Hollywood Studios Backstage Buildings (What are they?)

[cookiee_munster]

Hey, I tried to do a bit of a search, but didn't have it in me to keep scrolling back. Apologies if this is something that's covered quite regularly.

I was looking at a thread a few weeks ago about looking into the expansion plots around magic kingdom. Not a lot, but there's some potential space there.

Which got me thinking about The Studios. Obviously it's had two massive lands/expansions which got me thinking about the further possibility of more expansions in the future. One area in particular that's always got me wondering. Whenever I look at an Arial picture of the studios, what are all those buildings just next to Toy Story land/Behind Animation Courtyard? and is there a possibility of those being relocated for future attraction expansion within the park? or are they all absolutely integral to being there without any relocation?

If people answering what buildings they are could do some labelling, that would be super! Thanks!

 

[MagicHappens1971]

Hey, I tried to do a bit of a search, but didn't have it in me to keep scrolling back. Apologies if this is something that's covered quite regularly.

I was looking at a thread a few weeks ago about looking into the expansion plots around magic kingdom. Not a lot, but there's some potential space there.

Which got me thinking about The Studios. Obviously it's had two massive lands/expansions which got me thinking about the further possibility of more expansions in the future. One area in particular that's always got me wondering. Whenever I look at an Arial picture of the studios, what are all those buildings just next to Toy Story land/Behind Animation Courtyard? and is there a possibility of those being relocated for future attraction expansion within the park? or are they all absolutely integral to being there without any relocation?

If people answering what buildings they are could do some labelling, that would be super! Thanks!

I cant tell off the picture:
But, the large building closest to launch bay was one of the Animation buildings I believe. It has a preview theatre in it and offices and what not. Idk if they still use it for anything

The building kinda to the left of RnRC is the carts warehouse so like (popcorn, pretzels, etc)

There’s a large building right behind sunset that is a large breakroom/cafeteria for cast

Backstage areas for Sunset Ranch

And other random trailers and stuff that I’m not sure what they belong to

I’m sure that most if not all these buildings could be razed and either be not needed or the things they’re used for, moved

 

[roj2323]

Hey, I tried to do a bit of a search, but didn't have it in me to keep scrolling back. Apologies if this is something that's covered quite regularly.

I was looking at a thread a few weeks ago about looking into the expansion plots around magic kingdom. Not a lot, but there's some potential space there.

Which got me thinking about The Studios. Obviously it's had two massive lands/expansions which got me thinking about the further possibility of more expansions in the future. One area in particular that's always got me wondering. Whenever I look at an Arial picture of the studios, what are all those buildings just next to Toy Story land/Behind Animation Courtyard? and is there a possibility of those being relocated for future attraction expansion within the park? or are they all absolutely integral to being there without any relocation?

If people answering what buildings they are could do some labelling, that would be super! Thanks!

1, 2. Groundskeeping and holiday decorations (Lots of other storage is scattered about backstage for this)
3. Rock 'n' roller coaster
4. Show keeping / Show ready Custodial offices and materials storage. There's also a break room.
5, 6. Water chiller plant (this is how the buildings in the park are air conditioned)
7, Entertainment management / DHS Entertainment Show Support.
8. Training offices. Basically every cast member in the park ends up in this building at some point.
9. More GSM offices, costumed character offices, Park upper management. Imagineering supposedly has some offices in there too but I haven't personally seen that.
10. Huge parking garage. This fills up regularly
11. the new BBQ place for TSL (this area was formerly training offices)
12. Imagineering (trailers)
13. Take 5 (the main cast cafeteria) (good food, lousy prices)
14. Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy

If anyone knows one of these to be inaccurate, let me know and I'll edit.

 

[cookiee_munster]

View attachment 659998

1, 2. Groundskeeping and holiday decorations (Lots of other storage is scattered about backstage for this)
3. Rockin rollercoaster
4. Show keeping / Show ready Custodial offices and materials storage. There's also a break room.
5, 6. Water chiller plant (this is how the buildings in the park are air conditioned)
7, Guest service manager offices. It was somewhat mixed departments last time I was in it 7 years ago
8. Training offices. Basically every cast member in the park ends up in this building at some point.
9. More GSM offices, costumed character offices, Park upper management. Imagineering supposedly has some offices in there too but I haven't personally seen that.
10. Huge parking garage. This fills up regularly
11. the new BBQ place for TSL (this area was formerly training offices)

If anyone knows one of these to be inaccurate, let me know and I'll edit.

Amazing, thank you!

I find it slightly nuts they don't have dedicated buildings outside the park for some of this stuff.

Some stuff obviously has to stay, but I don't think it would be difficult rehousing them elsewhere in the park.

It's such a large area of space that I definitely think could house another major expansion.

 

[roj2323]

Imagineering is the small square building to the right of Building 4. Building 7 is mostly Entertainment management with the northern half of the building housing DHS Entertainment Show Support.

Thanks, Updated.

 

[roj2323]

Amazing, thank you!

I find it slightly nuts they don't have dedicated buildings outside the park for some of this stuff.

They do. Nearly all of the buildings north east of Magic Kingdom are support buildings. There's also a block of buildings south of Animal Kingdom and more support areas built north of Animal Kingdom. Additionally within DHS there's more support buildings wrapped around the park and some hidden within the park as well. One particular area of interest is behind Sci-fi Dine in and Baseline Tap House. (stage lane) There's a bunch of stuff hidden back there. Take a look around on google maps. There's tons to see if you know where to look.

Additionally a lot of this stuff is there in part because the park had working sound stages and they needed all of the support buildings. Over the years a lot has been repurposed making the park a bit of a disorganized mess. It's getting better but in some cases the stuff just can't be moved because it supports the entire WDW property. A good example of this is the big green building behind Alien swirling saucers in TSL. That large green building is Maintenance Base, which is a call center for every maintenance issue across the entire WDW property. You call in there and they find the right person to dispatch or schedule to fix XYZ reported problem. It looks just like a 911 call center.

 

[danlb_2000]

Hey, I tried to do a bit of a search, but didn't have it in me to keep scrolling back. Apologies if this is something that's covered quite regularly.

I was looking at a thread a few weeks ago about looking into the expansion plots around magic kingdom. Not a lot, but there's some potential space there.

Which got me thinking about The Studios. Obviously it's had two massive lands/expansions which got me thinking about the further possibility of more expansions in the future. One area in particular that's always got me wondering. Whenever I look at an Arial picture of the studios, what are all those buildings just next to Toy Story land/Behind Animation Courtyard? and is there a possibility of those being relocated for future attraction expansion within the park? or are they all absolutely integral to being there without any relocation?

If people answering what buildings they are could do some labelling, that would be super! Thanks!

I think the most logical path for expansion is into the parking lot and moving the parking lot into the area between the park and Victory way.

 

[bpiper]

They do. Nearly all of the buildings north east of Magic Kingdom are support buildings. There's also a block of buildings south of Animal Kingdom and more support areas built north of Animal Kingdom. Additionally within DHS there's more support buildings wrapped around the park and some hidden within the park as well. One particular area of interest is behind Sci-fi Dine in and Baseline Tap House. (stage lane) There's a bunch of stuff hidden back there. Take a look around on google maps. There's tons to see if you know where to look.

Additionally a lot of this stuff is there in part because the park had working sound stages and they needed all of the support buildings. Over the years a lot has been repurposed making the park a bit of a disorganized mess. It's getting better but in some cases the stuff just can't be moved because it supports the entire WDW property. A good example of this is the big green building behind Alien swirling saucers in TSL. That large green building is Maintenance Base, which is a call center for every maintenance issue across the entire WDW property. You call in there and they find the right person to dispatch or schedule to fix XYZ reported problem. It looks just like a 911 call center.

Is this maintenance base just for Disney employee reports of issues or does it handle me calling in and saying my room's refrigerator died from my resort room phone?

 

[Br0ckford]

I think the most logical path for expansion is into the parking lot and moving the parking lot into the area between the park and Victory way.

View attachment 660669

I love looking at Walt Disney World on Google earth and seeing the behind the trees stuff

 

[networkpro]

I love looking at Walt Disney World on Google earth and seeing the behind the trees stuff

BUT the orbital sightlines!!!

 

[roj2323]

Is this maintenance base just for Disney employee reports of issues or does it handle me calling in and saying my room's refrigerator died from my resort room phone?

It's just cast reported issues. Your non working refrigerator would be handled within the resort you're staying at unless they are out of backup refrigerators and then it might get called into maintenance base for someone to pull one out of one of the storage buildings elsewhere on property. In short WDW operates very much like the military. Every park and hotel is treated like it's own separate business and within each of those businesses each department is also treated like its own business with its own budget. Even from there management is broken up into service areas such as separate attractions or blocks of attractions in some cases and then even further into more specialized areas. It's great for making sure things run smoothly but it does have a lot of redundancy and thus waste built into the hierarchy and sometimes one department will for example paint the innovations buildings because they are due according to a maintenance schedule, while a completely different department is planning on bulldozing the same said buildings within 12 months but hasn't announced it yet.

 

[bpiper]

It's just cast reported issues. Your non working refrigerator would be handled within the resort you're staying at unless they are out of backup refrigerators and then it might get called into maintenance base for someone to pull one out of one of the storage buildings elsewhere on property. In short WDW operates very much like the military. Every park and hotel is treated like it's own separate business and within each of those businesses each department is also treated like its own business with its own budget. Even from there management is broken up into service areas such as separate attractions or blocks of attractions in some cases and then even further into more specialized areas. It's great for making sure things run smoothly but it does have a lot of redundancy and thus waste built into the hierarchy and sometimes one department will for example paint the innovations buildings because they are due according to a maintenance schedule, while a completely different department is planning on bulldozing the same said buildings within 12 months but hasn't announced it yet.

Thanks for the info.