I love how they gave the mountains in the background a slightly different color to make it look like they are far off in the background. Or is that just LA smog?
Don't worry kids, I'll take this one...
A minor point of correction; Disneyland Resort is not actually in "LA". It's in Orange County. It's trivial, but when Orange County can claim it's own trashy Housewives show, it's time to separate ourselves from Los Angeles County and/or the City of Los Angeles. :lol:
Los Angeles, and most of Southern California, suffered with terrific smog during the 1940's through the 1960's. Due to increased emissions controls on automobiles and industry in the mid 1960's, by the 1970's the smog problem began to improve.
But it wasn't until the 1990's that the smog as people knew it from the 1950's began to disappear completely.
There has not been a smog alert day in Orange County in nearly 20 years, and even the Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, where smog was at its worst by being trapped by the deep inland valleys, haven't had a smog alert day in 10 years. There are still days when coastal fog or haze blanket OC, but that's a natural environmental condition unrelated to the manmade particulates that once made up smog.
Here's a chart that shows the decline that began in the 1970's and the eventual elimination by the turn of the 21st century of what were called "Stage 1 Episodes" by bureaucrats, but were more commonly called "Smog Alert Days" in Southern California pop culture and media, as measured by the Air Quality Management District. There's been no real data published in the last 10 years because the air quality has continued to improve beyond that level, and the phrase
Smog Alert Day no longer means anything to an entire generation of younger Southern Californians.
The result is air that still may have tiny amounts of manmade particulates in it, and the coastal basin of SoCal still generates natural fog or haze due to the mountains, valleys and ocean. Tourists often see a naturally hazy day in LA and mistakenly assume it's the "smog" they heard so much about in the 1960's and 70's. And air quality in SoCal is still
far short of pristine and devoid of manmade additions. But actual "smog" as was known in old Johnny Carson joke punchlines from 1972 no longer exists in SoCal, and certainly not in coastal Orange County.
The pictures of the Cadillac Range show the paint techniques and sculpting that WDI used to create the stunning effect. Although it is hard for WDI to compete with Mother Nature, when you could wake up to this type of view in 2012 from your Disneyland Hotel room. This is a view that would have been impossible for most of the 20th century when smog still blanketed the Southland consistently.
Disneyland Mountain Range by
WJMcIntosh(Mostly offline until 4/30), on Flickr
