250-1 Advances in landscape design techniques: examples from the Disneyland Resort

Session: Deliver the Message: Harness Diverse Media and Divergent Methods to Describe and Depict Geoscience Information

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Theme parks whisk you away to fantastic lands and remove you from your everyday experience.  The Disneyland Resort in California has perfected building attractions that mimic geologic icons (i.e. Matterhorn) and realistic adaptations from Disney movies (i.e. Cars Land). Techniques in movie-making and animation have advanced since Disneyland opened in 1955, so have methods to make the attractions and areas within the resort appear more realistic and more faithful to the movies.

In this presentation, we will present examples throughout the history of the Disneyland Resort to show how methods of recreating landscapes have advanced over the past 70 years. The earliest examples used basic techniques to make “rocks” many looked like “granites” or would make simple landscapes of the desert southwest.  The transformation of desert landscapes is a great case study of how Disney designed more accurate geology in its attractions, like the Disneyland Railroad, Pack Mules, Mine Train, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Cars Land. Earliest examples like the Pack Mules and Mine Train, built in the 1950’s, included features that mimic hoodoos like those seen in Bryce Canyon National Park, but lack finer-scale detail. By the construction of Cars Land in 2012, Disney Imagineers were able to include fine-scale geologic details into the outcrops and stratigraphy like cross-bedding, graded beds, angular unconformities, and iron staining. The attention to geologic detail extended into constructing “new” worlds like those seen on the “world” of Batuu at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, opened in 2019. Ultimately, the more realistic geologic depictions help remove theme park guests from their everyday world and take them into the world of fantasy and wonder that are both familiar and new. 

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-10406

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