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Behind the scenes of WDW & DL: Beast’s Castle & The Little Mermaid

                             

Disney World and Disneyland are both very busy with expansions and changes within their parks. At Disneyland, they’re adding a brand new Little Mermaid attraction, and at Disney World, they’re going over the top and expanding Fantasyland.

Over in Anaheim, work continues on the Little Mermaid attraction as they’ve got until June 3, 2011 when the attraction is scheduled to open. Disney Parks Blog has been gracious enough to provide it’s readers with a behind the scene’s look at what’s going on at the attraction.

The video specifically focuses specifically on the music being put into the attraction and how truly important the music is to the attraction. While the characters are the heart and name of the attraction, it’s the music that really brings the attraction to life. In the video, the music is described as the soul.

“Theme park attractions are different than films. Theme park attractions are supposed to be funny and draw attractions to themselves. In film the music withdraws and is supposed to be in the background as the actors take the foreground. In a theme park the music is supposed to be consistently entertaining,” said Danny Troob the Musical Arranger and Orchestrator.

Although the video focuses heavily on the music that will be breathing life into the heart of the attraction, it also offers a first look at several elements and characters inside the ride. The video offers a first look at some of the fish, King Triton, and Arial and Price Eric, as well as a shot of original concept art of the attraction.

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Skipping over to Orlando to visit the Magic Kingdom, the Disney Parks Blog was also gracious enough to provide a behind the scenes look at Beast’s Castle being constructed for the New Fantasyland expansion for 2012/2013. From Fantasyland, Beast’s castle look enormous, but I hate to be the heart breaker and tell you that it’s just forced prospective.

Like Universal did with the Hogwarts castle located inside the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Disney is using forced perspective to make it seem that the castle is enormous. Carefully paying attention to scale on every aspect of the structure is very important with forced prospective.

Enough said about forced prospective. Compare the photos below and decide for yourself: Is Beast’s Castle life-size, or are those giants doing construction? (I hope you picked life-size).

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