Disney's Wilderness Lodge Geologic Fireplace
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Rose Red
N 28° 24.531 W 081° 34.391
17R E 443857 N 3142627
The Hidden Mickey is etched into the 82 foot tall geologic fireplace design. You can view the Hidden Mickey from the main floor.
Waymark Code: WMV0N7
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 02/03/2017
Views: 15
This Hidden Mickey is located at a popular gathering spot in the corner of Disney's Wilderness Lodge lobby on a towering, geologic fireplace with cozy, rustic, wooden rocking chairs gathered around the fire. The Hidden Mickey is etched into the 82 foot tall geologic fireplace design. Descriptive plaques are beside the fireplace and on the floor in front of the fireplace.
The Grand Canyon Fireplace was inspired by Mary Coulter's small geologic fireplace at the Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
The Bright Angel Lodge fireplace was quarried directly from the layers of the Grand Canyon whereas the massive Disney version is a work of art by Imagineering.
Disney Imagineers re-created the layers of the fireplace to represent the different rock structure and strata of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon from river to rim. As you ascend the levels of the lobby, you travel upward to present times.
The Disney Imagineers even went to great lengths to add appropriate fossilized detailing of plants and animals representing 2,000 billion years of geologic history.
Disney had sent paleontologist and artist Robert Reid to study the actual walls of the Grand Canyon. His studies were reproduced in a detailed book that was used to help create the fireplace's colors, rocks and fossils of plant and animal life - many of which are real and are carefully embedded in the correct strata.
More than 95 colors of paint were used in re-creating accurate colors of the different geologic strata. Hues of red, magenta, green, buff, brown and black are visible.
Samples of elements from each strata are shown in glass display cases near the fireplace on each floor level. These displays describe the epoch that section of the fireplace rock represents.