Have you ever noticed how Disneyland seems both giant and kind of small at the same time? You can thank Walt Disney Imagineering for this visual feat, particularly their methodical use of a technique called “Forced Perspective”. With Forced Perspective, buildings and objects look taller than they actually are, and Imagineers can manipulate perceived distance between objects as well.
To achieve this effect, Imagineers design Disney buildings to a 1- 5/8 – 1/2 scale. The first floor of a Disney building is to scale, but the second floor of the building façade is only 5/8 the size of the first floor. And if there is a third floor, it stands at 1/2 the size of the base floor. When guests standing on the ground look up, the building looks like it stands three stories tall, when in fact it shrinks with each floor.
The best place to see blatant use of Forced Perspective in Disneyland is on Main Street USA. Look at this picture closely:
Notice how the shop with the blue awning appears to stand three stories tall? Look closer, and you’ll see that the second floor is a little too short for a grown person to stand in. And the third floor is even smaller than the second floor, making it the right size for Tinker Bell, but a little cramped for anyone else!
Disneyland’s Forced Perspective also works with stand-alone buildings. The most famous structure in the park, the Sleeping Beauty Castle, uses this visual trick to seem much larger than it actually is:
If you look closely, you’ll see that with each level, the windows get slightly smaller, to the same effect as the buildings on Main Street USA. With this trick, the 77-foot castle seems way taller than in reality, dominating the skyline and proudly guarding the entrance to Fantasyland.
In addition to enlarging the buildings within the park, Imagineers play another visual trick on park guests; they manipulate the perceived distance between different lands. This trick is especially useful in the design of Main Street USA. Guests entering the park see the castle looming in the distance, at the end of the extensive street, but the street seems shorter and more manageable when guests are leaving the park in the opposite direction. Look closely at this building on Main Street USA’s main block:
The right side of the building (the side closer to the gate) comes down at a wider angle than the left side. So guests looking at the building from its right will see it as larger and further away than guests looking at the building from its left. When the whole street has this effect, its perceived size drastically changes.
**Update February 2022: I’ve had a few emails from readers suggesting this piece of the forced perspective story is a myth. I did pull this information from a book about the park’s construction and discussed it with a cast member on Main Street, but I will keep digging into this to see if I can get further confirmation as to it being fact or fiction. I’ll let you know if I can find any other resources on the wall angles!
Here is a view of Main Street USA from the garden in front of the gate:
See how large it looks? The castle seems far off in the distance, and the street seems large and inundated with shops to explore. Guests arriving in the park immediately feel excitement about everything there is to explore. On the other hand, tired guests leaving the park at the end of the day don’t see a long, busy street. Forced Perspective makes Main Street USA seem like a short, reasonable walk to exit the park:
Although Main Street USA has the clearest examples of Forced Perspective in use, every land in the park uses this visual trick to make the buildings seem larger than they actually are. Next time you’re in Disneyland, take a minute to look closely at the different Forced Perspective tricks in the park; you’ll have a new appreciation for the genius of Imagineering!
Actually, the heights of the each floor are very specific to give the forced prospected. Walt had wanted the buildings to be 5/8 scale. On the outside, sure would look ok, but think about this, a 10foot ceiling would bring it down to 6.250 feet (6″3″). My guess is tht the inside would have een a 9 foot celiling. so that would be it would be 67.5″ or 5′ 7.5″. I;m 6’1″ and that would make it very cramped. The imagineers were able to come up with what scale to use that would work. Here is the break down. 1st floor at 90%, the 2nd floor at 80% and the 3rd floor at 60%. While we are at it, The idea that the Main Street USA designed after his boyhood town of Merceline, MO isn’t completely correct. Walt had asked Harper Goff to use Merceline to come up with Main Street U.S.A. So that is what he did. When walt saw the drawings, he said that wasn’t going to work, that he needed 2nd floors for additional space and storage. There is one building that was used from there, the Zurcher Building, which provided the bases, in a sense became the Coca-Cola building on Main Street. So if Merceline wasn’t what it was mostly based on, what was used? Harper Goff used his hometown of Fort Collins, CO. Walt loved what he saw when Harper showed him the drawings and the City Hall, bank building and others were used to make the Main Street U.S.A, we know from when Disneyland opened in 1955 through today. (I love finding all sorts of Disney history and trivia) Hope this helps.
Interesting stuff. My last visit really pointed out how forced perspective affects visiting the park. They were refurbishing the castle, which made the whole experience of walking down Main Street feel small and insignificant. Kind of dampened the Disney magic.
Yeah it’s amazing how the castle alone impacts Main Street!
What does “comes down at a wider angle” mean? In relation to what is it a wider angle? And what does ‘coming down’ mean? I don’t doubt the effect! It seems right! But I’m still unsure how it’s done. ? Thx!
Hi Lindy! Basically, the side walls on the buildings have the tiniest slant. The slant is steeper on one side than the other. So when you look at the buildings from one side, they appear longer than they would on the other side. I hope that explanation helps!
I still don’t understand
I think the gist of it can be understood this way, and the photo in the article doesn’t really show it in the photo of the front of the building, but imagine that the building has a rain gutter going across the front at the roofline like most houses have. The water would flow to the castle side of the building because the train station side is slightly higher. When you look at the face of the building, it’s almost imperceptible, but this combined with the “buildings” (facades) not being as tall as the castle end of Main Street trick your mind into thinking the end of Main Street is further from the castle than it really is. Why? Because when viewed from the middle of Main Street looking at the castle, the rooflines and building height lead your eye to a point on the castle that is lower than it would be if the buildings were uniform in height and didn’t have the slightly angled roof. So, in the photo of the castle, all those lines sort of lead your eye to the entrance to the castle, whereas if forced perspective wasn’t used, they would lead you to the window above the entrance (approximately). It’s a subtle but powerful effect that counts on your brain filling in information based on real world experience and not paying close attention to what is actually there.
That is a great explanation! Thank you.
So cool.