The backdrop that is Disney's California Adventure's Buena Vista Street, which takes place in 1923 when a young Walt Disney made his way out to California, as you come through this Marketplace of shops, stores and restaurants it all looks real. Even though it really is full of merchandise and opportunities for ways to experience the park and spend money, it's fake. They're an assortment of little cutouts in one larger building. We might not be able to use their associated doors and never make it to their second floors, we can cruise through the entire building of real stores. We're exploring the fake buildings of Disney's California Adventure. The fakest land of them all - Hollywoodland - where everything's a lie and disguised to make you think that it's something that it's not. On the corner of the Hollywood Studios we have our first fake building. The exterior facade is an Art Deco styled Studio building with all of its ornate details but we can never actually go inside this building. The facade looks like a real building covering what actually is the inner courtyard of Award Wieners and Mickey's Philharmagic queue. Another fake building of Hollywoodland advertises flowers, sweets and even pet supplies but it's a fake building. We never get to go inside. Next door we have another Art Deco building, a fake department store on the corner. Beautiful marble inlay wraps around the entrance and the brass framed window doors but we can't go inside. On the edge of Hollywoodland we are completely surrounded by fake buildings and Disney puts a lot of love and care into them. Literally these are the windows that look out onto the street on the other side of the backlot. You can see the steel work, the aluminum sheets of everything on the other side. As we move around DCA it's going to get trickier to figure out what exactly the building's purpose is other than to create perfect backdrops for us to explore and not get distracted by cast members doing their jobs.
Imagine how different Disneyland would be if there was another Village on the other side of Main Street USA. A Village taking us back further inside Disneyland and back further into our nation's great history. Walt announced Liberty Street as the first ever expansion for Disneyland in 1956 one year after the park had opened. Liberty Street would lead you down to a cul-de-sac, set during the Revolutionary War and would feature a mixture of period perfect buildings representing several U.S cities. 13 buildings to be exact, paying tribute to the original 13 colonies, featuring Merchants and Trades that reflected this time period. Within the stores, merchants would practice the crafts they sold where a Disneyland guest could buy something from a blacksmith that they saw work in his Forge. At the end of Liberty Street you would enter Liberty Square which would feature two of the land's attractions the first being Independence Hall's the Hall of Presidents. This would be a wax museum because animatronics wouldn't exist until 1963. The second attraction the Hall of the Declaration of Independence would have featured three scenes inspired by famous paintings and a replica of the Declaration of Independence. The idea would be that both attractions would help tell the story of the United States. The area however was never built because Walt had a lot on his hands in the late 50s at Disneyland including the Matterhorn bobsleds, the Disneyland monorail and submarine Voyage. Walt however did go as far as to have maps printed showing both Liberty Street and Edison Square. Though this was originally planned as an addition to Main Street USA at Disneyland in California the concept was revived during the design of the Magic Kingdom in the late 1960s. Imagine walking off Town Square in Disneyland, past the Mad Hatter and interim into Liberty Street where you walk along a tight corridor of 13 different buildings that leads to a small fake Harbor on the left. To the right a very tiny Liberty Square where there's a Liberty Tree and two attractions about the founding of our great nation. Logistically it wouldn't have worked because this is where the parade goes. The parade starts at It's a Small World then works its way through Fantasyland and up Main Street to quietly hide backstage. For its second performance, the gates of magic swing wide open and the parade works its way back to It's a Small World. And realistically, how would you explain this??
Not enough landscape or trees could cover Space Mountain. And if I had to choose, I want Space Mountain over the historic project! Let's just keep things as they are, please! This building will be closing June 5th and reopening June 9th. This building houses three rides, two shops and one restroom. That's six different amenities for guests inside of this one building. Curious as to why, during the busiest season, Disney would close three iconic attractions - Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? You can see those shingles are all starting to pop up but what else could it be? With all the recent fire concerns could it be just to remove a lot of debris on the rooftop that's gathered over the years. The gutter has all of those items that have been collected in the gutter. Let's examine the overall shape of this amazing building. I understand this area right here takes us up above the area where Mr. Toad is. I don't know if you're above Mr. Toad the entire time but why else would they take you up on the second floor other than to conserve space? There's the Peter Pan tree where you can see the initials of Peter Pan and Wendy Darling. You can hear the Peter Pan Loop through this door. This turret over here is where the Peter Pan style roof and the Bavarian Village begins. This corner pocket and how it all comes together is no accident. The parallel alignment that you see is imaginary. It's a jigsaw puzzle of little pockets. Every so often it bends and folds and pops out and extrudes and goes back in just making one big building look as if it actually is a European style Village. This building spans from across the Matterhorn, and wraps around the east side of the castle. The architecture is stunning. Walt created the look of several different facades for each attraction, in order to give the illusion of multiple structures. To see MORE of this beautiful building AND the three attractions, watch the video slideshow! Lots of work being done everywhere in Fiesta Village. It’s open on weekends, but there’s a dead end at the swings. You can enter/exit via Camp Snoopy or behind the Merry Go Round.
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