Be Our Guest Restaurant’s tiny castle

Whenever you visit New Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom, the line of sight draws you to Beast’s Castle, the landmark that sits atop an artificial mountain. When you gaze at this construct, your imagination fills in some blanks that it shouldn’t. Imagineers are tricking you, and you don’t even realize it.

You know from experience that Imagineers build man-made mountains that cast a long shadow over the landscape. Magic Kingdom alone houses four different gigantic mountains. Since you know that they’re capable of this feat, you make the same assumption about Beast’s Castle. Only, you’re wrong.

Imagineers employ forced perspective to create the illusion of a large castle. As you can tell from the picture, the construction worker’s head reaches the parapets of the towers. Yes, that’s only one part of the structure, but it demonstrates the point. Beast’s Castle looks titanic from a distance. Up close, it’s easy to tell that this is one of the smallest castles that Disney’s ever built.

By the way, Disney had a pragmatic reason for this tactic. Park officials didn’t want to block views of existing structures like Cinderella Castle from other spots on the Walt Disney World campus. A small castle solves this problem.

Soarin’ Erector set

You’ve really got to hand it to Imagineers. These folks can find inspiration anywhere. One of them, Mark Sumner, discovered that a potential project had stymied him. He knew that Disney officials desired an E-ticket attraction at Disney California Adventure, and his bosses had informed of plans to build the largest IMAX screen of its kind ever.

Unfortunately, nobody could figure out how to simulate the sensation of flight by using regular technology. During a family visit, Sumner started scrounging through his old toys and rediscovered his old Erector set. At that moment, his epiphany changed the course of theme park history.

The Disney employee recognized that the Erector set performed the exact actions he needed for Soarin’. So, he presented his idea to his superiors, and they agreed to construct what is tantamount to the world’s largest Erector set. It matches perfectly with the gigantic IMAX screen, as three levels of guests can watch the same show simultaneously.

Mechanical Imagineering tricks rarely get discussed since they’re not sexy. However, turning a children’s toy into one of the greatest theme park attractions ever definitely qualifies as a triumph of the highest order.