Re-Imagineering is back with two posts in what looks to be a series on some of the ‘elemental’ losses Disneyland has experienced over the years. The first two are Air – The Skyway and Earth – The Parking Lot.
Walt and his designers knew that by carefully contrasting the parking
lot’s wide grey expanse of cement and steel with the color and intimate
pageantry of Main Street U.S.A. they’d be giving guests a carefully
calculated jolt of sensory uplift the moment they left the entrance
tunnel, much like the experience Dorothy had leaving the drab sepia
world of Kansas and opening the door to a Technicolor Oz.
Ironically, I hear there have been a couple of days when the parking lot would have made more money for the mouse than California Adventure has.