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A Red Balloon Was Floating Over Magic Kingdom's Piston Peak Site, and It Turned Up in the Background of an Official Disney Photo
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A Red Balloon Was Floating Over Magic Kingdom's Piston Peak Site, and It Turned Up in the Background of an Official Disney Photo

Michael Travels
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Disney published a photo on Monday that was supposed to introduce one of the Imagineers appearing in this Saturday's Disney+ showcase. Look past him, to the upper left of the frame, and there is a small red balloon parked in the sky above the Piston Peak National Park construction walls.

Cinderella Castle is in the same frame, sitting almost directly under the balloon from this camera angle. That is the whole story, and it is a bigger one than a stray balloon usually is.

A smiling bearded man in glasses, a navy ball cap and an orange high visibility vest with a JASON name tag stands in front of brown construction walls and a rustic wooden fence. Cinderella Castle's grey towers and blue spires rise in the left background, and a small red balloon floats in the pale sky above the walls, noticeably higher than the castle's tallest spire.
The photo Disney published to introduce Jason Grandt. The red balloon sits at upper left, above the construction walls and, from this camera angle, well above Cinderella Castle's tallest spire. Photo: Disney

Why a balloon matters here

Piston Peak National Park is the Cars-themed land going in at Magic Kingdom where Rivers of America used to be. The open question since it was announced is what you will see from inside the rest of the park. Frontierland sells the American frontier and Liberty Square sells colonial America, and Imagineers have publicly addressed whether a mountain range from a Pixar movie will rise behind either one.

Disney has not announced a height for those mountains.

WDW News Today, which flagged the balloon in Disney's photo, reads it as a sightline test, the standard trick for this problem: float a marker at the height a structure will reach, then photograph it from the places guests will actually stand. The outlet's read is that the marker was set for something Piston Peak is going to get, possibly one of the piston-shaped peaks, and shot from a range of angles so Imagineers can see how much of it shows and tune the designs.

That reading is the outlet's, not Disney's. Disney has said nothing about the balloon, and the photo is a staff portrait, not a construction update. What is not in dispute is that the balloon is in the frame.

One more caveat worth stating plainly: Disney does not say when the picture was taken. The blog post went up on August 10, but the construction visible behind Grandt could be weeks or months old.

Concept art of a red four by four character car with cartoon eyes in its windshield climbing a muddy forest slope with two guests riding aboard. Behind it are tall rock spires including a balanced rock arch, evergreen trees, and a river where a second vehicle throws up spray. A watermark in the lower left reads Artist Concept Only, copyright Disney slash Pixar.
Concept art for the Piston Peak off-road rally attraction. Disney has been publishing art like this since it announced the land, but has never given a height for the peaks in it. Image: Disney/Pixar, via WDW News Today

What Imagineering has said so far

According to WDW News Today, Imagineering has said the new mountains will stay out of view for guests arriving down Main Street, U.S.A. or crossing through Liberty Square, and that Liberty Square's outlook will instead be rock work and a large waterfall. The outlet also reports Imagineers have likened the concealment approach to Mount Prometheus at Tokyo DisneySea, which the outlet says reads as a rolling green hillside from that park's Cape Cod area, part of its American Waterfront port, rather than as an active volcano.

Those are WDW News Today's characterizations of earlier Disney comments rather than fresh quotes from Disney, so treat them as the outlet's summary.

The showcase is Saturday

The photo came from a Disney Parks Blog post previewing "Horizons: A Carousel of Progress," which streams live on Disney+ at 7 p.m. PT on Saturday, August 15. Neil Patrick Harris hosts. Disney Experiences Chairman Thomas Mazloum takes part, along with nine Imagineering leaders: Bruce Vaughn, Ali Rubinstein, Michael Hundgen, Emily "Emo" O'Brien, Caroline May, Claire Weiss, Brent Strong, Chris Beatty, and Jason Grandt.

Grandt, whose photo this is, is listed by Disney as Executive Creative Director, Walt Disney World.

Disney says the showcase will bring "project updates, first looks, new artwork and renderings, behind-the-scenes stories, creative insights," and closes the post this way: "So, mark your calendar and get ready to go behind the construction walls, because the next chapter of Disney Experiences isn't just being imagined. It's being built."

Whether the balloon comes up on Saturday is anyone's guess. A height number for Piston Peak would settle a question that has been open since the land was announced. Disney published this photo, balloon and all, five days before the show.

Sources

Image credits: Jason Grandt photo by Disney. Piston Peak attraction concept art by Disney/Pixar, via WDW News Today.

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