Friday, December 09, 2022
8 Festive Facts You Need to Know About Holiday Décor at Walt Disney World
Disney Parks Blog: From cheerfully curated Christmas trees and festive wreaths to glittering garland and gingerbread structures with an aroma of sugar and spice, holiday festivities are in full swing at Walt Disney World Resort during the 50th Anniversary celebration, which runs through March 31, 2023.
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Holy shit. that is so much decoration. I have just about a million questions after reading that article. The first question being where do they store all of that? they must have a giant warehouse or something to store all of the decorations. like nine miles of garland? thats crazy. second question is is how long does it take to put up? like do they have to do it all in one night when they are closed? or do they do it bit by bit over a few weeks and just some patrons get to see partial decorations before the whole thing is done? third question is how many people does that take? like id imagine they have to take on more folks to get all of the work done in a timely manner but how do they do that? do they take volunteers? do they do overtire? or does everyone just have to take on the crazy amounts of overtime it must take? so many questions.
This is incredible. Granted, is is the big Mouse company, so of course they would go all out. That being said, seeing the stats laid out like this was something else. The amount of time, effort, and money that must have gone into this is simply incomprehensible. My interest is certainly piqued by the trees – massive size aside, having the first fact dropped state that the toppers on the biggest trees being over 7 feet and 200 pounds was ridiculous… I was thinking to myself, now how did they manage to get a 200 pound topper at the top of a 70 foot tall tree without snappting the top off? But of course fact number 4 clarifies it really nicely by adding the small fact that over 110 tons of steel were used in the fabrication of the trees. Not to mention the 15,000 ornaments and TWO HUNDRED SIXTY THOUSAND LIGHTS!! Knowing Disney, they are definitely pixel addressable, presumably three or four channels per pixel, totalling 800,000 to over a million addresses of data, which would cover nearly four THOUSAND universes of data. That sound astounding and ridiculous, but knowing the mouse company, I would not even be surprised.
I absolutely love seeing statistics for topics like this. I find it so interesting to see how large some of these décor pieces really are, how much they weigh, and how long they took to conceptualize and create, amongst other things. Genuinely, who would have thought that there is nine miles worth of garland hung up within the parks. I cannot imagine a team of 50 individuals working throughout the entire year and focuses solely on holiday decorations. Some of these numbers really surprised me, but some of them were on par with what I expected – like the fact that they begin installing decorations on Halloween, and finished by Thanksgiving, or the 1700 wreaths. The surprising numbers include the 40,000 pieces of décor, and the fact that those pieces are spread over 780 locations. I would actually love to have read more about the 7’ wide… 33,000 pound Christmas tree..
As a former Disney employee, I'm always intrigued by park trivia. There is so much thought that goes into literally every little detail -- nothing is by accident. I actually didn't even know there was a gingerbread hour tradition, and it's both very cool and very unsurprising that it features hidden Mickeys. In fact, many rides and attractions at Disney parks feature hidden Mickeys! I know where many of them are at Disneyland, but not all. Anyway, most of this trivia isn't so much about the finer details as just the sheer amount of stuff that goes into transforming Disney for the holiday season. What I found most interesting is that the process takes nearly a month to complete -- and then only hangs around for another month before it vanishes again. It seems like a long time to complete a turnover -- but it's not. Disney parks and resorts are huge, and employees only really have between midnight and 6am to work on this transformation. And that's while working around the daily maintenance! Truthfully, the fact that there are only about 140 people working to make this magic happen is truly impressive.
This article was super intriguing to me and I've always been interested in how the disney machine works from day to day. I’d like to say I'm shocked by the scope and size of it all but it is Disney after all. I think i'm left with even more questions now since reading but i love inside look articles like this. I thought we were starting out tame with the 29 icon trees but they hit us really quick with nearly 600 other trees. The sheer size of these things makes me wonder so many things, mainly; how do they set these things up and how much crew is needed for that? They listed the seasonal workers needed and a general timeline, but I would be so interested in the nitty gritty. And for example, who runs these calls and what do those look like? Where do they source/build these things? And where are they when it's not the holiday season? Maybe one day I’ll see the breakdowns but for now i'll just wonder.
I am always amazed at how festive Disney gets and how much effort they put into things at the parks. I am lucky enough to have seen this once before in person and it is even more mind blowing than it is online. I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into this and to be honest, the crew behind making this all possible seems smaller than I originally thought. Not only do they have to do this in one park, but Disney has multiple parks and resorts and they do this at every single one, each one with the same level of detail and festivity. In particular I really love the gingerbread house at the Grand Floridian. There is a TV show on Disney+ about the holidays in Disney and it goes even further into the specifics of all of this and shows some of the people that make this possible.
As a kid my family would also often go to Florida a lot during the holidays and I always remember how magical the Christmas decor was at Disney World. Seeing all the steel and oversized ornaments and pounds and pounds of branches that go into it now especially as a stage manager seems like what could easily lead to an organizational disaster so props to Disney for doing this for decades on end. There's some idea that Christmas decorations are wasteful or not necessary however I think if it brings you Joy and if it brings others destroyed it should live on. I did not realize that this Anna life-size gingerbread house until now and that it has been going for 23 years and I hope that the next time I'm at Disney over Christmas I get to see it. All in all Disney decorations bring even more magic to the Christmas season and the team of over 100 people that make that happen truly can bring joy to the world.
Theo
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