To update myself (asked this back in February):
I thought it strange and thought it a placeholder of some kind at the time. The model has three trees.
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The actual park is a little different.
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Those are definitely not trees or a mound of dirt. Curious to see what this becomes over the next few months.
There's similar footers(?) on the other side of the carousel's pond.
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Unless it's an oddly-shaped berm or more fountains I have no idea what it could be.
I have been wondering this for months and I haven't seen anybody else questioning this feature until I found this old post. Thank you, I'm not crazy!
It is a tiered (like a wedding cake) foam berm with artificial grass glued to it, perhaps lighting points hidden all over the surface, a handful of trees...and just recently it's showing a rounded notch or "bite" taken out of the top.
It is truly the most puzzling thing in all of EU for me. It's unclear what its purpose is, that is if it has a purpose, such a place to do seasonal/holiday displays or a stage? If it had real or artificial topiary (which would fit Celestial Park thematically) then I would understand the tiered artificial grass "look" more, but I see no evidence of that in the fly-by videos (though this feature is elusive in those videos!).
I guess it could be for blocking some views but seems like that could have been done using the existing "vocabulary" of natural materials from Celestial Park, like rock work or just dirt and foliage. (And if it is blocking a view, why block a view from or at a carousel?)
If it doesn't have functional purpose, or thematic justification (like topiary), I just can't see why this unusual material and sculptural approach would be necessary or appealing to the park designers. Why was it worth any expense at all -- why not just grass and trees? Nowhere else in the park, or Celestial Park, is this artificial grass used yet and given how naturalistic Celestial Park is, the tiers/artificiality seem unexpected.
Seems like in a project this big with so many people involved, something unusual would need to be explained and justified in meeting after meeting to bosses after bosses...which I would expect would "weed out" weird things that can't be strongly justified. So obviously this has made the cut!
I have tremendous faith in Universal given how extraordinary everything is, but this one stumps me. If anyone has any theory please share! I posted some recent photos taken from a Bioreconstruct video -- THANK YOU Bioreconstruct, hope that's okay!