mousermerf said:
Ya'll really have a napoleon complex don't ya?
WDW's trees aren't cheap - and we can put one next to the castle without dwarfing it.
The AK one is particularly nice. Plus all the resort trees are very grand and eloquent. The only tree that looks tackey is in MGM and that's because it's fitting the theme of the park. All those horrid plastic decorations and giant santa faces came into existence during the period the park is themed around the hollywood heyday.
It's not really the size I'm talking about, as the scale of these things is hard to judge from pictures anyway. It's mainly the quality of the decorations, the style with which they are displayed, and the materials they use overall. WDW just looks cheap and unsophisticated.
Although what doesn't help with the low-rent look is the fact that the WDW "trees" aren't really trees at all. They're lots of tree branches artificially attached to a metal frame in the shape of a cone. They are perfectly conical in shape, I'll give them that, but they are clearly fake.
But it's really the decorations themselves that look so cheap. And it's not just the trees. The garlands and wreaths I've seen around WDW also use the same, sparse, plastic decorations. They just aren't.... elegant. And a Disney Christmas done right is always so elegant.
At Disneyland the decorations use real silk ribbons and bows. Wreaths in Frontierland are decorated with real cinnamon sticks bought at a food store, with western rope and gingham tying it all up. Pinecones and real dried berries are used in Critter Country. Main Street has real metal decorations tied to each garland, as if a shopkeeper used 100 year old decorations to create them. New Orleans Square uses real feathers and Mardi Gras beads, like something from a Vegas showgirls expensive head dress, to decorate the garlands and wreaths there. LaughingPlace has a nice pictorial update of the "Reindeer Round-Up" area in Disneyland's Frontierland this year. Go and check out the pics, particularly the up close pics of the wreaths and garlands and detail work, to see what I'm talking about. Here's the link...
http://www.laughingplace.com/Lotion-View-154-1.asp It's just one example out of an entire Resort that clearly spends a big bundle on Christmas decorations, unlike WDW.
It's the lack of real, theme specific materials that WDW is lacking. Most of it is generic, plastic "CHRISTMAS DECORATION" like you'd buy at KMart or an old dime store that was going out of business. There's just so little style and such a lack of sophistication in all of these decorations at WDW, as if a little old lady in a nursing home who hasn't been outside in 20 years were in charge of the decorations. It really is like something from a 1970's shopping mall. A very odd timewarp, but not in a good way.
Only the tree at Animal Kingdom begins to show a little class and elegance. But they still stick to that sparsely decorated, barely thought out style of decorating.
It's just weird that the Christmas decorations can be so radically different between two Disney properties in America, that's all I'm saying. It's just weird.
