Having grown up going to WDW, I developed a bad case of "New Orleans Square Envy" when I got to visit Disneyland for the first time recently. It's such an awesomely immersive area, with a lot of charm and atmosphere. The closest thing we have at MK, it seems, is Liberty Square, and while I love Liberty Square and all the colonial goodness (there's nothing quite as awesome as eating a funnel cake at Sleepy Hollow as the sun goes down...), it doesn't quite hit that New Orleans Square spot. Why is that?
This may sound shallow, but I honestly think the difference is in the width of the streets. New Orleans Square has windy, narrow streets that surround you and make you feel like you've stepped into another world. Liberty Square is this big open plaza with expansive vistas into Frontierland, the Rivers of America, and back into the Hub. The architecture is beautiful and the atmosphere is charming, but something of the immersion factor is lost when you can see into a different century if you turn your head too far to the left...
So, playing armchair Imagineer, how could you fix this? It's tempting to just say, "Narrow the streets!" but I feel this wouldn't work for a number of reasons. Number one, a big honking parade goes through there multiple times a day! Number two, while New Orleans Square is off the beaten path, Liberty Square is the beaten path, centrally located between Fantasyland, Frontierland, and the Hub. Adding bottlenecks to this area would cause more problems than it would solve.
To get a New Orleans Square vibe in Liberty Square, therefore, it seems like Liberty Square would have to expand somehow. But how could it possibly? The whole area is "landlocked." Well, I've never been a cast member so I don't know much about the backstage areas, but, looking at a map, there ought to be at least a few possibilities to consider...
As best as I can tell, there are three sort of potential areas that could be used to create an, immersive back-alley colonial-themed marketplace area of Liberty Square, but I don't know if any of them could possibly work in real life: (1) Around and behind Liberty Tree Tavern, possibly replacing the Diamond Horseshoe, (2) replacing Hall of Presidents, (3) extending out into Fantasyland and replacing the Tangled bathrooms.
It might be tempting to replace the Hall of Presidents, as the American Adventure is arguably the better show, but I feel like you'd never get away with it - the attraction is kind of an institution unto itself. The Diamond Horseshoe doesn't seem to have been used for much consistently lately (as far as I know?), but cutting a swath through that building is likely to break something logistically.
Area-wise, you could definitely get some windy streets if you pushed Liberty Square out into Fantasyland. Would the loss of the Tangled restrooms raise a public outcry? Would it create more bottlenecks in an area that's already trying to desperately not be a bottleneck? The other potential advantage is to this section is that the back would open up to backstage area between the Haunted Mansion and Small World show buildings. Could a long Indiana-Jones queue snake out between them to lead to an awesome new Revolutionary War-themed E-ticket?
No idea. Probably not, I would guess. There may not be a way to increase the immersion factor at Liberty Square, where crowd logistics are at a premium. Nonetheless, it is fun to fantasize about a Boston-North-End/Charlestown themed set of back alleys with lamp lights and Cozy-Cone-style windows where you could sample New England themed desserts and small plates... In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to hang out at the Morocco Pavilion some more...
Or maybe there's a way to do it that I'm missing?
This may sound shallow, but I honestly think the difference is in the width of the streets. New Orleans Square has windy, narrow streets that surround you and make you feel like you've stepped into another world. Liberty Square is this big open plaza with expansive vistas into Frontierland, the Rivers of America, and back into the Hub. The architecture is beautiful and the atmosphere is charming, but something of the immersion factor is lost when you can see into a different century if you turn your head too far to the left...
So, playing armchair Imagineer, how could you fix this? It's tempting to just say, "Narrow the streets!" but I feel this wouldn't work for a number of reasons. Number one, a big honking parade goes through there multiple times a day! Number two, while New Orleans Square is off the beaten path, Liberty Square is the beaten path, centrally located between Fantasyland, Frontierland, and the Hub. Adding bottlenecks to this area would cause more problems than it would solve.
To get a New Orleans Square vibe in Liberty Square, therefore, it seems like Liberty Square would have to expand somehow. But how could it possibly? The whole area is "landlocked." Well, I've never been a cast member so I don't know much about the backstage areas, but, looking at a map, there ought to be at least a few possibilities to consider...
As best as I can tell, there are three sort of potential areas that could be used to create an, immersive back-alley colonial-themed marketplace area of Liberty Square, but I don't know if any of them could possibly work in real life: (1) Around and behind Liberty Tree Tavern, possibly replacing the Diamond Horseshoe, (2) replacing Hall of Presidents, (3) extending out into Fantasyland and replacing the Tangled bathrooms.
It might be tempting to replace the Hall of Presidents, as the American Adventure is arguably the better show, but I feel like you'd never get away with it - the attraction is kind of an institution unto itself. The Diamond Horseshoe doesn't seem to have been used for much consistently lately (as far as I know?), but cutting a swath through that building is likely to break something logistically.
Area-wise, you could definitely get some windy streets if you pushed Liberty Square out into Fantasyland. Would the loss of the Tangled restrooms raise a public outcry? Would it create more bottlenecks in an area that's already trying to desperately not be a bottleneck? The other potential advantage is to this section is that the back would open up to backstage area between the Haunted Mansion and Small World show buildings. Could a long Indiana-Jones queue snake out between them to lead to an awesome new Revolutionary War-themed E-ticket?
No idea. Probably not, I would guess. There may not be a way to increase the immersion factor at Liberty Square, where crowd logistics are at a premium. Nonetheless, it is fun to fantasize about a Boston-North-End/Charlestown themed set of back alleys with lamp lights and Cozy-Cone-style windows where you could sample New England themed desserts and small plates... In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to hang out at the Morocco Pavilion some more...
Or maybe there's a way to do it that I'm missing?
