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Sapphire Falls Resort

The foliage is the first to go. If this is where the waterway will intersect, it's before the little lagoon with the plane.

So this is the peninsula. Plane on the left and service dock on the right. I had the worst time spotting the green storage building in aerial views until I found it beneath that jungle of bamboo. I wonder if they will move the dock elsewhere south of Sapphire... which would be nice.
 
image.jpg


an overlay with the new park map and aerial view. the red triangle shows were the plane was on the aerial view (and no longer is)
 
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Anybody know where/if the plane will be back? It don't look
like there is enough room for it in the laggoon.

image.jpg


an overlay with the new park map and aerial view. the red triangle shows were the plane was on the aerial view (and no longer is)

I just got home from spending a week at Royal Pacific. As of this morning, the plane was still there. Now there was a diving team around it doing work, so my guess is they were working on removing it... But it isn't gone yet.
 
I'll wait to see the final product, but it looks sort of plain right now.

They all look plain if you look at them closely enough. They are all just a wall of rooms with pretty roofs or different colored facades with a modicum of trompe l'oeil. It is surprising how junky common they are on inspection. Disney is no different.
 
They all look plain if you look at them closely enough. They are all just a wall of rooms with pretty roofs or different colored facades with a modicum of trompe l'oeil. It is surprising how junky common they are on inspection. Disney is no different.
Yeah, more or less trompe l'oeil is usually the difference. Portofino used to have all those decorative shutters & such, but they became badly warped in the Florida weather and looked terrible, and they eliminated them in the most recent refurb. Portofino looks better now since the line is cleaner.
 
Yeah, more or less trompe l'oeil is usually the difference. Portofino used to have all those decorative shutters & such, but they became badly warped in the Florida weather and looked terrible, and they eliminated them in the most recent refurb. Portofino looks better now since the line is cleaner.

Hmmm... that is very Disney for them to not put things back to the original design. Not a Universal trait at all. I wonder if they are working on new materials shutters...

On the other hand, I have no idea who does their City Walk or Hotel designs. If any of it goes through UC, it seems they are as merely distant overseers.
 
Hmmm... that is very Disney for them to not put things back to the original design. Not a Universal trait at all. I wonder if they are working on new materials shutters...

On the other hand, I have no idea who does their City Walk or Hotel designs. If any of it goes through UC, it seems they are as merely distant overseers.
That's been two years since the redo so I'd think the shutters are gone for good, especially since they trompe l'oeil'd shutters on the buildings. The originals didn't hold up and looked like crap. Trompe l'oeill (trick of the eye) shutters look much much better than those bent up, half falling off ones did. The Portofino redo turned out fine.
 
They're all pretty plain before theming sets in. Give it some time. Hell, Art of Animation looked like a prison before they did their magic. Was that the one that was largely abandoned for a while? Or am I thinking Pop Century?
 
They're all pretty plain before theming sets in. Give it some time. Hell, Art of Animation looked like a prison before they did their magic. Was that the one that was largely abandoned for a while? Or am I thinking Pop Century?
Yeah it was AoA, was supposed to be the first half of the Century
 
They're all pretty plain before theming sets in. Give it some time. Hell, Art of Animation looked like a prison before they did their magic. Was that the one that was largely abandoned for a while? Or am I thinking Pop Century?
The simple impatience of people. Remeber everyone freaking out when they thought Transformers was going unthemed lol?

The landscaping for Sapphire is beautiful though. Wish you people could see it in person.
 
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