I think those are the new Avatar lollipops Disney has been hyping haha
I'm all for providing depth to a scene, but not at the cost of compromising a view from a distance if you can avoid it.
This part of the part will look awesome from the parking lots, why compromise it with very little payoff.
I agree to points of cost too, while in the land i don't think this adds much either with the high cliff wall facade that hides the show building.
Regarding the paint color, maybe they are planning for some fading in the sun?
I know that was taken into consideration for the tree of life and even in that they came up a little too short and the fade because VERY green.
Lastly, all the floating rocks seem to have a lot of small tree features. Going to be very very fascinating to see how this holds up in the first storm.