Disney's America was to be a unique Disney Park unlike any built before or since around the world in more ways than one. One of the biggest reasons was the berm that separated the park from the outside world would have been significantly more massive than any other berm that had ever been built in any Disney Park.
Be sure to check out the entire Never Built Disney's America series so far here. Today we explore the berm, and why it was to be so massive.
Disney's America was set to be a patriotic theme park located in Virginia amid actual historic sites, making it a perfect addition to other sites in the region, with the hope people would visit the park on a trip to real historic sites.
Because of its positioning amid other historic sites, the park had to account for them in its planning so as to not disturb the sightlines from the real historic sites with high attraction buildings or impede their normal operations in any way.
Disney took this into account by using up to 40% of the land on their proposed resort as a green berm, with no active development. The general idea behind this was to leave enough forest and greenery to make it appear from the outside like the park did not exist, which was important as the park's proposed location was close to historic battlefields.
This was one of the main things that Disney used to respond to the criticism of the park by historians, that they were making a conscious effort to preserve the region's historical integrity while still providing the region with the economic development and new jobs that came with a new theme park coming to a town.
This is incredibly evident when looking at concept art from the park, with massive forests and greenspaces left throughout the park. While some of these were almost definitely left for future additions to the park, the vast majority would never be filled in with anything to ensure the character of the area was preserved.
Other methods taken would be height limits taken by all of the attractions of the park to make sure that the berm was effective.
Even this could not save the park, and it would have to be entirely redesigned in a desperate attempt to save Disney's investment, but that is what we shall be discussing next week.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check out the rest of the series so far here. Make certain you come back next week when we explore the second proposed version of Disney's America.
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