Invisible Themepark

Tag: Themeparks

Cutaway drawings of rides, structures, and other facilities found at themeparks, fairs, parks, etc.

  • New York World’s Fair 1939 Perisphere and Trylon Cutaway

    New York World’s Fair 1939 Perisphere and Trylon Cutaway

    New York World's Fair 1939 Perisphere Cutaway
    New York World’s Fair 1939 Perisphere Cutaway

    The symbol and centerpiece of the 1939 New York World’s Fair was its combination trylon and perisphere.  The trylon was a 610 foot tall tower, whose bottom section provided entrance for the adjoining 190 foot diameter perisphere.

    This circa 1938 cutaway was drawn prior to completion of the trylon and perisphere.  It shows how visitors would take escalators up through the trylon and be deposited on two “doughnut-shaped moving platforms,” as LIFE puts it, to watch a 6 minute show focusing on a futuristic, utopian City of Tomorrow.

    Source: LIFE Aug 1, 1938

  • Disneyland Matterhorn Cutaway, 2012

    Disneyland Matterhorn Cutaway, 2012

    matterhorn-cutaway

    A nice, recent cutaway drawing of the Matterhorn at the Anaheim, CA Disneyland.  This graphic, from the February 8, 2012, Orange County Register, shows remodels to the Bavarian-influenced concrete “rock.”

    One of the most notable and largest changes was filling in many of the large openings, including the large one that allowed passage of the now-discontinued Skyway.

    This cutaway also shows the secret Matterhorn basketball court.

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

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

    Disneyland Main Street Forced Perspective

    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

    Disneyland Main Street Drawing

    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

    Disneyland Main Street Drawing

    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.