Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough

Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough
Park	Disneyland Park
Land / area	Fantasyland
Type	Walkthrough
Opened	April 29, 1957
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Status	Operating

Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough is a walkthrough attraction inside Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland Park in California. Guests climb narrow staircases and follow passages through the upper level of the castle, where a series of illuminated dioramas, presented like the pages of a giant storybook, retell the story of Princess Aurora from Walt Disney's animated film Sleeping Beauty (1959). It is one of the quietest attractions in the park, and one of the easiest to walk past without realising it exists.

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History

When Disneyland opened on July 17, 1955, the castle was a landmark but not an attraction: its upper interior was empty, unused space. Walt Disney decided to put that space to work as a storybook walkthrough promoting the animated feature then in production. The walkthrough opened on April 29, 1957, nearly two years before the film reached cinemas, with Walt Disney and Shirley Temple taking part in the dedication ceremony.

The original scenes were created by Imagineer Ken Anderson in the distinctive style of Eyvind Earle, the film's production designer, whose flat, richly patterned artwork gave Sleeping Beauty its medieval-tapestry look. The interior was expanded in 1968, and in November 1977 the dioramas were completely redone in a different style, modelled on the animated window displays of Main Street, U.S.A., with doll-like figures replacing the Earle artwork. That version divided opinion and is generally regarded as the weaker of the two.

The walkthrough closed on October 7, 2001. Disney gave no detailed public reason at the time, and the closure was widely assumed at the time to be connected to the security climate after the September 11 attacks, although that explanation was never officially confirmed. For seven years the castle interior sat dark. On July 17, 2008, timed to interest in the film's 50th anniversary, Disney announced the attraction would return in the spirit of the 1957 original. The restored walkthrough reopened in late November 2008, drawing queues back to the hub on its first evening.

Experience

The entrance is on the west side of the castle, on the Fantasyland side. The story is framed by oversized illuminated manuscript pages that open and close the tale. Guests first encounter the announcement of Aurora's birth, then climb to scenes of the infant princess receiving gifts from the three good fairies, and of the kingdom's spinning wheels being burned in a courtyard pyre to protect her from Maleficent's curse. At the top of the castle the mood darkens: a window looks into the great hall where the whole court lies asleep, and the second half of the route is given over to Maleficent, her raven, her goons and the thorn forest, building to Prince Phillip's battle with Maleficent in dragon form. The final scenes soften again, with Phillip's kiss waking Aurora among roses and doves, and a closing book page showing the couple dancing as Aurora's dress shifts between pink and blue.

The 2008 restoration deliberately returned to Earle's artwork and hand-painted forced-perspective style, then layered in effects that had not been available in 1957, including projected animation, Pepper's ghost illusions and a dragon transformation devised from concept art prepared for, but never used in, the original version. One small survivor links the versions: the raven figure from the 1957 show had been kept by a maintenance worker after the 1977 redo and was returned for the restoration. The reopening also added an accessible alternative for the first time: guests who cannot manage the stairs can watch a captioned, high-definition virtual recreation of the walkthrough in a themed room on the castle's ground floor.

See also

• Sleeping Beauty Castle
• Disneyland Park
• King Arthur Carrousel