Should Disneyland cut down some of its trees?
Take a look here and here, where Weiss documents the visual changes in Disneyland Park over the past five decades. To me, the biggest differences in these photos are the size of the trees.
Take a look at this photo I shot earlier this month. The trees tower over the castle, in the background. And trees obscure the view of the Main Street shops from even Town Square.
Much of Disneyland, including Sleeping Beauty's Castle was built using forced perspective. That is, upper floors were built to progressively smaller scales, allowing relatively small buildings to create a visual illusion of greater size.
But when trees next to these buildings grow over 10 feet tall, the forced perspective is compromised, then lost. Disneyland becomes Lilliputian Land, with small buildings dwarfed by the towering trees.
In some places, the greenery is needed, such as behind City Hall, where the tall trees now block the view of show buildings behind it. But in other places, trees obscure what could be welcomed views.
I believe that many more kids would want to venture over to Tom Sawyer's Island if they could see the many play areas on the island from the mainland. Now, however, trees obscure everything on the island, creating an immense green "blank space" in the middle of the Rivers of America.
Clearly, I'm in the camp which believes that Disney needs to either prune back or cut down many of the trees in the park, to return to the park's greenery to the scale it had in the 1960s. (Early Disneyland was too bare, IMO.) I'm sure that others will disagree. So let's put it out there: Should Disneyland cut back its trees?
Discuss in the comments. And thanks again for reading Theme Park Insider!
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1) Town Square
2) The Hub (both inside and outside, including Carnation Gardens and the pathway to the Matterhorn)
3) South and west of Thunder Mountain (need vegetation more consistent with desert theme).
4) Take enough off the top of the TSI trees at the south end of the island so people can see the treehouse.
Leave the rest.
Trimming the hub trees makes sense, enough shade to cover the benches, but not so much that it imposes on the firework viewing.
Did Disney in the 50's cut them to be like that or were they just young trees? That would be the true question to whether they should cut them or not.
What was left was an awkwardly looking empty hub and the castle is directly in front of concrete, no beautiful lush greenery to make the castle setting more realistic and no visual separation between Main Street and Cinderella Castle.
The entire look is completely ruined and now Magic Kingdom's Main Street view has been essentially ruined... I really pray that one day Disney wises up and replants at least some of those trees.
The trees over at Disneyland might look large and may be messing up some of the forced perspective... But if what happened over at Magic Kingdom is any indication... Having no trees in sight would just make the view much, much more worse.
OK.....wow here's something to think about??? Why does Busch Gardens Williamsburg consistantly get rated so well?? Maybe because the trees add to the ambiance of the park??? Why not the same with Disney?? Disney still trims the trees, but not in a way that I believe this post is meant to imply!!!!! Take a queue from BGW.... this is what really matters!
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