How Disney Tricks Your Mind

Oh Pappy please welcome now it's very common knowledge that Disney is the best in the business when it comes to theming their theme parks whether it's using the correct type of plant from the area that the attraction or land is based on or finding ways to make the local plant life or even animal life in some cases work to their advantage Disney really knows what they're doing when it comes to developing a story around an area and making you feel immersed in that story today we're going to be talking about how Disney immerses you even further into the story aside from just plants and animals from optical illusions to make you feel like you're seeing something that shouldn't be there - how Disney manages their trash to make you feel like you're actually in an 18th century American small town well I mean since it's the 18th century would it be a village or a settlement well whether it's a city or a town or a settlement I say settle on in because we're about to take a deep dive into the human psyche and examine the human experience at Disneyland and Walt Disney World okay maybe not that deep but we will be looking at how Disney tricks your mind [Music] now you'd think being Disney they have access to top-tier technology to help trick the human mind but actually a lot of these tricks happen to be very very simple and things you can even recreate at home the first effect we're going to talk about is the Firefly effect that is used in the Pirates of the Caribbean Bayou scene at the very very beginning you know when all the people are eating to your right and all the people are playing their guitars to your left okay it's just one person strumming but he does a really good job during this scene if you look to your left deeper into the Bayou you will see a few Firefly is glowing and flying around now you may think these are just like flashing bulbs or LEDs that flash and make it look like a Firefly but in reality this effect is actually very very simple the fireflies themselves are actually small lights attached to thin black wires these lights are glued to black pieces of cardboard and flutter due to air being blown from small fans below the fly's themselves because the small fans are blowing air at the fireflies or the lights the lights will fly around and get blocked from your view sometimes by the black piece of cardboard that they're glued to and because of this kind of optical illusion we see small fireflies buzzing around the Bayou occasionally blinking but ladies and gents fear not because that is not the only very simple optical illusion that Disney uses in its attractions to fool you into thinking something paranormal is happening at both haunted mansions in America and I'm pretty sure most of the haunted mansions around the world there lies a singular optical illusion sometimes before you get on the actual attraction and sometimes while you're in your doom buggy allow me to introduce you to Vinny and bookend now as you can plainly see these busts that I have here in front of me don't exactly recreate the optical illusion found in the Haunted Mansion very well but as we switch to video evidence of these busts you can see that their gaze follows you around as you walk or ride past guests are often amazed at this and look at this for a long time trying to figure out how the effects work are they on like a turntable and why do they only follow me myself on the other hand I'd cannot stand looking at these busts for longer than two seconds and that is because I know how the illusion works now if you know how the illusion works you know where I'm going with this but if you don't and you don't want to have a minor headache every time you look at these busts I suggest skipping ahead you see these busts or what is called a negative impression or a reverse impression both are acceptable just imagine for a second that you have a huge block of clay and you decide to headbutt that block of clay after you recover you'll be left with a 3d negative impression of your own face and that's basically how the busts work this marble man actually recedes into the wall behind him and is not sitting inside a small little cubby like you would think the dim lighting then helps to create an optical illusion that the busts are actually turning their heads when in reality they are completely stationary now the reason this gives me a small headache I'm not sure about anybody else out there but me personally I can see the illusion at the same time as seeing the actual reverse impression so when I look at these busts sitting in their little cubby on the wall I do see busts turning and looking at me but I also see a negative reverse impression and when I see both at the same time it kind of gives me a little bit of a headache I know is it just me am I the only one with this problem and now we move on to talking about the granddaddy of Disney attraction illusions one that they still use to this day everybody have a seat and allow me to introduce you to the Pepper's Ghost illusion and the history behind it now the earliest account we have of this illusion comes from GM Battista della Porta in the 16th century and yes it is that old and people for some reason think it's Holograms teleport the rights let there be a chamber wherein no light comes unless by the door or window where the spectator looks in let the whole window or part of it be glass as we used to do to keep out the cold but let one part be polished that there may be a looking-glass on both sides whence the spectator or must look in for the rest do nothing let pictures be set over against this window marble statues and such like for what is without will be seen within and what is behind the spectators back he will think to be in the middle of the house as far from the glass inward as they stand from it outwardly and clearly and certainly he will think he sees nothing but the truth okay so what does that all mean so the basic trick involves a stage in this case the Haunted Mansion ballroom set or the hallway in the Tower of Terror the stage must be split into two rooms one that the people can see into the part of the ballroom that we see and the second that is hitted from our view a plate of glass is placed somewhere in the main room at an angle that reflects the view of the room we cannot see toward the audience the objects in the hidden room are then lit and can be seen reflected in the glass in front of us the objects appear to have a sort of translucent or transparent quality to them therefore the name Pepper's Ghost and therefore the use in the haunted mansion basically in layman's terms the ghosts underneath us are lit reflect on the glass in front of us and appear to be spooky ghosts in front of us the use of this illusion can be found of course in the Haunted Mansion but also in the Tower of Terror and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh you know that seem in the attraction where poos like sleeping and then he starts astral projecting and he flies out of his own body and hallucinates all these Heffalumps and Woozles that's Pepper's Ghost but here you leave illusions used inside Disney attractions and enter the world of immersion into these attractions and lands it doesn't quite have the same ring to it something that I've wanted to talk about for a long time here is what I like to call floor transitions now I'm not quite sure if that's the official name Disney gives then but that's the name I'm choosing to run with today now when lots of people are in the Disney parks they like to look up and around them at the scenery that's around them and while the theming around you is really cool and I like looking at all the foliage and you forced perspective but take a moment next time you're at the parks to look down like I said earlier you enter Main Street and the street is paved black but on the sides of the street you have the red cobblestone sidewalks upon reaching the hub the red cobblestone sidewalk turns into a circle and then branches off into all the surrounding lands you'll notice that if you turn to go into say Adventureland that the ground beneath you changes in most cases you will cross some sort of bridge to enter the new land in adventure lands case it's kind of a bridge it's a half bridge but you do cross a bridge to enter Frontierland and Fantasyland via you know the castle moat you have to cross a bridge over that the only land you don't really use a bridge to cross into is Tomorrowland keep in mind that this only affects the lands that sprout out of the hub like Fantasyland frontier land Adventureland and not Tomorrowland unless we're talking while Disney World because then yes it does have a bridge but this brings me to my next point don't only look down when you're walking into a land but when you're walking around the land itself for example when you're walking around the banks of the rivers of America at New Orleans Square the ground is cobblestone meanwhile over in Adventureland it's sort of a brown concrete with stones and small pebbles mixed in to make you feel like you're walking through the dirt or the mud a famous example exists at Walt Disney World at Liberty Square you'll notice as you're walking around Liberty Square that the edges of the walkway are sort of a brick red that's meant to represent the dirt roads or the cobblestone roads that you're walking on towards the center though it's more like Adventureland at Disneyland it's sort of a river of rocky brown terrain this of course is meant to represent the rivers of human feces that would run down the streets during the American Revolution people in the morning would throw their bedpans out the window and it would land in the middle of the street bedpans by the way are what you used when you had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night so yeah that's what the the ground at Liberty Square represents but you can find other examples of this at all the Disney parks all over the world so I encourage you next time when you're in the park to look around not just around you and above you but also below you and now I want to talk about something that sets attractions apart from movies in that you can't experience an attraction the same way you would experience a movie Theater everybody strap in and prepare yourselves for the wonderful world of audio mixing okay I understand this may not be what you clicked on the video for but trust me it's very entertaining now when you are creating a movie you have the movies score or soundtrack mirror or expand on what's happening in the scene that you're watching when an audience watches a movie they're only looking at what you want them to look at they're only looking at what's presented in the frame meanwhile in a theme park attraction that's a whole lot different because you're not just looking at one frame of a movie you're in a real moving 3d environment and the music has to accompany what's happening in the attraction the same way that it does in film but in this case you can't force the audience to look at something that you want them to look at they'll be looking wherever they feel inclined to look of course you can kind of get around this by using ride vehicles like the Optima and the Haunted Mansion where you can turn audiences to face where you want them to look in fact music is the first thing you notice when you walk into a new attraction like the Haunted Mansion organ or the Pirates of the Caribbean cue music that I can listen to for hours and hours on end it gives you a sort of idea about the time period you're entering and what kind of attraction you'll be writing when you're on the actual attractions these soundtracks are meticulously made so that you hear bits and pieces of different audio dialogue and music that Disney wants you to hear you of course aren't going to get the entire script to the auction scene when you ride through it end pirates of the Carribean but you get bits and pieces because of the timing the timing is very important the lines have to be long enough that guests can understand what the character is trying to say while they ride past but also not too long because the guests don't spend too much time in that one scene these audio loops are also made in a certain way that you can enter the scene at any point and you'll pretty much understand what's going on and you can exit that same scene and enter another scene and not feel like you missed anything I recommend checking out a channel called JPL Studios just so you can see how many audio bites Disney uses in each of their attractions and um spoiler alert it's a lot of audio tracks ones that you don't even recall hearing on the attraction but once you hear them individually and isolated you know just how much it helps build the scene and I could talk about Disney audio mixing for days and days because it's super interesting to me but that's where I choose to leave it today we we move on to a different type of force perspective that I didn't mention in my last video that I'd like to bring up here now I made an error in my last video it's not actually called no seeum green that's just what a few guests call it the actual name is go away green so whenever you see the color in the parks don't say it's no seeum green it's actually go away green and I like that a lot more it's got a little bit of an alliteration going on and I absolutely adore alliteration the illusion actually has nothing to do with go away green I just wanted to you know clear the air no hard feelings now this case of forced perspective is used as you may have guessed on Main Street USA now I'm not sure if this is used to the same caliber at Disneyland as it is at Walt Disney World when you first enter Main Street USA at Walt Disney World you will notice that the castle is a long ways away but you'll notice as you arrive at the castle that it wasn't a very long walk at all and the castle looked way further away at the beginning of Main Street than it actually was and that's force perspective baby not vertical force perspective though to make you feel like buildings are taller than they actually are but horizontal force perspective to make things feel further away than they actually are this is because the buildings on Main Street USA actually do get smaller as you progress down the street but while they do get smaller in size the vertical forced perspective is still at play making you think they're taller than they actually are all of these optical illusions bundled into one make you feel like the castle is further away than it actually is in short the shrinking buildings give you the illusion of distance and that is just a small example of Disney's masterful storytelling through optical illusions and practical effects I'd love to hear from you guys down in the comments below have you ever been fooled by any of these optical illusions what is your favorite optical illusion at any of the Disney parks so next time you're walking through Liberty Square at Walt Disney World smelling the flowers and enjoying the sights and sounds of a colonial American town just be sure to watch your step hello everybody thank you so much for watching this video on more Disney illusions what did you guys think about this video I tried to amend some of the mistakes I made in my last video while also adding some more facts that you might not have known if you feel so inclined to remember you can follow me on twitter at offhand Disney or you can donate on my patreon patreon patrons that was some alliteration for you got access to this episode's audio actually earlier this week so if you'd like to hear this episode's audio earlier than it when it's post on youtube be sure to donate even just one dollar on patreon it really goes a long way helps me out tremendously so thank you all my patreon patrons and all my Twitter followers shout out to you guys please be sure to hit that like button and if you are subscribed hit that Bell icon trust me it really helps me out a lot because we are about to hit the 100,000 subscribers mark don't know how I made it this far but it's all thanks to you guys I'd really be curious to know what would you like to see in a 100,000 subscribers special leave that in the comments if you have any ideas if you want to discuss more Disney you can head over to the offhand Disney discord or the offhand Disney subreddit there's some active conversations going on over there as always everybody I just want to say thank you all just so much for the support and for the 100,000 subscribers it really means the world to me that you guys watch this content and you enjoy it so thank you actually from the bottom of my heart I'm really thankful for that and again if you have any ideas for any specials just let me know down in the comments as always everybody thank you so much for watching this video and all my videos and here's to a hundred thousand more [Music]

Channel: Offhand Disney

Views: 2,036,951

Keywords: Disney, Tricks, Secrets, Illusions, Themes, Theming, Walt, World, Disneyland, California, Florida, Orlando, Anaheim, Travel, Transitions, Sightlines, Berm, Music, Ride, Audio, Attraction, Imagineering, History, Details, New, Orleans, Square, Main, Street, USA, Haunted, Mansion, Pirates, Caribbean, Behind, The, Scenes, Pepper's, Pepper, Ghost, Illusion, Firefly, Blue, Bayou, Scene, Tangled, Magic, Kingdom, Negative, Reverse, Impression, Busts, Following, Eyes, Portrait

Id: gr65x-9ve64

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018