deeparrival.com: Disney Imagineers said an early balloon test for Piston Peak National Park showed planned elevations were too tall and prompted a redesign before construction advanced. The useful question is not only what changed, but what a traveler should do with the information right now.
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At first glance I thought they floated themselves up in a balloon and looked at everything from above, and I was thinking to myself: if visitors are walking on the ground, why does the view from the sky matter? Turns out I had it backwards. They place a balloon at the height where the peak will be, then look at it from other areas of the park to see whether it shows up where it shouldn't. They say it won't delay the opening, but I imagine it meant a lot of engineering overtime and a few sleepless nights figuring out the fix. Expensive lesson. But hey, it's Disney. They'll probably make it back within a month of opening. They'd already built models to check the structure, but a model is always viewed from a chosen angle. Once the park opens there will be thousands of random "camera views" walking around. A real-life check is always worth it.
I really credit Disney imagineering for instilling a love of technical theatre in me at a young age. So, to this day I still try to follow along with new developments in the Disney Parks, which is why I chose this article. The last time I visited the parks (which is often for me because I live near the Orland area), construction was already underway for the expansion this article covers known as “Piston Peaks.” This area being developed meant the demolition of Tom Sawyer Island. This change was a little bit disappointing to me, because the island was one of the last fully original lands in the Magic Kingdom, and it was a large part of my mother and uncle’s Disney experiences growing up. However, this construction is a major issue for the layout of Magic Kingdom. When I visited in July, several walkways throughout that area of the park were cut off, the waterway connecting the island to the park was already drained, making it a painful eyesore, and the façade of one of Disney’s most iconic attractions, the Haunted Mansion, was covered in its protective fabric box. (These fabric boxes are just printed images of the building itself, and they stick out like sore thumbs, especially at night). This construction needs to be completed quickly because it is such a disturbance. While this article claims the ballon test results means that no further delay is being caused to construction, I am worried that having to change the elevations of the land may imply that the newly added land will not be cohesive with the rest of Frontierland’s design, which could result in either a large visual disruption or even more construction to correct this issue within old Frontierland.
I always wondered what it would be like to be a Disney Imagineer. The job has seemed fantastical since my childhood, engineering and building the parks one attraction at a time as both a piece of highly engineered structure but also art. The creative aspects and limits of their role is so interesting in how they build on top of an already existing system to expand and alter the attractions. The balloon test seems like a hilarious solution but one that is created for a reason. The sight lines of Disney have been one of their most important aspects in containing the different widely varied sectors of its parks and their attention to this view is incredible. It is also an interesting issue to think about how they manage construction on a park that is almost always in season. They have to learn how to balance their construction and the visitors' experience.
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