What would you choose as Disney's Hollywood Studios Park Icon

[The Empress Lilly]

The Earful Tower can also be seen from World Drive. Uniquely, DHS has a park icon that's better visible from outside than from within the park. It's cool, it ties in the actual Disney movie studios with not just DHS, but with the whole of WDW, reminding all those driving up towards EPCOT and the MK how it all started with a Mouse and a film studio.
It may not be the best icon, but the tower is a great symbol:

The views down the boulevards are iconic for the park too. The first pic ought to be without the HAT, but that appears to be a matter of time. (yay!)

For specific icons, the Chinese Theater is the obvious candidate, but is currently blocked, and suffers from not being a park original. ToT is a good cadidate too, but I dislike how half its front looks like Baghdad 2003. Which to me sort of rules it out as an icon.

DHS is so purdy. She's a real looker!

 

[Since1976]

As much as I loved the original view down Hollywood Blvd, I always thought it was odd that Disney used an existing building, the Chinese Theater (whose real counterpart is owned by someone else), as its initial focal point. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't later legal issues surrounding the Chinese Theater at least partially the reason for the BAH being constructed in front of it?

Should Disney scrap the theater facade with a "weenie" which is uniquely Disney but evokes Hollywood at the same time? What could that new focal point possibly be? And no matter what they do, would it be just as poorly received and controversial as the BAH?

 

[The Empress Lilly]

As much as I loved the original view down Hollywood Blvd, I always thought it was odd that Disney used an existing building, the Chinese Theater (whose real counterpart is owned by someone else), as its initial focal point. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't later legal issues surrounding the Chinese Theater at least partially the reason for the BAH being constructed in front of it?

Should Disney scrap the theater facade with a "weenie" which is uniquely Disney but evokes Hollywood at the same time? What could that new focal point possibly be? And no matter what they do, would it be just as poorly received and controversial as the BAH?

The legal issues are usually debunked as myth.

I know what you mean about the Chinese Theater! I too often regret that the Theater is not a Disney original. It makes it difficult to embrace it, to love it as a Disney icon.

What made me accept it, was the realisation that virtually all (most notably, not ToT) of the buildings on the two boulevards are copies of existing structures. The front half of DHS simply is the Disneyfied version of a real place, consisting of copies of real buildings. Once I understood the full extent of this, it was easier to accept the Chinese theatre too.
Also, these are not carbon copies. There is still an original creative process involved in their transposition into DHS.

 

[danpam1024]

DHS is a "smaller" park with "bigger" rides- nothing stands out. TOL, SSE, Cinderella Castle dominate the entrances of their respective parks. Nothing (other than the BAH) "dominates" the entrance of DHS. Perhaps the Chinese Theater On a hill of some sort with the iconic "HOLLYWOOD(LAND)" sign in the background would have been a better choice. The Earful Tower is cute- but scale is far too small

 

[NWDMD]

Thanks for all the responses! I think the Earful tower wouldn't make the best icon for a panoramic poster of Hollywood Studios. I think Hollywood Boulevard would be nice. The picture from The Empress Lilly above would be awesome if it was panoramic. Does anyone have any good photos that have good resolution and are wide?

 

[MikeTaylorSound]

The main reason to go to DHS just happens to be in one place, Sunset BLVD: Phantasmic!, ToT, RnR, and whatever they're turning Beauty and the Beast stage show into. If it weren't for Star Tours and the themed-dining, I wouldn't venture past Echo Lake.

 

[luv]

This is still my favorite logo ever.