The first treasure, located in the Magic Kingdom, has probably been seen by every guest since the park's opening in 1971. Five murals grace the breezeway in Cinderella Castle. These murals depict the story of the Castle's "owner", Cinderella. Famed Disney Imagineer, Dorthea Redmond was the brain behind the murals.
Once Redmond completed her drawings, Hanns-Joachim Scharff took them and cut more than one million pieces of glass, silver, gold and jewels to create mosaics. These pieces were then transferred to Walt Disney World to be placed. The whole process took two years to complete, as to make sure that the mosaics could withstand the Florida weather and millions of hands that would touch them.
The fourth mural shows the glass slipper being placed on Cinderella's foot. This mural is probably the most special of the series. It includes the faces of famed Disney employees, Herb Ryman and John Hench. Both men were very influential in the creation of the Walt Disney World Resort. Cinderella's stepsisters, Drizella and Anastasia, are depicted green with envy and red with anger, respectively as well. Simple touches like this are what makes this forty year old mosaic a hidden gem in my book.
My next treasure that I am going to discuss, is not really hidden, but more of an overlooked park icon. Spaceship Earth, opened in 1982 with the ambitious EPCOT Center. Famed science fiction writer, Ray Bradburry consulted Walt Disney Imagineering in developing this 18-story geodesic sphere.
At the time EPCOT Center opened, Spaceship Earth was seen as an amazing feat of architecture. Construction took 40,800 man-hours and 26 months to complete. Spaceship Earth, is not only a park icon, it is also an innovative attraction. Originally, a 13 minute ride took guests through the story of communication. In 2007, Spaceship Earth's sponsorship switched from AT & T to the Siemens Corporation, and the theme of the ride was switched to the development of technology.
Spaceship Earth sits on four blue "legs" to create the illusion that the sphere portion is floating in mid-air. One of EPCOT Center's original taglines was "creating the new world of tomorrow". Walt Disney's original idea for EPCOT was to be a utopian city with everything a citizen would need located within city limits. I feel that Spaceship Earth represents Disney's image of the "City Hall" for his idea of EPCOT.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading about a couple of my favorite Disney treasures. Please feel free to comment and post some of your own. I will try to make this a regular posting, to try and share some interesting facts that I have found.
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