It’s time for a fun article mini-series! For the next few days we will be exploring some maybe not so well known facts about WDW and Disneyland parks. So have fun reading!
By Fantasmic Diva
Working for Walt Disney World has definitely provided me with the time and resources to learn a lot more little tidbits about my favorite place in the world than I already knew and I thought that I would share a handful of them with you!
- There are 486 seats in the Philharmagic Theatre! Ever wonder why the wait is so short…that would be why! And…due to the technology utilized in the projection system and the 3D effects…all 486 of those are great seats for this fantastic attraction!
- Cinderella has her own horse on Prince Charming’s Regal Carousel! Since she is his princess, Prince Charming decided that Cinderella deserved her own horse on the carousel; look for the horse with a golden ribbon in it’s tail and that’s the horse of Charming’s beloved Cinderella.
- Don’t walk along the center of the streets in Liberty Square! Ever wonder why there is a strip of brown pavement that runs along the center of the roads in the square? Ever wonder why there are no bathrooms in Liberty Square? Well…back in the early days of the colonies after which the land is based, there was no indoor plumbing, and hence no indoor bathrooms. Ever hear the phrase look out below and wonder what it meant? I’ll leave it to you to decode what the colonists did with the contents of their chamber pots.
- Crooked shutters in Liberty Square: Liberty Square is one of my favorite lands in Magic Kingdom, mostly because of hot detail oriented it is. The metal that we now use for shutters was precious war material for bullets during the days of the American Revolution. As a result, to help the war effort, colonists hung their shutters with leather hinges. Eventually that leather stretched and the shutters began to hang crooked, and that’s why the shutters in Liberty Square are usually crooked.
- Mr. Toad lives! (Sort of)- There are two traces of Mr. Toad left in the Magic Kingdom even though his ride has since been removed. He can be seen on the Winnie the Pooh attraction that replaced his own. When you get to Owl’s house, keep your eye out for a picture of Mr. Toad handing Owl the deed to his Wild Ride, hint…it’s on the left hand side. He can also be seen in the pet cemetery outside of the Haunted Mansion, also on the left.
- The animation studio that now houses character meet and greets, the drawing class and the Drawn to Animation show used to be a real working animation studio. Three full length animated feature films were made there: Mulan, Brother Bear and Lilo and Stitch, the working studio was closed in 2004. I always suggest taking a good long time in this building, as it has a lot to offer for kids of all ages!
- Tony the Tiger haunts the Haunted Mansion! Did you know that the broken singing bust in the Grim Grinning Ghosts section of the Haunted Mansion is voiced by none other than Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of both Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes and the singer of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch in the Christmas Special! Another recognizable voice appears in the room of Madame Leota…any Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty fans will recognize her voice as that of Maleficent and the Wicked Stepmother in an instant!
- Walt Disney has only been on one WDW attraction…but which one!? He has been on the second oldest attraction in the Magic Kingdom, the Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland! It was originally premiered at the 1964 Worlds Faire and then moved to Disneyland until 1974, after which it was moved to WDW.
- Pascal makes an appearance in Fantasyland! If you look about the area of Kingdom Crossing, where Rapunzel’s Tower lives on the outskirts of Fantasyland near Liberty Square, you might just see Pascal from Tangled hiding among the decor and even down by the creek! Look closely though, he blends in quite well!
- Imagineers never sign their work…or do they? 99.9% of the time Imagineers don’t sign their work, they put little hidden gems for us to find, like Mr. Toad on the Pooh attraction or the hidden Mickey’s all over the park. However…the artists of the mosaic inside Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom were given permission to sign their work since it was technically a piece of fine art (though in my opinion…all of the work of the Imagineers is). Look closely and Dorothea Redmond and Hanns Scharff have clearly signed their names to their work.
