Landscaping

Image: misscrabette, Flickr (license)

Disney’s commitment to landscaping has become so renowned that they even devote an entire festival to their ability to cultivate horticulture. 

It might be the single thing guests take the most for granted, in fact. When you consider what goes into the guest experience — everything from service to food to housekeeping to attractions to entertainment — the most unsung but important element is the green space on property.

Each resort has perfectly manicured lawns and gardens that evoke themes as broad as the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Mexico, and even Africa. The immersion we feel when walking in, say, the Japan pavilion or along the Port Orleans French Quarter Resort is due, in large part, to authentic greenery that Disney has spent decades growing.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom is an ode to our planet’s beauty, and it features some of the most lush horticulture on Disney property — and it is this horticulture which separates such a park from its competitors at zoos and theme parks around the country. 

Disney is a beautiful space to spend time, and it is so beautiful in large part because of its greenery. That’s a far cry from the pavement and concrete vistas of Six Flags and Cedar Fair.

Trash Cans

Image: themeparktourist, Flickr (license)

If you live in a city, you likely have had the experience of walking a few blocks with a cup of coffee in your hand that you are desperate to throw away. Disney, thankfully, has never had that problem.

Trash cans at Disney are so ubiquitous that you’ll never find yourself without one in your vicinity. This confidence allows you to buy food and snacks without worrying about when you’ll be able to dispose of them. And, that ubiquity keeps the parks cleaner over time — making them feel more special.

Add to that the theming that goes into each trash can — from the clean-looking shine each can possesses to the unique logos and designs present on each one — and you find yourself being surprised more theme parks don’t have a similar commitment to dealing with trash. You feel more confident than you would at a regional park, and the cans look more pleasant — meaning you don’t frown whenever you see one.

Sightlines

Image: harshlight, Flickr (license)

Disney’s attractions began as a diversion Walt Disney forced on his team of animators. In constructing Disneyland, Walt turned to the people he trusted the most to create these moving tableaus of stories he wanted to tell. 

As such, the first Imagineers viewed their attractions as films, and they applied the same logic to them that they did to those films: Audiences should only see what we want them to see. 

Over time, that idea became baked into the DNA of the Disney parks. A guest shouldn’t ever see something that the storytellers don’t want them to see — be it an electrical transformer, the back of a show building, or a few cast members on a smoke break.

Thus began Disney’s obsession with sightlines, and that obsession has led to so many pieces of Disney magic. The Tower of Terror is technically visible from the Morocco pavilion at Epcot. So, they painted it the same color as that pavilion to help it blend in. 

When constructed, Tomorrowland was one of the few places in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom where you could see outside the park’s grounds. So, the Contemporary Resort was built in its view, so that the theme carried out beyond the land. 

At other parks around the country, rides are where they have to be. If there’s something you really don’t want guests to see, maybe you build a fence — but broadly, at regional parks, you can see vast open fields of construction equipment right in the middle of a park. 

And that’s the Disney difference, at the end of the day. The commitment to story pervades even the parks’ physical layout — something you won’t ever notice, unless you look for it. That’s the definition of something small, but Disney wouldn’t be Disney without it.