Illusions…

Illusions… having people to see or experience something that either isn’t real… or at least not real … right now.  Magic if you will. People have always been fascinated and drawn to magic. The word “Magic” seems to be more appealing have and more purity about it then the perhaps questionable word “illusion”. But it’s pretty much all the same. Disney always strives to “Maintain the Magic” for guests… create an illusion and keep guests somewhere outside the realm of reality. The first simple Illusion is Main Street USA. Looking down Main Street creates two illusions. One… the buildings are taller than they actually are…. and two… the street appears to be much long then it really is. The technique is call “Forced Perspective”. By building the next higher floor shorter in height, and so on with the next higher floors, the building will appear to be much higher than it actually is. This is done all along Main Street Stores. Looking down Main Street at Cinderella’s Castle is another great example. To the eye, it appears to tower into the sky, when it is actually much less taller. Since we perceive the extra height, our mind also perceives extra distance away. The illusion of being taller and a greater distance makes everything appear to be much larger. 

The construction of the Fantasyland expansion in Magic Kingdom demonstrates this very well. A tall massive Castle from the movie Beauty and the Beast….impressive from any distance. Looking at the last photo it’s easier to see how they create the illusion.

Here’s a real castle used as a model…Impressive!

The Castle in Fantasyland…

the upper portion looks to be several stories high…

here’s a close up of the tower…

massive! …

… or is it?

actual construction reveals the illusion…

( unless that guy is a giant ! )

the massive tower is maybe only six foot wide…

the illusion makes it look much, much, larger!

and there in lies the Magic!

---------

More illusions… well… here’s one more. Think about a football field (standing at the 50 yard side line) … if you walk across from one side to the other you go about 50 ft. If you walk around the field you’ll travel 150 feet. If at the starting point you can see the paths you’d be traveling you could get the feeling that even if you had walked around the end of the field going a greater distance, you really wouldn’t have gone very far… cause you can see it all. In the parks, especially Magic Kingdom, you can’t see the complete path that you’d be walking. You just walk around to the other side, perhaps another themed area, and it seems that you have gone a much greater distance. Combined with the illusion of “Forced Perspective”… making distances seem much greater… well… you can see why you have the impression that the park is massive. This may also be why we seem more tired then we actually should be… we only think we have gone a greater distance… or at least you feel this way when you are older.

So there you have it… a bit of Disney Magic… right in plain site… and you maybe didn’t even know what was happening. But don’t think about it too much… in fact… don’t think about it at all… just enjoy the Magic!