Those "un-themed warehouses" in DHS were designed as real soundstages, and the entire studio area was designed to mimic the look and style of the Walt Disney Studios in California since it was serving as an East Coast satellite studio.
This is a un-themed warehouse:
View attachment 706183
These are purposely built soundstages and production facilities to aid in the creation of and the showcasing of actual movie production that pays respect to the original studios back in California:
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If you can't see the difference than I'm sorry.
What the "intention was" is irrelevant. It always meant HWS looked worse than immersive parks like EPCOT Center even when they were designed to be visited instead of transportive. It's why Disney California Adventure and especially Walt Disney Studios Paris replicated it because it meant they could hand-wave a lack of theming as "but it
is themed!" It's like the people saying "but Chester & Hester's theming is great!" Sure, it's themed to
something, but that something can be
cheap.
And the thing is, HWS looks bad presently even though they are not serving that purpose anymore. All the areas especially off of the
hub and
Commissary Lane need to be rethemed just like DCA's
Hollywoodland, Universal Studios Florida's
Production Central, Universal Studios Hollywood's
Lower Lot, and pretty much the entirety of
Walt Disney Studios Paris still need to. It looks bad and it's cheap at every park that has it and they all need to go.
HWS just happens to have more of those cop-out
theming areas than all those parks but Walt Disney Studios Paris.
Also, that warehouse you showed honestly backs up my point. Anything that looks like either of those things does NOT belong in a world-class theme park.
There's a reason why they themed the Toy Story Land side of the old soundstage that houses Toy Story Mania! If it's not a legitimate working movie studio building that's part of the park experience (the only park in the world that
is presently real is Universal Studios Hollywood) then it needs to be themed to something actually themed.
Soundstages are unthemed at actual studios because it's cheaper that way, it is effectively, a warehouse building. I have been to many actual studios from Warner Bros. Studios, to Universal Studios Hollywood, to Walt Disney Studios, and to Trilith Studios in Atlanta, and they are cool as an actual film studio, but the moment they cease production they're not interesting at all. So when Toy Story Mania took over a soundstage it should then rightfully be themed to something else. Otherwise, it's just cheap.
Super Nintendo World, for example, shouldn't have just been soundstages where you enter them for rides and restaurants.
Only the actually working components of the studio should be themed to a studio. I apply that exact same logic to HWS, as everything from Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy to Commissary Lane and all of Animation Courtyard are un-themed, cheap laziness in 2023.
The fun fact is, DCA has objectively fewer of those boxes than HWS (and the only other ugly area that's on that level is again, around Goofy's Sky School), yet people act like HWS is a prettier park. If pretty is the metric, regardless of theme, those boxes are not pretty, and by the nature of
DCA having fewer of those un-themed show buildings in numbers (Hollywoodland is universally regarded as needing the most help at DCA), I would argue
HWS has far more areas that are just as bad as Hollywoodland.
Therefore, DCA is in my view a prettier park, but I'm backing it up with objective evidence because I think it's hypocritical to excuse the ugliness at HWS and yet blast DCA.