One of my favorite places in Walt Disney World is found just outside Magic Kingdom. Just a monorail ride away sits Disney’s Contemporary Resort, where a gigantic Mary Blair-designed mural fills the Grand Canyon Concourse with bold colors and playful figures: bunnies, bears, birds, and Native American children. Tucked among them is one of the resort’s most beloved oddities: a goat with five legs.
The Mural & Why The Goat Has 5 Legs
The mural was designed by legendary Disney artist Mary Blair, whose distinctive style defined projects like it’s a small world, Peter Pan, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland.
When Disney’s Contemporary Resort opened in 1971, Blair was commissioned to create a massive mural to go inside the Grand Canyon Concourse. She ultimately landed on designing a stylized pueblo village. The massive ceramic mural is made up of more than 18,000 of hand-glazed tiles, each placed individually to form the final composition.
The mural’s vivid colors also reflect the era in which it was created, drawing from late 1960s and early 1970s design trends. The result is a piece of Disney history that feels both timeless and unmistakably of its time. I’d say that’s a fitting representation for the -Contemporary- resort.
The mural stands approximately 90 feet tall, or nine stories, covering three sides of the building’s central pillar; making it one of the largest Mary Blair-designed pieces in existence. The monorail passing through the concourse was part of the original resort concept, making the mural one of the first things you see when arriving by monorail.
Blair was known for embracing imperfection and movement in her designs, using wobbly and curved lines with many vibrant colors. The five-legged goat became a visual expression of that idea, a playful reminder that perfection was never (and never should be) the goal.
How to Find the Five-Legged Goat
The five-legged goat can be found on the Magic Kingdom side of the mural, positioned among other whimsical critters and children. Spotting him is easiest if you stand near the monorail platform and scan slowly. Once you see it, you’ll never not see it again.
You can also find a more obvious inclusion of the 5-legged goat in the lobby area, which was recently updated for the resort’s 50th anniversary in 2021:
And if you’re lucky enough to find it, there’s an old 2009 Hidden Mickey “Fun Icons” pin series featuring the goat himself:
— Photo: PIN & POP
One glance at that mural, and you know exactly where you are. There’s nowhere else it could be but Disney’s Contemporary Resort. Long live the Mary Blair mural!
