The Earffel Tower, with its topiary twin, back in the days of the old Backlot Studio TourIf that "punny" name doesn't sound familiar, the sight surely looked familiar to millions of Disney fans. It was the water tower with Mickey ears that stood next to Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
Disney had announced that it would remove the iconic tower as part of its ongoing transformation of the park. The Earffel Tower was located in the backlot area that the old tram tour visited and that is now set to become Toy Story Land.
The Earffel Tower appeared as the studios park's symbol on many Disney promotional materials, along with the Magic Kingdom's castle, Epcot's geosphere, and the Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life. Sometimes Disney used the old Sorcerer's Hat that once stood in front of the Chinese Theater as the park's icon instead, but that's gone now, too. That leaves the Tower of Terror as the leading pick for the Studios' icon at the moment, though many sarcastic Disney fans might suggest that a construction wall would be the most appropriate icon for Disney's Hollywood Studios these days.
Disney closed the Backlot Studio Tour, Streets of America, and the Lights, Motors, Action stunt show theater to clear space for Toy Story Land and Star Wars Land, two new themed areas for Disney's Hollywood Studios that will open at some point after 2017.
Fans of Disney-themed water towers can rest assured that the company's original water tower, which inspired the Earffel Tower, remains at the Disney corporate headquarters in Burbank, Calif.
And a copy of the Earffel Tower remains at Walt Disney Studios Park, about 50 km away from the "e-pun-ymous" Eiffel Tower in Paris.
I see what I did there.
Why not just put the Water Tower at Disney Springs. It would fit the theme.
I would put it at all star movies but it probably cannot be moved very easily and might be falling apart or in disrepair already.
I feel like Disney changing the name of MGM/DHS every few years is to confuse uniformed tourists into thinking it's Universal Studios which is what it originally ripped off. If it becomes Hollywood Adventure they can confuse tourists into thinking its Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. Has a major theme park ever had this many name changes?
They're not meaningless. Water towers were commonly associated with Hollywood film studios. The main purpose of the water tower was for fire suppression efforts at the studio. The city water systems could not provide a sufficient supply of water to dose a large fire, which were not uncommon on the highly flammable wooden sets. Therefore, the studios installed these large water towers to have an amble supply.
These water towers could be seen at most of the studios and usually displayed the logo of the studio. Because of the number and prominence of these landmarks, the local population of Los Angeles associates water towers with Hollywood studios. Therefore, the the water tower was very appropriate for the theme of this Disney theme park. It was not meaningless!
Ya'know, if you're really so desperate to get a rise out of Disney fans, the very least you can do is do a little bit of research.(Then again, the fact that I'm responding to you probably means you were successful, but I don't care the bait was just too damn tasty)
If you're talking about USH, then yeah, I wouldn't doubt that's where Eisner and Co. got the idea. But if you're talking about USF, then I'm not so sure. DHS opened in 1989, USF opened in 1990. And I'm pretty sure that USF was officially announced after DHS was.
And even if Disney has stolen some things from Universal (which I bet they have) Universal has stolen a fair deal of things from Disney as well. The whole concept of a theme park themed to famous movies and TV shows, and is it really a coincidence that they decided to build their East Coast park in the exact same city where WDW had been stationed for over a decade at that point? I don't really think so.
And so far, the park has only had one name change: from Disney-MGM Studios to Disney's Hollywood Studios, and that was because Disney lost the deal with MGM due to some sort of corporate crap.
Epcot's also had just one name change. It was originally called Epcot Center, but now it's just Epcot. Dollywood's had several name changes throughout the years from what I've heard, as well as a couple Six Flags parks. And if you really want a name that's eerily similar to the name of a Universal park, try BGT's water park. It's called (I kid you not!) Adventure Island. Yup. I don't know the date that it first opened, but if said date is IOA's debut, I'd get a little suspicious.
I suppose I should also talk about the Earful Tower, since it is supposed to be the main topic of this thread.
First off, to the poster who asked if it was an actual water tower, yes it was. I remember on the Backlot Tours they would say that it pumped hundreds of gallons of water per day, though I forgot what they specifically used that water for. I don't remember if it was drinking water, if it was only for DHS or if it supplied the entire resort, (probably the former since the latter would mean all kinds of trouble for the resort)but basically, yes, it was a real, functioning water tower.
Second,while I will kinda miss the Earful Tower, I'm not exactly upset. Growing up, I always saw the Sorceror Hat as the park's symbol, so that loss was much more devestating for me.
To you it may have been just a "prop," but to a lot of other people it stood for something bigger, and represented everything they loved about the park. And by that logic, why do we hold such such as the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids of Giza to such importance? One's just a really tall tower that looks like the architect just completely abandoned it after finishing the scaffolding, and the other's just a bunch of big stone triangles with some dead guys inside.
And just because something's old doesn't mean it's bad. In a lot cases, the old stuff can be a lot better than the new stuff. (This is especially true when it comes to music) And, yes, like I've said before, the new DHS will definitely be better than the old one. But the old DHS was still a really good park, Indiana Jones and Beauty and the Beast are amazing shows, and the park as a whole was still very well-themed. No, it wasn't perfect by any stretch, but compared to 75% of every other park in the world, it was pretty solid. And I really liked learning about movies instead of being in the movies. Everyone else tries to put you in different worlds, so why not do something.
Furthermore, why would you criticize people for being sad? Obviously we can't mope over it for too long, but people need to be sad sometimes; it's what keeps us from becoming emotionless sociopaths.
That TOTALLY made my day!!! :D
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