The Heart of the Park: The Disney Castle

At every Magic Kingdom there is a Fantasyland, and rising above them, a castle that inspires dreams. And, sometimes, hosts a restaurant.

Is there anyplace more iconic to Disneyland than Fantasyland? My goodness, even when I was dreaming up a theme park based on the United States for “You Must Be This Tall”, I eventually needed a Fantasyland-inspired section of park. It just wouldn’t feel like a theme park without a few castle turrets and ballgown-wearing princesses.

After all, the Fantasyland castle is the icon of the Magic Kingdom “Castle” parks. The central theme of Disneyland is fantasy. The guide maps for Magic Kingdom used to bear the motto “Fantasy Reigns”, although I think that was removed with the most recent design.

Plenty of regional parks over the past sixty years since Disneyland debuted have survived (and even thrived) with only the storybook-and-castle theme. When I was little, I visited The Enchanted Forest in Maryland, and Lowry Park in Florida. Both were themed to fairy tales. Although even at that age, I was already a Disney snob and found the painted concrete tableaus of Mother Goose tales a little less than magical.

The Enchanted Forest, in particular, had a beautiful castle entrance, complete with a dragon. But there was no there there. It was an entrance. I don’t even recall what was beyond the arched entryway, but I know it wasn’t more castle, and that was a stinging disappointment.

Enchanted Forest entrance, circa 1955. Credit: all over the internet. I found this one at clarklandfarm.com

(I can’t recall the entrance to Lowry Park at all. And it’s a zoo now, so clearly I wasn’t the only one who was eh on the whole execution of the storybook park.)

All Turret and No Throne Room

If I was looking for a gorgeous interior and a fantasy that didn’t end at the facade, Small Me was slightly disappointed by Cinderella Castle. I know, it should be impossible to be disappointed by a soaring, 189-foot tall Gothic inspired castle rising from the flatlands of Florida. And really, in every other way, Cinderella Castle satisfied by storybook-loving soul. Those sky-blue slates! Those grinning gargoyles! Those slim towers and gilded windows! Better than the real thing: that was Cinderella Castle.

But…I just needed it to be real. And to be real, it needed an interior.

And so I joined what I imagine to be legions of children, who pointed at the stained-glass windows wrapping around the back of the castle, and told my parents we needed to go inside.

And to be then defeated utterly by the grown-up waste of it all when my parents said, “It’s just a restaurant inside.”

A restaurant?

They built a whole castle and inside they just stuck a RESTAURANT?

Why are adults LIKE THIS?

This was the late 80s, and Orlando was already entering the golden age of themed restaurants and dinner shows. At this early point in my family vacation I had perused dozens of brochures promising trips to the Wild West, the Tudor Court, medieval kingdoms—and been disappointed by all of them to find they were restaurants, not places. Places where I could wander, admire, touch, experience.

I was genuinely wrecked that it was just a restaurant, guys. Look at those ADULTS enjoying a castle built for CHILDREN. Credit: Disney 1974, lifted from some blog who lifted it from another one, times a thousand.

Cinderella Castle began so tantalizingly close to the castle ideal I was searching for…walking through the great Gothic archway, passing the miraculous mosaic retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale on the walls inside—although I was confused, as a young child, why the artwork did not look like the cartoon—and ending in the glorious courtyard where the carousel was spinning, a beanstalk was erupting from the shop on the right, and a fountain tinkled beneath Cinderella’s feet by the shop on the left.

(The shop on the left was then called Tinker Bell’s Toy Shop, but the medieval style writing curved the “T” and I thought it was Tinker Bell’s Coy Shop.)

Disneyland’s castle experience probably would have driven me to depression if I’d gone there as a child, but luckily I was an adult and much more willing to enjoy the premise of the perfection of miniatures (and vintage imperfections in all their plywood glory) when I first visited the West Coast parks.

For me, the castle reached her glory with Disneyland Paris’s remarkable Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, a title which I always google, copy, and paste, because I can never remember it.

Cartoons Brought to Life

As a child, I demanded realism. Cinderella Castle’s exterior seemed like the perfect example of European castles. I did not yet know that the Mad King of Bavaria built Neuschwanstein Castle (the castle’s primary model and another name I always g/c/p) as a sort of early Walt Disney move, a fairy castle financed with infinitely more wealth than our mortgaged entertainment hero.

I did not like Disneyland Paris’s castle.

I thought it was too fanciful. Too cartoonish.

I was a terrible child. Way too serious. I grew out of it.

A few years ago, rejoicing in the wisdom of my late thirties, I went to Disneyland Paris and indulged myself in the pleasure of reliving childhood, only with more sense than in my original version. And now I know why all those crazy adult types were always saying La Chateau de Whosa-whatsa was the most beautiful Disney castle of them all.

It’s genius, really. Europe already has castles. By the bushel. People in Europe are sick of castles. They wish castles would just shut up already.

So, for the European iteration of a castle park, the Imagineers provided Europe with a fairy tale alternative to the real thing. Swirling tracery where there should be hard angles. Pink walls where there should be gray granite. A castle built for whimsy, not for siege.

Child me: “this is pink???????”

Adult me: “THIS IS PINK!!!!!! THERE ARE SWIRLS! THERE IS A DRAGON!”

Okay, child me might have also liked the dragon in the cellar. But my son didn’t like it, so, you never know.

The interior of Disneyland Paris’s perfect castle is also lacking those home spaces I wanted to explore as a child. Where is the solar, where is the Great Hall, where are the stables and how can I find the kitchen where all those delicious tarts are being baked at all hours? I’d read the books and I knew what was supposed to be within those stone walls.

But it does have soaring spaces and the most delightful stonework of squirrels and acorns, incorporating the fanciful artwork from Walt Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty,” and outside the hillside climbs up the castle walls in the most alluring green, with square trees dotting the grass. Square! Trees! Again, straight out of the movie.

The tree sculptures inside the Disneyland Paris castle just GET ME. Photo: Disney

Perfection. Fantasy achieved, in a single castle, on a continent lousy with the real thing.

Oh, That’s Very…Large

I think there’s a line that was crossed with Shanghai Disneyland’s ginormous Castle You Can See From Space, and I don’t even want to discuss the mish-mash of Hong Kong Disneyland’s new castle. Shanghai’s Enchanted Storybook Castle reminds me of an Viennese palace with turrets stuck on top. All of the streamlined soaring for the heavens that was part of the Gothic ideal is forgotten in the quest for more interior square footage.

So, in that way, the Imagineers of Cinderella Castle were right, and I was wrong. The outside was more important than the inside, and too much on the inside would have ruined the sweeping strokes of artistry that drew us to the park in the first place.

(But it didn’t have to be a restaurant, guys. Kids don’t get little mini-strokes of excitement from restaurants. Adults do. That’s why you had to add all those princesses. Follow me for more tips. )

Well, in this essay I…said a lot about how I feel about castles. What about you? What’s your castle ideal?