This podcast is sponsored by AAA, the American Automobile Association. AAA members get discounts on tickets, resort accommodations, and more at Walt Disney World and other Orlando attractions. If you book a qualifying Walt Disney World Resort vacation package at select AAA offices, you'll receive a free subscription to Turinplains.com, as well as dedicated trip planning resources just for AAA clients. Go to AAA.com or ask your local AAA travel agent for more details on this offer. Hi, this is Len Testa, it's another episode of The Unofficial Guide Disney Dish Podcast with Jim Hill, and today we're continuing our tour of the Magic Kingdom with urban designer and author Sam Genaway. Sam's most recent book is Walt and the Promise of Progress City. How's it going, Sam? Oh, it's going well. How you doing, Len? I'm doing very well. Thanks. We should right smack dab in the center of Cinderella Castle in Finnessyland. Cinderella Castle, the ultimate beckoning hand, the ultimate weenie, the giant building that centers the entire park and is virtually visible from almost every area within the park. So if you ever feel lost, just sort of look up and you'll see the little spires that dragged you into the Magic Kingdom in the first place, and we're standing in the archway, which is kind of closed, I guess, because they're doing a show out front, which they do far too often for my taste, because they should leave this open for people to walk through. It's really nice. We've got Cinderella's Royal Table restaurant. On our left, we've got shops on our right. It's really a nice way to walk. I like running through this when I run the Disney races. Yeah, yeah. And you know, another great little detail, another wonderful little element is within this breezeway. Today, when I was in here earlier, I just stood here for a few minutes and really admiring the mosaics that were designed by Dorothea Redmond. So there's a tile mosaic that goes one, two, three, four, five panels long. And it tells the story, doesn't it? It does. It tells the whole story. It tells the story of Cinderella in five panels. And it does it in a style that would have been appropriate for this type of a structure, and mostly, they're just gorgeous. I mean, they used very exotic materials. This was a case where there was no value engineering. They really spent the money. They allowed Dorothea to do something that would be truly brilliant. And then it's really supported. If you look at the capitals of the column, the capitals of the column have the little mice and other of the minor characters from the story, and you can even see that they're holding the shoes. Oh, that's clever. And there's the scenes themselves, not only have they made a tile, but they're using forced perspective. That's right. So in the middle tile where Cinderella is running away from the prints after the ball, I guess the clock and struck midnight, she is in the distance farther away than the characters in the foreground. She's so she's physically smaller, the implying movement away. So that's really, if you ever had to explain to somebody what you meant by forced perspective, this is a great place to do it. It adds depth to what is otherwise a two dimensional design, apply the same technique to three dimensional design, and what you're going to do is give an enhanced height. So for instance, this castle's 189 feet, I believe, and it looks much, much, much taller because as the blocks are at the base, they're massive. As the blocks go up higher and higher and higher, they get smaller and smaller and smaller. Look at the windows, they get smaller and smaller and smaller. The whole thing just looks like it reaches up to heaven. That's great. One of the things I love about this scene too, look over here in the fourth panel, the evil queen is on the left hand side, and they actually took one tile near her hand and made it diamond shaped to represent her ring. I mean that level of detail, that kind of precision, that craftsmanship, that's just missing in a lot of places. One of those kind of places, I say, take your time, take a breath, look at it, you know, you had some of the most talented artists in Hollywood working on these parks and they're showing their absolute best work because they were held as such a high standard. We're saying how to Lumanjal real quick. Hi Lumanjal. Hi Lumanjal. Hi Lumanjal. Do it a show. Talk to you later. See you. Alright, so what are you saying? Okay, so now we're into the, you see all sorts of stars here. Lumanjal. Oh my god, there's like a line up with them over there too. It's like an entourage, it's amazing. Yeah, that's great. So what we've done is we've now passed to the castle and what we are theoretically in is the courtyard of the castle and we're surrounded by three-dimensional design buildings that represent castles throughout Europe of the period. They're all a little bit different. Some are more stone, some are more Tudor style, but as we continue towards the carousel, what we're beginning to see is that we've entered the courtyard and this is when, this is when the magic kingdom starts to look like the old version of Disneyland when they didn't have any money. You see, right now if you look up, what you see is, you see the, you see the back wall of the, you see the back wall of the castle, right? Over by, over by snow way to adventure. Yeah, you sort of see the back wall. Bish no white. We'll miss you. Yeah, goodbye snow white for another, for another month. Yeah. So come get in line. I thought it was fun. I, I missed that one. So if you look up right now, we're inside of the courtyard. You can see the walls that are surrounding us. You can see that we're now inside and celebrating, but we're at a middle of a tournament. So the facades are not as richly detailed as the ones when we first entered. Instead, the facade for a filler magic for snow whites adventures look more like, they look more like a tents from Ivan Earl's sleeping beauty and it looks like tournament tents. That's right. And, and, and in Disneyland when they first built it, well, it really didn't have enough money to do it. That's how they dress these for some reason at the time they decided, well, at the magic kingdom to mimic Disneyland and then in 82 in Disneyland, 82 83, they toured fantasy land down and they rebuilt the entire fantasy land into three dimensional facades. And what we're starting to see now is that happening here at the magic kingdom. So like how? Right now, we're standing, where are we standing out right now? We're, we're over by, I guess we're, um, uh, Friars Nook. Okay. So our Friars Nook and we're looking at the construction of the new fantasy land. What they're trying to do is to give a more defined sense of space. You know, when the submarine was out here, it sort of went on and on forever. And when the submarine was gone, it didn't tie everything together. You didn't have a space. It wasn't like an adventure land or frontier land where you had buildings on one side and you had nature infinite nature on the other. Here you had buildings on one side and you had an abandoned submarine ride on the other side. What we've done is they're starting to build the outside of the council wall so that when you first entered in here where all the dark rides are, you're inside the council courtyard. When you go through where the steel structure that they're starting to raise right now, it's going to be a gateway that leads out to the fantasy forest, the enchanted forest. It's going to be a huge improvement, I believe, because what it'll do is get a better sense of time, space, and, and, and good urban planning. You kind of have to think of spaces as outdoor rooms and this is a good concept, a good space, a space that has that higher degree of life, that quality. It feels like a room. There's four sides to it. There's a good solid ground plane and there's edges to the buildings that kind of perceive as a roof. And when people go through spaces, psychologically, the two areas that you focus on the most are the ground plane, the places where you're walking, which is where you want to put the best materials because it's the places where people will touch it. And you want to deal with the edges of the buildings because that helps to define where the sky is for you. What's in between the ground plane and the edges is less important, although in a lot of places at the Disney parks, they go through the trouble of making sure what's in between is also of the same high quality and standards. That's great. So the, so the wall that's going to represent the edge of sort of the castle area is really only going to be about 30 yards outside of the, the, the buildings that we know of now and fantasy. Yeah, it's going to be like a small courtyard and then it'll, you know what it'll feel like? It's going to feel like a very intimate cool little space. I mean, it's just proportion well. There's certain mathematical proportions that tend to create the best possible spaces. We're going to, we're going to talk about the golden ratio now. Oh, no. Okay. All right. Thanks. But that is one. I mean, there is, you know, if you think about it, humanity's been around what some ten thousand years. Three, four, five. And, and we know, and we've, and we've kind of learned how to do things right. I, I'm always reminded that the best public space, probably ever anywhere in the world is Plaza San Marco and Venice. And that was built over a period of like 700 years, but it has, it, it wasn't just one person, but it still ends up hanging together and becomes very valuable. And one of the reasons why that works so well and why I think this area is going to work well, is it's going to be at the crossroads of activities and you're going to have activity nodes surrounding it. So what's an activity node? activity node is, it's a, it's a physical as for the circus thing. It's a physical, an activity node is a physical activity that works like a draw, kind of like the weenie. So if you go into a hotel, an activity node would probably be the front desk with a concierge. Oh, I got it. When you go in the hub, the activity nodes are the gateways into the different lands. You know, this is really cool. I noticed this really for the first time I, I don't get out here often. We just, we just transitioned to river by, by mad tea party and we just transitioned from the gray concrete of the old kind of fantasy land, we're, we're walking over towards storybook circus land where they've, they've completely redone not only the, the attractions, but also the pavement. And this is a case of, I believe these are circus trains, where they're going. You see the, you see the train tracks or the wheels. Yeah. So it's, it's, this is another example of, I think as they continue to remodel the park and they get the opportunity, they're going to start to tell the story with your feet as well. And you look down and I thought this was really quite brilliant. And as we get a little closer to where the train station is and where Casey Jr. is going to be, we also begin to see train tracks that are embedded into the ground as well. So they're, they're using not only the walls, they're not only using the buildings, but now they're starting to use the ground to reinforce the story that you have. And this is, this is actually a, they've, I think they're running in a slightly different way today than they were, even just a few weeks ago, because the, the big circus tent is now up and I think before we were running a little more to our right. Yeah. I think this area is going to turn out to be quite beautiful. I've seen the model for it. It's pretty spacious too. I mean, this is a, this is a pretty wide walkway. That's right. And, and I had the good fortune of, of chatting with a former Imagineer, Marty Scallar at his house, not too long ago. And he was very proud of the Imagineers that were doing the work for this project there. Some of the more of the younger team and he just thought that they were really hitting some home runs. And it's a, and I was, you know, as a California and you always kind of get a little skeptical until I got to the train station. Is it a train station? All right. Before we get to the train station, let's talk about the Dumbo. So right now as we record this, one of the two spinners on Dumbo are open. And the, the big change though in Dumbo is the fact that you're now flying over water. Yes. Well, that's what they is. This is the same way that it is at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris. When they did the remodel for the fantasy that, oh, you know what? I've never just noticed this. We're Dumbo, right? We're Dumbo. They have peanuts embedded into the concrete. That's classic. That's very, genius. And elephant footprints and peanuts over by Dumbo. I highly recommend looking down, but occasionally look up because you're going to run into me and I don't really want you to do that. Okay. That's great. This is the, this is the same spinner like they have at Disneyland Paris and Disneyland. Right. When they, when they, they were building Disneyland Paris and they were doing the fantasy land redo, they pulled the one that was meant for Paris and put it in California, then they built another one and then they've designed this. So this is very much more like California. Yeah. And the, the water is a, is a nice effect during the day. It's done. It's even more movement, even when the ride is down, uh, sorry, even when the ride is, uh, stopped. Uh-huh. You still get the movement of the water. You get the sound, but at night it's a completely different experience because it's, it's lighted from the bottom. Yeah. Different colors. The, the water is still moving. It's a, it's a much better ride at night. And it's good use of music that helps that atmosphere. Yeah. And you know what? I'll show you how stupid I can be sometimes. I didn't realize until about three years ago that when Dumbo stopped spinning, all the Dumbo's fly to the top. And I just one day went, oh, wow, it's here as a bunch of elephants. A bunch of elephants are coming or going. I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell with elephants feet. It's great. Yeah. It's right. They're sort of circular. So we're, uh, we're walking, uh, walking past, uh, Dumbo over towards the, uh, the train station now. And I'm, I'm fascinated to see what this whole Casey Junior thing is because that's just a, it's a water play area. It's a water play area? Yeah. Okay. It's supposed to be pretty elaborate. All right. Excellent. And the caboose facing backwards, it's like a roller coaster. It's quite cool. But don't tell anybody that because that seats usually reserved for me. Okay. All right. That's another secret. So here's a good idea of repurposing. You've got, you know, the barn or coming up on the barnstormer. Yeah. And this is, uh, you know, we've already invested money in the track. We don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. So we'll just redress the cars. We'll get a much more heavy theme that's much more cognizant. And you've got, um, you've got flying, you've got goofy flying through a sign. I haven't been on this yet because the line's been pretty long the entire time I've been here. Right. But it adds energy. It's kinetic energy. It adds kind of a nice sound and it also has monkey feet in the ground in front of it. Oh, that's classic. So it's got, uh, looks like, yeah, monkey and people that's, uh, that's interesting. Yeah. So it's a, it's a nice, it's a nice, uh, you know, I, I think this area is really shaping up. I've only seen it in pictures until this trip, but, uh, it seems to be shaping up. Uh, the, it doesn't, at one point, I thought they were just sort of remodeling the tents that used to be there, but they are, they are going and they're doing something above and beyond and they're making the tents much more substantial. Right. They're larger. Yeah. And I think the pink tent back there was, uh, was always the tune telling. You know, this is one thing I find really interesting and this is something that's been happening lately. Everly since Animal Kingdom, they've started to introduce more of real life reality to the parks, not always just the fantasy. And I noticed today, cause you can't see all of, um, the, the Casey Jr. Waterplay area, but the idea of having telephone poles with transformers on them, uh, the trike and, and having the lights and the sort of, I didn't realize that. Yeah. Look at that. They've, uh, they've done miniature telephone, uh, electrical poles, right? And yeah. And then in the, in the, uh, in the world of urban planning, the, the Jane Jacobs, an author and a Robert Venturia famous architect kind of said that you have to have a certain messy vitality in a real city to sort of keep you on edge and alive. And that's usually because there are visual contradictions, quite the opposite of a theme part. But it's interesting to see that they're starting to do things like that because it didn't seem necessary to put the transformers, but I don't know what the rest of the story is. So it's got me very curious, but they're, it's not necessarily the most attractive lighting, but I bet at night it looks probably very, it's probably for night. Yeah. It's probably pretty at night. Oh, that's great. So we're walking over towards the, uh, the new train station, uh, right now, and then you say you like the train station. Oh, I just love this. Well, you know, the whole reason that Disneyland even exists and Walt Disney World exists is because Walt Disney loved trains. He couldn't play with his train in his backyard anymore because his wife wouldn't let him and he ended up wanting to go ahead and, uh, and, and end up wanting to buy Ward Kimball's train and he couldn't buy Ward Kimball's train. So he decided to build Disneyland and this is a huge tribute to Walt Disney. If you look up, it'll say Carol Wood Park, Fairweather Place, uh, the Carol Wood is the street that Walt lived on in Homebie Hills and his train, the Lillie Bell was part of the Carol Wood Pacific, the Fairweather route and they use the same logo that he had for his train in his backyard. Oh, that's perfect. So it's a, both a very subtle and a very appropriate tribute to have the train and another thing you're going to notice here as well is that the bathrooms are actually a train roundhouse. It's where you would store the trains and there, the train tracks all lead to the center except for we're right now standing on a path of a train track that leads to oblivion. It goes right off the edge into where the other Disney World Railroad goes to. That's classic. This is a, this is a really, yeah, this is a really well-themed area. The attention to detail that they're paying here is really pretty good. The other thing I like too is there's this walkway that goes from Tennessee land to tomorrow land and the theming continues even along the walkway. So it's not like they just stopped it where they said, okay, this is the end of the road and from here on out, it's just going to be concrete and, you know, blocks. Right, right. So you can sit here and you can see right now that the train track that we're walking on goes right towards where the Disneyland Railroad is and then it just sort of ends. The ties go down and the track sort of disintegrates. Yep. And it's neat. You know, I'm really quite impressed. This is my first trip back when much of this has been happening. If the train station is the example of the level of quality that they're using, then I think they're going to, they're going to do a great job. Another thing I'm a huge Casey Jr. fan as I said earlier. Look at the weather vein and you can see it's the Casey Jr. train. Oh, that's great. So the weather vein on top of the train station is the Casey Jr. Very nice. And really, this is getting rid of that sort of pop looking thing that used to be here and replacing this, it's just that was well worth money, well worth the trouble of everybody not being able to come back here for a while. Great. We'll have to, we'll have to redo this episode once the rest of the Disneyland opens. Can't wait. Yeah, well, so we'll do it in stages then because some of it's going to open by the end of 2012. Other parts will be 2014. Excellent. Any parting words, Sam? No, you know, I think the fantasy land and the Magic Kingdom has always kind of struggled because once the submarines went away, what was one of the big visual cues in the area, which took up a lot of real estate, when it went away, the area sort of fell apart. It didn't have that sort of dynamic energy that we've seen in all the other lands that we've been to. But now with this new addition, it's giving you a variety. You've got the Central Courtyard, you've got the Enchanted Forest, you've got this area, much like we've talked about in the Adventureland issue, we end up having the sequential space that are very distinct, the theme from each other, yet they're all under the umbrella of the overall theme. So brilliant stuff, good stuff. Fantastic. All right, well, that's going to do for this episode. Thanks for listening. I'm Len Testa. This has been the unofficial guide Disney dish podcast with Jim Hill. On behalf of Sam Genway, author of the new book Walt in the Promised of Progress City, we'll see you on the next show.
