January 9, 2009

Recycling in the Disney Kingdoms

Beyond recycling old America Sings characters for Splash Mountain or old parades for Festival of the Lion King, going green has additional meanings for Disney Imagineers and executives.

This unbuilt Adventureland attraction for Hong Kong, (seen above in rare concept art), could very well find a place in the new Disney park in Shanghai. As we all know, concepts are never really dead until pieces of them are ripped apart and reassembled in some fashion, appearing somewhere else. It's the Disney version of recycling and going green.

Disney park history proves this is so: pieces from the infamous Discovery Bay wound up in Disneyland Paris' gorgeous Discoveryland. The mega-attraction Thunder Mesa, once on the boards for Frontierland in Florida, found major scenes from its river attraction in Epcot's World of Motion many years later- and so it goes.

So... if this Carnataur from Countdown to Extinction meets Roller Coaster hybrid ends up one day in the newest Chinese park, Don't be too surprised. It's not only efficient- it is Disney being green- and the real motivation-saving them money, that is!

(Art copyright The Walt Disney Company.)

No comments: