News New Haunted Mansion Grounds Expansion, Retail Shop Coming to Disneyland Resort in 2024

[celluloid]

It looks like a nice Mother in Law Suite or artisan gift shop in the least themed part of Stone Mountain Park.

 

[wityblack]

That fixture was almost certainly selected to comply with ADA's regulations on protruding objects. Essentially, in order to allow blind or low-vision people to navigate a space using a cane, objects sticking out from a wall into a walkway are limited to 4" maximum thickness:
View attachment 829825

Of course, limiting a fixture to 4" depth does not mean that this specific fixture had to be chosen. There are all sorts of light fixtures available on the market (not to mention custom fixtures) that could have complied with the code without looking so "builder grade at Home Depot."

There are also ways that a larger fixture could have been used, by blocking the ground space below it so that it is no longer considered part of the circulation path. This would reroute traffic around the protrusion and give low-vision pedestrians something that's detectable at cane level. Throughout the parks, things like this are frequently accomplished with a planter, a rock, a stack of crates (WDI's favorite!) or even just a potted plant that could all easily fit within the theme of the structure.

That said, any time a fixture choice evokes a specific part of the building code rather than the themed setting, the design has failed somewhere along the way.

[Interestingly, it seems like WDI managed to find a way to get this right for the Rise of the Resistance queue tunnels but messed it up for the main tunnel entrance to the land, both of which have walls angled inward. In the queue, rocks at the lower bump out so that the angled walls don't impede on the path of travel:
View attachment 829845

But in the land entrance, the walls have a steeper slope and the rocks along the base are smaller, so there are still plenty of places where the walls extend more than 4" into the circulation path. Ironically it's an even bigger problem at the open-end of the tunnel, where the volumes of people passing through are greater and someone could have a face-first collision with the wall rathan than just grazing their shoulder along the edge of it:
View attachment 829844]

It's very interesting how many examples of this you find around the parks if you just go looking for it!

 

[lazyboy97o]

see[Interestingly, it seems like WDI managed to find a way to get this right for the Rise of the Resistance queue tunnels but messed it up for the main tunnel entrance to the land, both of which have walls angled inward. In the queue, rocks at the lower bump out so that the angled walls don't impede on the path of travel:
View attachment 829845

But in the land entrance, the walls have a steeper slope and the rocks along the base are smaller, so there are still plenty of places where the walls extend more than 4" into the circulation path. Ironically it's an even bigger problem at the open-end of the tunnel, where the volumes of people passing through are greater and someone could have a face-first collision with the wall rathan than just grazing their shoulder along the edge of it:
View attachment 829844]

My guess is that in the entry tunnel there is a 4” or less change between 27” AFF and 80” AFF, and that line is being continued. Technically correct as protruding objects can be stacked. That’s not something specifically written into the design standards but is shown in the US Access Board’s Guide to the ADA Standards.

The queue is a little different in that they’re corridors that are part of the means of egress. The smallest clear width of the corridor is what counts for egress capacity. Queues are tight spaces and doing something like the land entry would eat up space that doesn’t count towards egress capacity. It is also a volume of space that would have to be conditioned, so it’d be a premium initial cost, a premium use of space and it’d have an ongoing cost while not being usable. The entry tunnel is already large and it isn’t conditioned.