Journeys to magic kingdoms

 


This is the idealized view of Disneyland from the opening credits of the 1954 Disneyland TV Show, essentially it is the view that introduced Disneyland to the world.  It is a glamorized view of what it was like to approach Disneyland before the construction of Disney California Adventure, a view from the parking lot if you will.  While this view no longer exists in California and never really did it(You cannot see the Castle looming over Main Street Station at Disneyland) it does basically in fact exist in Florida...and it is spectacular.

I have been guilty of overdosing on Disney Fan Blogs and podcasts lately. Some of them have exhaustively researched articles and near academic writing. This has left me wanting to do a series of posts on the Disney Parks but these will be more of a personal exploration, a memoir of my Disney experiences informed by my background in Architecture. I feel a tremendous sense of "loyalty" to the original Disneyland, and yet I really loved Walt Disney World. As I started to think about it what I found so enchanting about Walt Disney World were the things that built upon and improved on Disneyland, and  the elements at The Magic Kingdom that remind me of things you no longer find in California. Comparisons between Walt Disney World and Disneyland fascinate me. The Disneyland Resort is the anchor of the resort district in the city of Anaheim; Disney World is essentially its own city, complete with its own infrastructure...highways, water systems, even transit. The expansions of the California property in the last 16 years have still not balanced the scales, Disney World is truly enormous. It was often said that it was "Twice the size of Manhattan".  There is the famous "Disney Bubble"; the total separation from the outside world. Disneyland arguably has more charm, intimacy and historical relevance...it is the first park and Walt walked the finished product.


Walt Disney World has its own infrastructure just like a "real" city- roads & highways, water, sewer & power, etc.  This is a water system fixture I took a picture of because it was so cool with the name and original World logo cast into it.

Walt Disney wanted to build a place for families to enjoy together because when his children were young he found himself bored on park benches while they rode kiddie rides. That's one of the reasons, he was also the son of a contractor so he was probably a frustrated architect, he was definitely a model railroad enthusiast, had his own backyard ride on railroad and well probably wanted to move up to the next scale! In many ways Disneyland is a giant model railroad set.  He found some orange groves outside Los Angeles built his park and then watched as his success caused a land boom that locked him into his original purchase.


Arrival by car and seeing the park in the distance was a big deal, it was so memorable an experience that it was recreated in this scene from a vintage It's a Small World children's book.  I have fond memories of arriving at Disneyland by school bus- every year my Junior High School attended an evening private party at the park. I have no pictures of the view from the parking lot, I was too busy being a dumb kid to think "Hey someday they will build a second gate here so I should take pictures for a blog post I will write in twenty years".  So instead I took a picture of my TV while watching a DVD for the first picture and my son scanned this picture from the original book.

In California the original (1955-1998) arrival sequence was typically by exiting the 5 freeway at Harbor Blvd., even today that first glimpse of the Matterhorn is terribly exciting. Many times we approached from the east- via the 57 freeway exiting at Angel Stadium "Look! The Big "A"" and then proceeded to take Katella Avenue west until turning at Harbor. The big Disneyland Sign was another landmark that built up that feeling of anticipation. After suffering through the parking toll plaza you made your way to the gigantic surface parking lot. The parking lot now being the location of California Adventure Park which opened in 2001. It turns out  there is some nostalgia online for this lost parking lot.  I suppose I am slightly guilty of that...only I didn't realize it until getting to Disney World where they still have these gigantic surface parking lots. They brought back Disneyland memories.

Disneyland as seen from the original parking lot.  Thanks to davelandweb.com for use of photo. As an aside I'm always so astonished at how bad the smog is in most vintage photos of Disneyland it is definitely something that has improved a great deal in Southern California.

Depending on where you parked there was a series of events in the landscape that marked your progress towards finally "arriving" at Disneyland. I recall that thrill when you got out of the car and finally saw north to the overall view of the Disneyland Railroad berm, the train station and Space Mountain. You then proceeded to pass under the outer monorail track and then the inner monorail track and then you'd reach the ticket booths and sneak that first view of the Mickey floral beyond the turnstiles. This sequence had a charm to it, in spatial terms it was a large open lot a "sea of asphalt" if you will, crossed by elevated monorail tracks with the park on "a shore" in the distance and to the west you made out the original Disneyland Hotel, looking south, and east you could make out the competitor hotels that had surrounded the park. I maintain that it wasn't the parking lot that made this experience...it was the experience of distant vistas, of transition as you passed under the monorail and the act of getting closer to the gate. In Florida this sequence was augmented considerably by the designed environment itself.

Walt himself from the "One Man's Dream" exhibit at Walt Disney World.  That big diagonal is I-4, the entrance was from the bottom of the property and the original Theme Park "The Magic Kingdom" is located way at the top left corner.

Walt Disney wanted to build a city, a real city of tomorrow, one where he could test the experimental planning concepts in vogue at mid century; to try to tackle the urban problems of the 1960's so the world might be a better place for his grandchildren. He set about to find a large amount of land, much more then he had in California and land he could buy cheaply. Walt Disney Productions wasn't in the development business per se, but Disneyland had been a phenomenal success and so he believed he could tackle the project. He understood that he would need a draw that would be the financial engine of the project and recognized the untapped east coast market for his kind of theme park. Accordingly The Magic Kingdom is placed in the farthest corner of the property so that folks would have to travel through his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow(or EPCOT) in order to get to it. Sadly Walt Disney died before he could spearhead the project, although he left behind a fairly detailed site plan/land use concept. They knew the new park was going to be bigger, an application of the lessons learned from over 10 years of operating Disneyland. The funny thing is Walt didn't care for sequels and was not nearly as interested in the new theme park as he was in his city. Walt Disney World would evolve away from a City of the Future into exclusively a resort...but if you look hard enough you can find remnants of that original vision.


We're here, we're finally here, I'm so excited I'll excuse the 1990's post modern excess.  The heart is in the right place- who doesn't smile at the sight of Mickey & Minnie! Even the freeways are nicer at Walt Disney World.

To get to The Magic Kingdom you exit I-4 onto World Drive, it may sound silly but I love World Drive...its practically a freeway.  You pass beneath the giant post modern "Welcome to Walt Disney World" arches...they are dated and scream 1990's but oh well it's still fun. Now you are "on Property" as they say, I swear it's the nicest freeway I've been on.  It's neatly landscaped, the only billboards are themed Disney attraction dioramas, monorails whiz by you...it's very futuristic and you leave Orlando behind you with "The Monorail Song"(not The Simpson's version but the classic track from the 50's) playing in your head. I highly recommend streaming it off your phone as you travel towards The Magic Kingdom; it intensifies the experience!



Quality three dimensional billboards and a monorail track!  We're getting closer!

It's a pleasant drive and it's longer than you think it will be, but finally you get to the Magic Kingdom Toll Plaza.  Pass through and then you still have to drive a ways!


Take my money! Let me in, oh wait just scan my magic band.

There is even a Disney World Gas Station "Car Care Center" in Disneyspeak along the route until finally you arrive at.....the enormous surface parking lot. It sort of looks like the old Disneyland parking lot but without the convention center and ring of hotels looking down at you, here there is trees and that remarkable horizontal sweep of the Florida sky, it's a different light than California(not better not worse just different) and you still can't see the park. Depending where you park you either walk or Tram it to the very institutional sounding Ticket & Transportation Center or "TTC".

Anticipation builds as you repeatedly pass beneath multiple arches, a procession towards the park little by little leaving the real world behind. 

The TTC is designed in (to me anyway) this groovy late 60's Tomorrowland style that someone decided was not "magical enough" so they draped green, red, yellow and purple ribbon all over it. Personally I think it detracts, I hope they restore it someday as a relic of the original EPCOT spirit...it has great bones. Here the monorails take you to the Magic Kingdom, most of the luxury resorts, or to "Epcot Park"(more on that in another post).


Mid-Century Swank meets 1980's festival marketplace at the Ticket & Transportation Center.  The Palm trees go through holes in the roof!



Now you can get to The Magic Kingdom by bus from your hotel or the Monorail from here but I think the best way to get the full effect is by ferryboat.

We have finally arrived at the TTC and have decided to take the ferry across Seven Seas Lagoon. The view is wonderful- to your left is the Tiki splendor of the Polynesian Village Resort, the lagoon has an island, beyond you see the Victorian elegance of the Grand Floridian Resort. Perhaps you spot a monorail entering the futuristic Contemporary Resort. But what entices you the most is that first glimpse of Cinderella Castle in the distance, standing gracefully seemingly at the edge of the lagoon...it clearly towers over everything else in sight.


Every lake I drive by now leaves me unimpressed because it doesn't have a 200' castle at the other side.



 As the ferry makes its way closer to the shore you start to make out the details...the Train Station, Space Mountain.

You can see these reflections in the water, the lagoon feels like an ocean as you travel further and further away from the real world, it is such an all encompassing experience and you haven't even entered the park yet! All around you is motion, the water, the boats, monorails and the Walt Disney World Rail Road.


The monorail, the Train Station & Railroad...the Castle looming over it all. I'm speechless at this point.

This whole experience can take like 45 minutes from star to finish but who cares...you are now at the shore of the most "Magical Place on Earth". Conceptually this is a similar experience to the original arrival procession to Disneyland. The distant view entices you from an open area surrounded by hotels and monorails but instead of a magic kingdom on the shores of a sea of asphalt you get a magic kingdom on the shores of an actual sea!


The view at night, my fuzzy picture does not do it justice but it is in fact that idealized view from the original Disneyland TV show.

Disney Dreaming

It is probably nearly impossible to grow up in southern California and not become a fairly devoted Disney fan....after all it is home to Walt Disney Studios and the Happiest Place on Earth: Disneyland!

Sleeping Beauty Castle, Disneyland

 

I've said repeatedly how important drawing is to me, and I've been blessed with a talent for drawing.  As a child I was a fan of biographies- particularly of Presidents and historical figures but one man stood out as a favorite: Walter Elias Disney.  It was an attractive story of a young boy who used his talent at drawing to go out in the world and make a success of himself.  I honestly can not remember a time when I did not love Disneyland, many birthdays I turned down a party to instead be treated to a family trip to Walt Disney's original Magic Kingdom.  My earliest Disneyland memory is of exploring Captain Hook's Pirate Ship- this would predate the "New Fantasyland" of 1983...so I am guessing it was at around age 4.  I also distinctly remember the time where we collected our leftover "Tickets/Coupons" only to get to the park and find that they had moved to one price passports. 

After family and perhaps the weather the thing I miss most about life in southern California is frequent access to Disneyland(or Disneyland Park at Disneyland Resort as it is now called).  The last 2 years that we lived in Whittier were a special treat as we could often see & hear the fireworks from near our home, and thanks to our Annual Passports we were able to take advantage of living only 15 minutes away and making very frequent visits....sometimes just for dinner and a few rides.  Our son Presley(my co blogger at Presley's Little People Blog) continues the tradition/obsession and we have celebrated his 2nd, 4th, & 10th at the park.

Cinderella Castle, Walt Disney World

 

We moved to the East Coast in April 2009, managed a visit to Disneyland in November of 2009 and that was it, for the first time in my life I went more than a year without a visit to Disneyland.  That drought lasted nearly 5 and a half years.  This past March, for Presley's 10th birthday we managed to accommodate a day at the "Resort".  I don't think I realized until I set foot on the property how much I had missed the place.  It turned out to be a very crowded spring break day- and it was such a different experience to attend as a Tourist and not a local.  I experienced a sense of urgency that was unfamiliar to me on my previous trips, thoughts of who knows when I would make it again went through my head.  When I got back to North Carolina I found it had woken up my dormant Disney obsession.  I was like Malcolm McDowell from the Star Trek Generations movie- after experiencing a taste of the Nexus (a dimension of  unlimited possibilities) and then being forced to return to the real world he then spends his time obsessing over finding a way back in.  This lead to our making our first visit(June 2015) to Walt Disney World in Florida.

Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant , Disneyland Paris

 

I love Disneyland(and the parks it inspired around the world) because it is an architectural petting zoo infused with nostalgic, historic, and cinematic experiences.  In college while in Europe for a school trip I was lucky to work in a visit to Disneyland Paris, the second "Magic Kingdom"  I visited.  I have illustrated this post with sketches of the 3 Disney Castles I have seen, I drew these and colored them using the "Paper" app on my iPad.

"Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina"

Hello out there!  It has been 2 years since my last post....so I am pretty sure no one is out there following...after all what is to follow?

Well as an update I'll note that we left Washington, DC for Charlotte, NC.  We have lived in the "Lake Norman" area of Charlotte for 2 years now.  It is a very beautiful spot with lots of greenery and those breathtaking Carolina Blue skies. 

So in keeping with the Richard Nixon parallels I've lived in Whittier and Washington, DC and now here I am  in the Tar Heel state...home of Duke University where Nixon went to law school!

Charlotte has a pretty impressive skyline- home to many banks and financial institutions and like most southern cities lots of brick buildings with white columns and porticos....think Jeffersonian/Georgian style...not to different from Virginia.  Charlotte in particular has quite a bit of Craftsman architecture and in fact some neighborhoods look an awful lot like Pasadena, California.

A visit to Mr. Washington's and some cherry trees

It was a LONG winter, and very cold. We had some snow, more than say last year, but nothing like the blizards of four years ago. But it was still very cold...so I basically just hid under a blanket for 4 months. Okay not really, but I don't think I will ever get used to east coast weather. You can take the boy out of Rialto, CA but you can never take the Rialto, CA out of the boy. Since I last posted we have done some interesting things, scattered and hardly of any organizing theme so I thought I just compose an illustrated ramble of some of the highlights of the past winter.

I'll start in reverse order, Washington's famous cherry blossoms came and went. We have some trees in our development that allowed us to enjoy the spectacle without the crowds. But I have been to them in years past so if I didn't just tell you that you would think these were from this year.

The trees were a gift from Japan about a hundred years ago and they line the Tidal Basin, where there are monuments to Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr, and George Mason. Now no one remembers poor Mason,(In fact I took no picture of his memorial in keeping with his spirit of anonymity) he was the writer of a document that inspired the Constitution as written by James Madison. This has earned him a share of recognition as a father of the Constitution. So much so that a National Parks Guide once told me "Over there you'll see a monument to the writer of the Constitution...James Madison", that was only half true...there is no monument to James Madison on the National Mall.

Of course this same guide told me while giving me a tour of the FDR memorial "Did the New Deal help end the Depression? No, not really but FDR made the people feel better and hopeful, and that was his real legacy". Sounds an awful lot like Leonard Nimoy on the Simpson's "The following story is true, by which I mean it is false. But then again isn't that the real truth? The answer...is no." Hopefully that guide is being furloughed due to the sequester.

I try to make Mount Vernon for President's Day, which come on is really Washington's Birthday. I'll let you in on a little secret that only I and about 50,000 people know about....on President's Day admission is FREE! So we usually make it an annual trip. One year it was the day after a blizzard so the crowd was managable...only 35,000 people.

I love Mt. Vernon, it is situated on this beautiful bend on the Potomac River, and even though it has pretty much been surrounded by suburbia they own enough land to trick you with Disneyland style landscaping tricks to make you think it is in the hunt country of 200 years ago. Even the museums are underground. The house was added to over the years starting as a small cabin and becoming the great manor house you see today. GW was a big picture guy so some of the details are rough, and yet that is so in keeping with his character. What may seem almost modernistic was probably just an outgrowth of his straight forward practical character.

The house mimics natural stone by being clad in wood boards that have been shaped as if cut masonry, and sand is applied to the paint to give it a faux finish. It was less costly then real stone would have been, but then has needed to be repainted at great cost over the last 200 years it probably has been a wash. The windows on the front of the house aren't quite symetrical due to the original cabin underneath...but no one seems to have cared enough to do anything about it and in fact the staircase cuts across on of the windows.

None of these things really detract from the overall dignity of the house, which is perfectly appropriate. Afterall everyone knows about GW's illfitting dentures, which would no doubt have been uncomfortable and unsightly and yet they didn't detract from the dignity of the great man either.

The piazza...the great covered porch overlooking the river is my favorite part of the house. I could sit there forever, but preferably not a day after a blizzard, and frankly not in February, and well honestly I am too cheap to pay to get in to the place.

It is a double height space and frames the river view , and yet once agin the simple elegant pillars are straight forward, they are square and are not classical columns. Squint and it almost reads like a Miesian colonade.

Is Mount Vernon getting smaller or is that boy getting bigger?

More on DC Architecture: Row houses near U Street NW

When you think of typical DC architecture the neo-classical White House, Capitol, & Memorials come to mind. And these of course are remarkable and beautiful buildings, but the reality of DC is that they represent just a small albeit much more famous side of DC architecture.

The building type you’ll actually see more of in the neighborhoods of the city is the row house. These are the small city houses found in most east coast American cities and of course throughout Europe. The blocks of the city are divided into lots which when developed usually had a small or no front yard, a narrow 2-3 story residence and usually a larger back yard. These houses would share side walls with the neighboring houses. They are some of the city’s first housing, especially the famous colonial and federal style ones found in Georgetown and Alexandria, VA. When we lived in the city my son attended school in Northwest DC in a neighborhood called “U” Street.

The school was housed in a former laundry- a gem of a streamlined moderne building. And it was surrounded by a neighborhood of mostly Victorian row houses. The city experienced phenomenal growth in the years after the Civil War and most of the classic DC row houses are of this vintage.

Victorian architecture is famous for turrets and bay windows but what comes to mind more often are the freestanding wooden “stick style” Victorian houses. It’s quite something to see that language rendered in brick and shoulder to shoulder with other similar style houses.

There are also much simpler houses that integrate a front porch, usually with Tuscan columns; these houses were from more of the turn of the 20th century and the years after. The DC variety have a particular scale to them not found say in Baltimore or Philadelphia, or say the brownstones of New York City. They also seem to have more whimsy and more protrusions and details, those other cities tend to have flat fronted row houses, but of course DC has its share of those, mostly “Federal” in style.

Many of these row houses have been restored, and are often painted in interesting ways. Now they are often converted into apartments and condominiums, with even the basements being turned into individual units.

There are also a few interesting new modernist condominium buildings that have been built in this neighborhood alongside the historic houses. The modern building pictured has a glass wall that looks similiar to the glass facade of the laundry that housed my son's school. But most probably find the old houses much more charming to look at and they make up much more of DC’s streetscape then the memorials and government buildings the city is famous for.

A city of magnificent intentions

Washington, DC is like a European city with an American accent. It has a Parisian quality to it, with its broad avenues and neoclassical buildings, and what with the influence of French city planner L’Enfant it is understandable. It sits along the great Potomac River, like London on the Thames or Paris on the Seine. Washington was a planned city though; it took 200 years to fill in according to an ambitious design whereas the great capitals of Europe developed organically over many more centuries. Charles Dickens mocked it's slogan "The City of Magnificent Distances" and called it "The City of Magnificent Intentions", for it's broad avenues were muddy ruts and it's buildings were unfinished at the time of his visit. It is fascinating how Washington appropriates the forms of neoclassical architecture in ways that are so different from European and classical precedent.

Take the White House, although certainly a grand house was it really that much more elaborate than the home of a successful Colonial planter? Washington’s influence and that of his beloved Mount Vernon undoubtedly had something to do with that.

It was modeled on an Irish country house, and not a Versailles or a Buckingham Palace. This was to be the seat of the chief executive of the new nation.

The capital looks similar to St.Paul’s Cathedral in London and it borrows the dome of the great churches. In a church the dome would be placed farther away from the entrance where the 2 wings from a cross over the altar. At the capitol that axis is turned so that entry is in the center of the long side, and the dome marks not a crossing but the joint between two large meeting rooms. The dome is placed above the symbolic gathering place of the representatives of the people.

The Washington Monument takes the form of an Egyptian obelisk, only at a gargantuan scale, and it is a single obelisk when Egyptian custom was for obelisks to be paired. It represents the emerging American technical prowess of its time as it remains the tallest masonry structure in the world.

The Lincoln Memorial is a modified Greek temple to the man who saved the union, like the capitol it is rotated so that entry is through what would be the side if it were the Parthenon.

The Jefferson Memorial recalls the Pantheon in Rome that inspired Thomas Jefferson in his own designs for Monticello and the library of the University of Virginia.

Union Station recalls both Roman triumphal arches as befitting a ceremonial entry to the capital city; its arches frame a distant view of the capitol dome. The station also evokes the great Roman baths(large communal gathering places)for use as a railroad passenger terminal. These formal adaptations reflect the way in which America evolved from and sought to improve on the western democratic tradition.