Moana Mickey’s Arcade now closed at Disney's Polynesian Resort

Tim Lohr

Tim Lohr

Well-Known Member
When I was a kid we went to arcades when my parents and grandparents were exhausted from walking around the parks, but this was in the early/mid 80's when video arcades were still a big draw, mainly because the were better than home video game systems. Now with PlayStations, Xboxes, and games on smart phones I cant see why people would want to go to a video game arcade anymore, but if the hotels had stuff like the old shooting gallery at the Contemporary, or things you couldn't experience any where else, that'd be a different story.
 
ToTBellHop

ToTBellHop

Well-Known Member
tikiman said:
How did kids survive on long vacation before the 80s?
I use to spend many weeks at a time in Hawaii as a kid and I can’t say I set foot inside an arcade, in fact I don’t even know if there was an arcade. I have never used the one at the Polynesian.
Now if we can just get everyone to put down their Ipads during every parade or fireworks show the world would be a better place. I get wanting to record the event but maybe we should sometimes just live in the moment and watch it through our eyes and not our electronic screens.
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They just want to be alerted of updated FP+ status.
 
Captain Neo

Captain Neo

Well-Known Member
Isn't Moana also the name of Disney's next animated fairy tale movie? They probably will end up renaming it to avoid future confusion.
 
bcalltimandanna

bcalltimandanna

Active Member
asianway said:
After the Fiesta Fun Center the Moana Mickey Fun Hut was always disappointing, but sad to see it's successor go
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The Fiesta Fun Center may be the epicenter of my sense of joy. I enjoyed Moana Mickeys as a kid, but the new location didn't do it for me. Nothing was like the FFFC (The Fiesta Food and Fun Center as we called it in the early 80s). It's a shame that very few photos are online of that gem. Martin should do an Ultimate Tribute for that one.
 
ford91exploder

ford91exploder

Resident Curmudgeon
awilliams4 said:
Some of us DVC folk will vacation for 2, 3, 4 weeks at a clip. When you really vacation at Disney like that, the whole commando thing at the parks every day goes away real quick and you do all the other things there.
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Exactly, Thats what my family does the two week DVC thing, No more commando ...
 
GrumpyFan

GrumpyFan

Well-Known Member
With the proliferation of small, portable electronic devices such as smart phones and tablets, most kids have more and newer games at their availability than even the biggest of arcades ever had. Plus, when you consider the amount of space they take up, and the overhead and maintenance to keep them running, it just wouldn't seem to make sense to continue operating them. If Disney isn't considering getting rid of them, they really should. I don't see that they would be missed much at all.
 
eastvillage

eastvillage

Active Member
asianway said:
The Contemporary in it's heyday was a sight to see. Shooting Gallery, Movie Theater, 24 hour f&b...
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tl77 said:
...but if the hotels had stuff like the old shooting gallery at the Contemporary, or things you couldn't experience any where else, that'd be a different story.
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bcalltimandanna said:
The Fiesta Fun Center may be the epicenter of my sense of joy. I enjoyed Moana Mickeys as a kid, but the new location didn't do it for me. Nothing was like the FFFC (The Fiesta Food and Fun Center as we called it in the early 80s). It's a shame that very few photos are online of that gem. Martin should do an Ultimate Tribute for that one.
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I started visiting WDW as a young child in the 70s. I have so many memories of the Fiesta Fun Center at The Contemporary. My parents would take my brother and I over there regardless of whether we were staying there or Poly, Ft Wilderness, etc. We'd spend hours enjoying ourselves. The shooting gallery fascinated me. It was those touches, the way they went above and beyond what'd you'd ever expect in an arcade, much less a hotel arcade, that made Disney so magical. If you didn't find me there, you'd probably find me over on Main Street at the Penny Arcade looking at the mutoscopes and questioning my future with the fortune teller
or giggling at trick gum, a fly in an ice cube, and whoopee cushions at the Magic Shop. :inlove: :joyfull: :happy:
 
alphac2005

alphac2005

Well-Known Member
Arcades are far from limited by video games. I never play(ed) video games at arcades, rather pinball machines, skeeball, air hockey, and there aren't too many kids that don't love a stuffed animal claw machine. None of those are screens, they can't fit in your pocket, and most are very hard to come by on a daily basis. The arcade is just a fun nugget to have on vacation and I echo exactly what @eastvillage said about the Fiesta Fun Center.

It's rather sad and cynical that every answer seems to be that "Well, with an iPhone and screens, who needs an arcade?" That's kind of missing the point of what the arcade is and the experience. It's about a whole lot more than screens and video games.
 
surfsupdon

surfsupdon

Well-Known Member
Air hockey and pinball are for our family.

We used to use the arcades after meals, with the change we were given. When the arcades went to "reloadable cards," we stopped using arcades altogether. Gone was the simplicity of saving your dollars and quarters to play a game after a meal at the food court. It was a much more simple time.
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Sad to hear it.
I have good memories of Moana Mickey's as a kid.
Before I was old enough for my parents to turn me loose in the parks, the resort arcade was one of the few places I could get away from them on my own for a while.
I remember Moana Mickey's had two games I really liked:

A Taito "Space Gun" rail cabinet (scary)

1122656149.jpg


...and a really wacky Sega "Time Traveler".
This thing really blew my mind as a kid. It was really nothing more than a Dragon's Layer-style laserdisc game, but it used a cleverly-placed curved mirror to create a "holographic" display that appeared to make the images float in 3D. I've never seen one of those machines anywhere else.



Arcade_complete_view.jpg
 
Tim Lohr

Tim Lohr

Well-Known Member
alphac2005 said:
Arcades are far from limited by video games. I never play(ed) video games at arcades, rather pinball machines, skeeball, air hockey, and there aren't too many kids that don't love a stuffed animal claw machine. None of those are screens, they can't fit in your pocket, and most are very hard to come by on a daily basis. The arcade is just a fun nugget to have on vacation and I echo exactly what @eastvillage said about the Fiesta Fun Center.

It's rather sad and cynical that every answer seems to be that "Well, with an iPhone and screens, who needs an arcade?" That's kind of missing the point of what the arcade is and the experience. It's about a whole lot more than screens and video games.
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I don't recall a lot of skee ball or air hockey at the Disney arcades, mostly the Pac-Mac style video machines
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
tl77 said:
I don't recall a lot of skee ball or air hockey at the Disney arcades, mostly the Pac-Mac style video machines
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These days, the arcade games at the various resorts' arcades are very uniform- you see the same stuff at every location.

They typically all have an air hockey table (some, like the one at Space Mountain, have the really neat multi-puck "Pac-Man Smash" table) a guitar hero setup, a big fruit ninja touchscreen, and lots and LOTS of sit-down racing cabinets.
Disney really likes sit-down racing cabinets for some reason.



 

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