Tag: Walt Disney World

These are the droids I am looking for: Build Your Droid at the Droid Factory

Disney Build Your Own Droid

I have a special place in my heart for examples of mass customization in the marketplace (hello Muppet Whatnot Workshop). Disney announced a Build Your Droid at the Droid Factory at the Hollywood Studios Tatooine Traders opening this year:

“We began discussing the Droid Factory in 2009,” explained Cody. “We know that personalization is an important aspect of the popular build-your-own light saber experience. We felt the same thing could be done with action figures but on a much larger scale.”

Large scale indeed – the Droid Factory has 71 different pieces to create the 3 ¾-inch figures! To get started, guests chose a dome, a body and legs offered in a variety of colors and styles (Cody said that availability of various parts and colors may change). There are optional third legs and novelty hats that can be added.

Build Your Own Droid Packaging

Disney Build Your Own Droid Detail

The Haunted Mansion’s “Impossible architectural space”

Haunted Mansion Disneyland

Call it the Parallel World paradigm.

Certain advantages come with PW.  For one thing, the architectural inconsistencies between the house we see on the outside and the one we see on the inside are all explained at a single stroke.  When the lightning flashes in the garrett of the stretching room, we see the site of the Ghost Host’s suicide, but what we see doesn’t match the outside cupola very well.  That’s because it’s a glimpse of the old house.  But other than this one early glimpse, you’re still in the house you saw from the outside until you get to the limbo area, where we board our buggies (we are, as usual, following the Disneyland model).  There, a transition takes place, which explains, I suppose, why we need something like a limbo area.  From that point forward we see the original house, the house as the ghosts see it.

via Long-Forgotten: The Ghostland Around Us, Beneath Us.

Haunted Mansion Ad

Magic Highway USA, 1958 by Disney


Check out two stills from the film, one showing the “old” town and the new improved distributed lifestyle:
Disney Magic Highway
One looks vibrant, the other cold and lifeless.

From the Archives: Disney World Typography


To Trains, originally uploaded by Mista Gargoyle

So I admit that I’m a bit of a font geek – typography, like fashion, interests me because not only because of its’ variety but also my fascination with the process of creation; which, even to someone schooled in design, is quite perplexing and mysterious.

I’ve linked to this before, but anyone interested in the fonts used and designed by Disney, must check out Mickey Avenue – Disney Fonts. Regardless of what you think of Disney from its’ abuse of copyright to Disney’s shell city in Florida to whatever ill you accuse Disney of perpetrating, you cannot ignore its’ influence on design and culture (for good and bad). That is why sites like Mickey Avenue and the accompanying photos of typography are so cool to go through.
For example, check out two examples of Coca-Cola advertisements, one in Tomorrow Land and the other in Animal Kingdom:


Tomorrowland Coke, photo by Mista Gargoyle


Animal Kingdom Coke, photo by Mista Gargoyle

The commitment to design which Disney adheres to is amazing. I realize that there is an incentive for advertising to adjust to the theme of whichever Disney Kingdom it is located, but Disney applies this same level of design throughout their theme parks. (Now, if their movie division could do the same…)

Sometimes design can leave an attraction, or a whole kingdom in a state of limbo. EPCOT Center is curiously stuck between aged retro and futuristic glee, all due to the design of the park. When I visited Disney World in 2003, EPCOT was the one park which was clearly dated. This is perhaps due to the type choice – World Bold – which the rounded sans serif vacillates between Buck Rogers and some unseen future. Place this type in the context of large exuberant buildings clad in glass and aluminum (the material of the future!) and concrete, and you get a Tomorrowland which you know is based in Yesterdayland. It is quite disturbing actually; once inside the Disney Reality Distortion Field, this jarring, bleak urban landscape destroys any suspension of disbelief.

But enough of the EPCOT critique. Anyone interested in what a single, hive-mind can accomplish through design, you must check out Disney.

For more Disney stuff, check out this Retro Disney Resort Logos, more photos of Disney Signage, and a Hi-Resolution Aerial Photo of Disneyland.