Page 87 - CelebrationsSpring2020

Cameron dreamt up for moviegoers, Disney designers were constrained by gravity and physics.
The solution? Take a closer look at those long vines hanging off the floating mountains...they’re not quite what they seem. Many are cleverly disguised steel support beams, designed to blend in with the other authentic vines in a thematically-appropriate way. The “vines” appear to hang naturally, leaving Guests with no reason to think that they’re actually holding the whole thing up.
Walter P. Moore and Associates and Disney Imagineering collaborated to bring this unique support structure to life. Incredibly, the steel beams are not straight. They incorporate subtle bends to better sell the illusion of hanging vines. The end result? Mountains that appear to float in midair. This accomplishment did not go unnoticed, with Walter P. Moore winning a prestigious Grand 2019 Engineering Excellence award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida.
The mountains themselves rise 156 feet into the air and, like many other attractions at Walt Disney World like
Cinderella Castle, use forced perspective to make them appear much bigger. The smaller floating mountains are positioned at the very top, tricking Guests into thinking that they are farther away The floating mountains are actually hollow, created by spraying concrete onto a steel mesh to form the craggy exterior. The same scaffolding approach as Expedition Everest was used here, too.
Okay, even Imagineering had to make one small concession to reality.The mountain with the small waterfall doesn’t exactly float. Rather, it appears to be delicately balanced atop a large rock. Actually, that’s a connection to the foundation on the ground. Certain allowances have to be made for the laws of physics, after all.
There’s no doubt the next great Disney mountain sits on an Imagineer’s Blue Sky drawing board somewhere, or may even be already wending its way through the design process. This is one Disney trend in no danger of disappearing. “One thing is for certain,” said Tony Baxter, “as long as human nature draws people to mountains, Imagineering will continue to build them.”
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