Imagineering show digs into details of Disney castles

[Disney4me]

The new installment of the “We Call It Imagineering” web series takes a worldwide tour of Disney theme park castles.

The “Building Castles” episode features the kind of details that only Imagineers can drop, including tidbits regarding upcoming changes to Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle.

The 28-minute show, available on YouTube, delves into historical matters with former Imagineer Tom Morris and into the future with Zach Riddley, an Imagineering strategist, who has duties regarding planned theme park Disneyland Abu Dhabi.

Our house

Walt Disney World’s Cinderella Castle gets a lot of love in the episode, including its coloring, the not-so-secret suite, projection-show challenges and the oft-discussed forced perspective, design tricks that make the structure look taller than its 189 feet.

“The shingles even are forced perspective. So the shingles get smaller as we go up. We enhance that illusion with lighter colors as the castle gets higher,” said Colleen Meyers, executive color design and paint with Walt Disney Imagineering.

Meyers turns the conversation backward and forward-looking.

“As we look at our next version of the castle, we’re trying to go back to evoke the classic castle – so, the castle of opening day of Walt Disney World,” she said.

“We look at all the old photos, the films, light hitting the castle. We put all that together trying to evoke an emotion,” Meyers said. “The castle started out quite a cool gray. As the years went by we started putting warmer tones on the castle to get that last ray of sunlight.”

Disney World ready to repaint Cinderella Castle with ‘classic color scheme’

The 2020 paint job for Cinderella Castle – the look that continues today – included a rose-gold hue and reflective gold pieces that changed some projection techniques.

“You cannot make a dark blue roof bright yellow without doing some color magic,” said J.P. Perez, senior visual effects designer for Disney Live Entertainment.

It doesn’t sound easy, putting flat, moving characters on a curved surface.

“There are going to be bends and corners that we can’t avoid. It is a castle, after all,” Perez said. “So we design it in a way that doesn’t interrupt the overall look of the characters and the castle scenery.”

Finally, fun facts from Sophia Coscia, video systems designer with Disney Live Entertainment.

“We have 500,000 lumens of projector light hitting the castle, which is the equivalent of 750 60-watt light bulbs,” she said.

Snow White out

Of course, Disney’s first castle was in Disneyland, and Walt Disney called on movie studio set designers to create his Sleeping Beauty Castle there. The earliest plans had no castle, Morris said.

“The park was just going to be Americana,” he said. The icon was added as a way to tie in Disney characters.

Host Ali Rubinstein, WDI senior vice president global creative and show design, asked why the Disneyland castle wasn’t named for Snow White, the company’s first big-screen princess.

Disney: What it costs to eat entire menu of Epcot food fest

“They actually did consider Snow White initially,” Morris said. “But Walt found that it would be a great way to promote the film ‘Sleeping Beauty’ that was actually in production at that time, even though four years away from Disneyland’s opening.”

The first castle was a quick turnaround project, he noted.

“They didn’t start the construction drawings for this castle until January 1955. That gave them seven months to finish it,” he said.

Francois Mori/AP

Mickey Mouse waves in front of Disneyland Paris' Sleeping Beauty Castle in a 2018 photo. (Francois Mori/Associated Press)

Castle country

The Disneyland Paris castle is pinkish “to give it a more fantastical flavor” and to make it stand out among the many castles of Europe, said Michel Den Dulk, portfolio executive creative director, WDI Paris.

But it benefits from location and its artisans, he said.

“The same artisans that work on the Notre Dame and bringing that back to life are also the people who work on our castle on restoring the finials or restoring the beautiful stained glass inside,” he said. “We treat it as a monument the French people have embraced, and we benefit from the great talent that’s in this country.”

In the dungeon: a 79-foot dragon, that was once the largest animatronic in the world. (Fun fact: It snores).

Around Asia

The castle at Hong Kong Disneyland was built as a tribute to the original in California. Planners used 1955 drawings. It was later renovated and augmented to play off the natural, green, mountainous backdrop.

The castle at Tokyo Disneyland is modeled after Magic Kingdom’s centerpiece, although it’s 22 feet shorter. It also has a walk-through attraction / photo op called Fairy Tale Hall inside.

Shanghai Disneyland’s Storybook Castle is considered the company’s largest and most complex castle. It has restaurants, retail and a boat ride that floats through it. Other details include murals tying seasons with princesses, jade backdrops for meet and greets, four swans that represent the women in Walt Disney’s life and, high on the tallest finial, a single peony, the national flower of China.

Walt Disney Co. and Miral are planning Disneyland Abu Dhabi, which will be a castle-style park on a waterfront. (Walt Disney Co.)

Water works

Up next: Disneyland Abu Dhabi, which was announced in May.

“One of the first decisions we made as a company was to think we’re going to create a castle park here, a park that’s based on our Magic Kingdom-style of storytelling,” said Zach Riddley, senior vice president global creative strategy for WDI.

“Abu Dhabi is a city on the water and so we’re really excited about being able to incorporate water for the first time in the design of one of our castles,” Riddley said. Details will be shared down the road, he said.

Birthday take

Not dwelled upon in the series: Alternative looks for the castles, although we get a glimpse of the notoriously pink birthday cake castle cooked up for Disney World’s 25th anniversary.

Still, I felt a nod near the beginning of the episode.

“While our castles have had a few different looks over the years – I mean, who hasn’t? – they’ve always been synonymous with Disney magic,” said Bruce Vaughn, WDI’s president and chief creative officer.

Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.

View the full article