emails!
We have a winner! Congratulations Geoffrey Nease! – you will be getting a bunch of great Ephemera – hope you enjoy!
If you think you know the answer to this month’s audio rewind, email us! contest@retrowdw.com – This month, the winner will be getting a mystery prize! All entries are due 6/23/2020 and a random winner will be selected.
Main Topic
This month we aren’t taking you to a specific ride, resort or theme park. When looking back our first ephemera episode was a huge hit! We also did one on dining, Retro Food. So today, we are going to have Brian lead us through some really neat menus, food options, and dining.
The former dining locations are a great way to look back and experience how the resort used to be. Dining was huge back in the 1970s and Disney made sure the dining was just as special as the trip itself.
Brian has a whole pile of menus and we all follow along as we dissect and discuss what people were eating many years ago. We start off at the Contemporary Resort Top of the World restaurant. This was an amazing space with entertainment, food and just an insanely great decor. This is great because we compare the pricing over the years and changes.
Another amazing location we take you to is The Outer Rim. Most of you know this as the current bar/lounge in the Contemporary. Well, it existed in a different format many years ago and they were actually able to keep the name. The menu doesn’t miss and it sounds like a great place to enjoy a meal. We round this all out with some room service menus, The Magnolia Dining Room and of course the Pueblo Room. We hope you enjoy this look back at some of the old menus and food selections from WDW History.
Young N Loving Teen Magazine – April 1972 (30mb)
Articles on The Grand Canyon Concourse from Passport to Dreams Old and New:
Menus
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Todd’s Mom Packin’ Sanka
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Meal memories…Sherwood crepes at King Stefans Banquet Hall, I still look for it hoping it will 1 day return to some menu there / there is a recipe online with the name of it in reverse / they were to die for and would be picked along w your 3 or so other menu options at the check in prior to ascending up the stairs or in the ‘barrel’ elevator for dinner.
Onion soup served in little cast iron kettleS at the Liberty Tree along with an appetizer option of oysters.
Cafeteria style selections at the Crystal Palace with a wandering accordion player for your dining entertainment.
Adventureland Veranda with the teriyaki chicken, ribs or both – yummy to this then 13yr old.
You say Kona I say Coral Isle Cafe
Thank you for the memories you recall in my mind w my now departed parents – how I miss them so.
Stayed at the Contemporary in ‘77 with the map on the wall showing the still hoped for Asian, Persian & Venetian Resorts, Polynesian in ‘79, ‘80 etc etc watching the water ski show on the 7 Seas which you swam in, renting the $6.00 / 1/2 hr water sprites & going to church on a Sunday at the Luau cove.
Look fwd to each one & everyone – Linda a Disney 1st timer fr 1976.
I remember the little plates of 3 butters at the Liberty Tree Tavern; one was a WDW Logo butter, one was honey butter, but I can’t remember the 3rd one. I miss Disney Central Foods so much and I hear they are no longer there, what a shame. I really liked their desserts, especially the cherry turnovers found in the MK, and their Banana Walnut and Black Forest layer cakes served at Heidelberger’s in the Village.
Meal memories …. pancakes for breakfast and fried chicken for dinner every day at the Contemporary when we spent 2 weeks there in 1977 (a 9-year old’s dream)! Can still picture mum’s massive morning grapefruits. Loved seeing the momorails coming and going overhead! Do any listerners have any suggestions for where I might find a Contemporary menu from that time? Either room service or restaurant? Looking to complete my little collection of ephemera from the year we were there.
I’ve had a passion for Disney since I was a child, maybe because I was born in 1964, the year of Mary Poppins and the World’s Fair, so your podcast and your Youtube channel are genuine pleasures for me.
My parents, brother, and I had eagerly anticipated the opening of WDW, and in the summer of 1973 we made our first trip when I was 9 years old. I remember a good deal about it. We stayed off property, so I have no hotel information from that trip. Pirates had not yet opened; we could see Space Mountain going up when we rode the monorail. Dining was not a big deal to us. I’m sure we mostly ate fast-food options. I distinctly remember eating at Pecos Bills and Tomorrowland Terrace, which both featured hamburgers and fries. We were astonished to eat in Pinnochio’s Village Haus and discover that we could see the Small World boats passing below! We were definitely not foodies, which was probably true of most people at that time.
Our next trip was in 1980. We again stayed off property; our food choices were still basic. I do remember that my mother had a special appreciation for the popcorn and she used to mention, in a reverential tone, that it was Orville Redenbacker’s “gourmet” popcorn whenever the subject arose. (Oh, by the way, we road the swan boats, and I remember them well.)
Sometime between that trip and our next, to see EPCOT Center in the summer of 1983, we acquired the very first Birnbaum guidebook! This time we had saved up our money, and we stayed at the Contemporary on the side facing Bay Lake. We were also now more adventurous in our dining. I wouldn’t say we were total bumpkins, but we weren’t very sophisticated. Birnbaum gave us confidence, and we followed many of his suggestions to the letter. My brother and I were now teenagers, so we could also go off on our own to the Magic Kingdom and the other hotels via the monorail. I remember the two of us heading down to the (totally amazing) Fiesta Fun Center, which was open very late, and eating fast food (those hot dogs that came in the foil packets!). Our family also ate in one of the restaurants in the concourse, which, as I recall, specialized in Italian food. I remember the room service menu, and how impressive it was at the time, room service being something we had seen in movies but not actually experienced. We didn’t order anything.
We went to the Polynesian for the Luau, but the food didn’t make much of an impression on me. We also went there to eat the banana-stuffed French toast. We made a special trip to the Golf Resort for lunch one day because Birnbaum said we had to try the fried ice cream, which we did. The Trophy Room and the Golf Resort were exactly as you have described them on your podcast. It was a very sedate place; the atmosphere was still early-seventies, even though it was now the early eighties. It was dull to a teenager (the kind of place Ronald Reagan might enjoy), but I’d give anything to eat there now. We took a boat to Fort Wilderness one night for the Hoop-De-Doo review, and we loved both the show and the food, which was right up our alley (we were also great County Bear fans)! We took the boat again to Fort Wilderness one night to the Trails End Buffet, which had a sort of build-your-own pizza kind of a thing in the evening.
In the Magic Kingdom we tried the Adventureland Veranda for the first time (a beautiful place). We went to the Town Square Cafe so we could try the Monte Cristo sandwich, as recommended by Birnbaum. We also went to the Liberty Tree Tavern, and I remember the walnut bread (Birnbaum probably told us to eat that too).
In EPCOT Center I remember eating at Alfredo’s in the Italy pavilion (I imagine, of all the countries, my parents concluded that Italy would be the safest in terms of dining) My father made reservations at the computer kiosk that morning, a process bewildering to him. I don’t remember the food, but I remember that sitting at the table next to us was Mike Farrell, who played B.J. Hunnicutt on the TV show M*A*S*H. I also remember we went one morning to the Lake Buena Vista shopping village, though I don’t recall eating there. I do remember walking around the Empress Lilly, just to take a look. It’s hard to describe how impressive the Empress Lilly was.
Apart from the specific memories that your great dining and menu episodes have triggered, not to mention the fascinating collection of menus on your site, you’ve also reminded me how different peoples’ attitude toward food was back then. Going out to eat really was a big deal. If my parents ever did go out for a nice meal, it always meant a steakhouse. Tableside preparation was definitely fashionable; Caesar salad used to be prepared tableside with a raw egg (try that now, hehe). Shrimp cocktail was considered very elegant (and it was expensive). Chef’s salads and club sandwiches were thought to be incredibly classy. I also remember, as Brian pointed out, when juice was served as an appetizer, and I remember when adults drank coffee with all meals, not just for breakfast and not just after dinner, but actually WITH the meal as the main beverage. And coffee wasn’t a thing then, and I expect it wasn’t very good. (And, yes, my grandmother drank Sanka.) Most people, my family included, just weren’t sophisticated about food. We really did “eat like Walt,” and not on purpose: simple, Midwestern home cooking was mostly all we knew. There’s one passage in Birnbaum where he explains to the unenlightened reader (us) that a caffe’ mocha is a combination of coffee and hot chocolate. That’s funny today, but necessary information at the time.
Well, enough already. If anyone reads all this, I’ll be surprised. But it’s been fun to go down memory lane. Your podcast today has kept me away from the news, and for that I am most grateful. Now, please do another movie night, which also gives me a nice break from grim reality.
Re: the bulldozer at the bottom of the lake. On the show One Day at Disney, they interviewed Thom Self who is a maintenance/scuba diver at Disneyland. There must be similar person at WDW who might be able to verify the story.
Great episode! And the first one I listened to “live” as I’m still working my way all the way from ep 1.
The discussion on Mickey’s Retreat at Little Lake Bryan brought back memories – I went a couple of times when on the International Program with Disney. I mainly remember this is where the football (soccer) games were played, and for our guys, most games were like a World Cup: France vs Morocco, Germany vs UK and so on. Those games were on pretty early to accommodate work schedules but as LLB wasn’t too far from Vista Way (where we were living) that wasn’t too bad. There wasn’t much else there but every once in a while there would be an event of some sort.
Other than football I don’t think I went to anything else as we had pretty good facilities at Vista Way so there would be no real need. I’m sure other cast went more often.
Is it still there? I thought it (or some of it) was taken up with the Commons which is where Internationals stay these days.
Complete menu list from Lite Bite at Lake Buena Vista Village, discovered in a photo taken in 1976:
Hamburger $1.25
with cheese $1.40
Fried BBQ Chicken Sandwich $1.75
Italian Submarine $1.60
Grilled Cheese $1.00
Tuna Sandwich (served with potato chips) $1.25
Hot Dog $.85
with chili, cheese & onion $1.30
Chili bowl $.65
French Fries $.40
Frozen Banana $.50
Fruit Tart $.50
Assorted Fountain Beverages (prices not visible on photo)
Brian and Todd: I’m assuming the Contemporary had a southwest theme for so long (and may even still have it) is because it favors the colors of the Grand Canyon on the mural covering the elevator shaft — plus the entire open area inside the hotel was called the Grand Canyon Concourse. The motif of the figures on the elevator shaft was also representative of the Native Americans and animals of that famous southwest area.