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Early History and Construction |
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Walt wanted a castle in his Disneyland. Sounds like a rather obvious thing to say, but it bears mentioning. The heart of Disneyland was Fantasyland, the place where the Disney animated films would come to three-dimensional life. Since most of them were European in origin, a castle provided a quick and powerful way to signify a European feel to this land, so the earliest 1953 sketch of Disneyland by Herb Ryman included just such a castle towering over a medieval village (which was to house the rides based on movies). |
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Herb
and Walt took inspiration from the castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria,
one of King Ludwig II’s fairy-tale castles built during his years of
madness, and at great cost to the coffers of Bavaria (it remains partly
unfinished to this day). But Herb thought the Disneyland version looked
too much like Neuschwanstein, so he experimented with the model and
turned the top of it around backwards – at which point Walt walked
into the room and liked what he saw. |
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| On October
27th 1954, Walt Disney's Disneyland premiered on ABC television.
Disneyland the TV show would not just be Walt's compensation to ABC for
the financial backing of his Disneyland project, but an important tool
Walt used in promoting and marketing his theme park. Of course, on
that very first introduction of Disneyland the Television show, Walt stood
behind the model of Sleeping Beauty Castle. |
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The
construction of
Sleeping Beauty Castle, as with all of Disneyland, reflected the years
of experience the Disney Studios had gained building sets for their live
action films. The
castle makes use of an old filmmaker’s trick called “forced
perspective,” in which objects seem farther away than they are. This
is accomplished by making the scale of doors and windows full-sized at
ground level, but incrementally smaller the higher up on the building
you look. The turrets at the top are nowhere near full scale, but
because the scale change is done gradually, they manage to look
full-sized and farther away than they are. |
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