Invisible Themepark

Category: Themeparks

  • 3 Best Eiffel Tower Replicas in the World

    3 Best Eiffel Tower Replicas in the World

    Everyone loves the actual Eiffel Tower so much, some builders have found it worthwhile to build Eiffel Tower replicas.  This iron structure is found in replica form all around the world.  Eiffel Tower’s monumental 984 foot height has not even been closely matched by any of the replicas.  However, there are sizes ranging from a puny 1:16 to the impressive 1:2 (half-scale) replica in Las Vegas.

    Eiffel Tower vs. Replica Eiffel Towers by Height
    Eiffel Tower vs. Replica Eiffel Towers by Height

    Paris Las Vegas Eiffel Tower Replica

    Paris Las Vegas Replica Eiffel Tower
    Paris Las Vegas Replica Eiffel Tower

    Scale:  Over 1:2

    Height:  540 feet

    Why So Great:  Paris Las Vegas’ sheer height makes it the best replica on the planet.

    Why You’ll Never Be Fooled It’s the Real Thing:  The great aspect that contributes to the visual appeal of the real Eiffel Tower is that it is on its own, with no competing elements.  By contrast,  Paris Las Vegas’ Eiffel Tower gets lost in the clutter of the hotel and casino buildings behind it.  Not only that, half of the tower (the back two legs) rest inside the casino buildings.

    About It:  At 46 stories high, Paris Las Vegas’ Eiffel Tower replica is available for touring to the general public.  Tickets for The Eiffel Tower Experience cost between $16 and $22.

    Tianducheng, China

    Tianducheng China Eiffel Tower Replica

    Scale:  1:3

    Height:  354 feet

    Why So Great:   The Tianducheng Eiffel Tower replica is the only one in the world that is couched within a reasonable replica of Paris itself.

    Why You’ll Never Be Fooled It’s the Real Thing:  For now, Tianducheng is a ghost town, awaiting a population that may never come.

    About It:  Located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.

    Window of the World Eiffel Tower

    Schenzen Window of the World Eiffel Tower Replica

    Scale:  1:3

    Height:  About 328 feet

    Why So Great:  Like the Tianducheng Eiffel Tower, this one is an impressive 1/3rd the size of the real thing. It also helps that this tower is on the grounds of a large themepark, Winddow of the World.

     

  • Disney’s RiverCountry Rotting in Fittingly Ballardian Way

    In 1976, RiverCountry opened up at Walt Disney World in Florida.  By 2001, it had closed.  Now, it stands–rotting and decrepit in a manner that J.G. Ballard would have approved of.  These photos come from an excellent thread about River Country on Dis Boards.

    It was just a waterpark, although one of the first generation of waterparks.  Here are the rotting water slides:

    Some fake rocks:

    And a map of the whole sorry affair:

  • Forced Perspective at Disneyland’s Main Street: How Does It Work?

    Forced perspective is one of those common photographic illusions.  Let’s say you go to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and position your spouse so that he/she is pretending to hold up the tower with their hand.  That is a type of forced perspective.

    But another way that forced perspective is used is to give objects and buildings the illusion of height.

    Our brains already know that as object recede in the distance, they get smaller.  So, what forced perspective does is preempt that by making those faraway objects even smaller.

    Main Street Forced Perspective

    Disneyland’s Main Street has long been regarded as the beating heart of the theme park–important, sanctified, untouchable.  Main Street’s spiritual origins are Walt Disney’s hometown of Marceline, Missouri.  Designer Harper Goff reportedly used his birthplace of Ft. Collins, Colorado as a design inspiration for the early 20th century storefronts found on the Disneyland Main Street.

    Long-time historian of faded and disappeared Disney attractions Werner Weiss visited Marceline in 2010 and found a few of the old buildings standing, notably the Zurcher Building and the Allen Hotel.  In a weird, ironic twist, the fake has now influenced the real, with Marceline having renamed its main street “Main Street USA,” after Disneyland’s own Main Street USA.

    On Disneyland’s Main Street, forced perspective means that each story farther up has smaller windows, smaller awnings, smaller cornices, and so on.

    It’s not a complete illusion.  It never is.  But it does trick you subconscious mind at first glance.

    Matterhorn’s Forced Perspective

    At the Matterhorn, larger trees are placed lower down.  Farther up, the trees decrease in size.  Up to the “treeline” of the Matterhorn, two foot pinion trees from Arizon were planted.  This makes the 147-foot mountain look–if not 14,000 feet tall–at least something bigger than 147 feet.

  • Disneyland Main Street: Fake, Well-Done, Increasingly Insignificant

    One of the most prominent, yet ignored, features of Disneyland is its Main Street. Even though thousands of people walk through Main Street every day, it is vastly ignored.  Too bad, because Main Street is one of the best features of Disneyland.

    The main elevations for Main Street were drawn up by a former art director at 20th Century Fox named Marvin Davis. In 1953, Davis produced drawings for the Main Street buildings that would eventually become the core of Disneyland. Most of these buildings are either two or three stories with mansard roofs and false fronts.  This is the architecture of many small towns from the turn of the 20th century.

    Sources of Inspiration for Disneyland Main Street

    It is often said that the Main Street of Disneyland, and perhaps the entire concept of hearkening back to some nostalgic idea of the past, is based on Walt Disney’s memories of growing up in Marceline, Missouri. While this may be true, it is worth noting that much of the inspiration came from other artists and art directors.

    One of the Disney art directors, Harper Goff, contributed additional pencil drawings that expanded Main Street’s size and looked remarkably like the downtown of Ft. Collins, Colorado, where Goff had been raised. At the time that Disneyland opened in 1955, a 40-year-old adult bringing his or her child to the park would have been born in 1915. This grown-up visitor would have remembered this style from the town of his or her childhood. If not that, the visitor’s thoughts were imbued with this culture through films of the day, most notably Meet Me in St. Louis.

    What is the Fate of Disney’s Main Street?

    It is a style that is no longer part of contemporary visitors’ memories or their parents or possibly even grandparents. Yet it is such an integral part of Disneyland that it would be difficult for Disney to tear this out replace it with something else.

  • Disneyland Matterhorn: Is There a Secret Basketball Court Inside?

    Legend has it that there is a secret basketball court located inside that most famous fake mountain located in the Los Angeles area…Disneyland’s Matterhorn.  Truth or fiction?

    Truth.

    Instead of a secret Bondian evil villain lair with shark tanks and stolen Rembrandts, the secret room in the Disneyland Matterhorn is actually a half-court basketball court.

    Size and Placement of Matterhorn Basketball Court?

    As you can see, it’s clearly not even a half-court.  Maybe a one-third court.

    Not only that, but it’s clearly an “improvised” board and hoop and is attached to the side of the stairs.

    Tony Baxter, Senior Vice President, Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, says that there was an empty space in the upper two-thirds of the mountain, and it needed to be filled with something.  Walt Disney himself even gave the “OK” to build the basketball court in the Matterhorn.

    Not to Satisfy Building Codes

    Rumor has it that local building code indicated that only sports-related buildings could be over a certain height (or something of that nature), so tacking on a basketball hoop was the loophole.

    That appears to be false.   The City of Anaheim is going to let Disney build a ground-breaking (in more ways than one) park with a whole slew of unconventional structures…but hold them to some archaic building code?  Nah.  I don’t see it.

    Here is a close-up of the Matterhorn basketball court backboard, with a Disneyland sticker on it:

    Video:  Disney Fact or Fiction

    This video confirms the rumor of a secret basketball court in the Matterhorn.  Skip ahead to minute 5:00 to see the actual court; there is a lot of filler before that.

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