People have been saying this for a long time, but I think people forget that seeing the plain, white roofs of the Fantasyland buildings really isn't the same as some of the things Disney's trying to get away with now. Some context is missing when that argument is made.
Look at the Peter Pan Facade for example:
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The ride is very clearly housed . . . inside a building. You can see the castle walls above it. This is not an accident - they are part of the idea. The original conceit for Fantasyland was that these were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval faire within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. While the roofs weren't anything special to look at, it's not like seeing the roof of the building took away from the illusion, because it being a ride housed within the kingdom's walls
was the point. It's a fairground ride in a fantasy realm- the building is diegetic, so to speak.
This is very different from a ride that's trying to pretend it isn't in a building, the way something like Little Mermaid is in New Fantasyland. Mermaid buried its showbuilding in rockwork to conceal the fact of there being a building with a ride in it. Peter Pan, Small World, Snow White, Mr. Toad, The Mickey Mouse Revue . . . none of these attractions followed that conceit. They were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval fairground within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. It's not like you'd look and say "What do you MEAN Peter Pan's Flight has a roof??" the way you might with the Mermaid showbuilding, which when viewed from above might be expected to be covered more rocks and grass. Strangely enough, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train does this, but that's sort of a happy coincidence.
I think, too, that people oversell how bad the views of the Fantasyland buildings really were. Here's the view from the Skyway of Mr. Toad:
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Snow White:
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And Peter Pan:
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None of them are lookers, really, but not particularly egregious either when you consider the concept of the ride
and the fact that these relatively unthemed angles could
only be seen from the Skyway. I'd say they showed more respect for sightlines here in 1971 than they frequently do in the present day, despite the company being far smaller and having far fewer resources back then. The view of Ratatouille from the Skyliner is far more offensive, and totally destroys the illusion that the cityscape continues beyond what guests can explore.
For 1971, that's pretty good if this was the worst of it. Even 20,000 Leagues, whose show building was larger than a Football Field, was able to reduce its visibility down to almost nothing:
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Now, the Matterhorn did originally have its internal structure visble . . . in 1959, four years after Disneyland opened. But even then, this was not quite to the extent people remember. There was lots of interior rockwork surrounding the supports, it just didn't amount to tunnels and caverns the way it does now.
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Not their best work, but considering Disneyland was 4 years old and The Matterhorn was already such a massive undertaking with nothing else like it on earth, I think they deserve more credit than they get for their efforts on the inside. The way people talk, you'd have thought they didn't even try. But even then, this imperfect attempt was rectified less than 20 years later in 1977 when the pride in their work could be matched by their bank account. The Matterhorn has had a very handsome fully themed interior ever since.
Disneyland's Fantasyland Dark Rides originated with the same conceit that was used in WDW's Fantasyland, but that changed in the early 80's when the land was redone. This resulted in wonderfully elaborate new Village Building facades for most of the rides, and you
could argue that the view from the Skyway sort of spoiled that this architecture didn't continue all across the top of the buildings. I'll give you that one, I guess - here's Mr. Toad and Peter Pan at Disneyland from the Skyway. Not perfect, but also not tragic considering they were still working with the bones from 1955:
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Of course, hardly any of this is
totally relevant, given that the roofs of these buildings at both DL and WDW have not been viewable to guests for 25+ years now, and all these buildings (at least the ones that remain) inarguably have fully healthy sightlines as a result.
The point is, even back in the day when Disney was working with comparatively very little they managed to make minimal mess of the showbuildings in Fantasyland, and where they couldn't they basically went back and bettered things before too long. That demonstrates a higher level of show quality standards than they're exhibiting with something like TRON, where minimal thought has been given to attempting to hide the building, to what the ride's building is meant to "be", where its visibility undermines the concept that the riders are getting sucked into a computer game, and where the show building can so clearly be seen from many places, up to and including the building's money angle.
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