Watching a video tour of Celestial Park by
Love Our Life I noticed something unfortunate design-wise, but fair warning, this a deep-dive on a niche topic.
First though, I'll say Celestial Park is the area of the park I think I'm most excited about due to its lack of entertainment-industry IP, scale of open space and vistas, landscape and water. It seems
generous of Universal, and I love that. There are so many details that blow me away...I've pointed out the wood ceilings before and again, I'm stunned. It is so easy to value-engineer this out of a build, I can't believe they got this through.
So, my reaction is to the walkways right outside the entry retail and under the arcade covers. I'm a big walkways-guy (like I'm a big sightlines-guy). These are among the things I care most about with theme parks (I know). I have theories about when and where to spend money on enhanced walkways. Plain old gray concrete is of course the cheapest approach, with colored concrete adding expense, and molded or sculpted texture even more, and artistically applied stains and washes -- or even embedded artifacts -- even more than that. There's a range of options.
Of course, what I love are fully artistically textured walkways, with washes and embedded artifacts. We're seeing that in some of the modern theme parks and new lands, and replacement walkways for older parks, for example, at Magic Kingdom (Adventureland, and in front of the Frontierland DVC lounge).
Why do I think walkways are important? Because it's the one physical thing every guest is in contact with almost every single moment of the day. They can not only see it (like they can see structures or landscape) but they are touching it. Sometimes they are sitting on it, such as waiting for a parade.
A thematic walkway can carry a heavy load in thematic place-making and conversely a non-thematic walkway can really cut against the immersion...reminding you that you are
just in a theme park.
A textured walkway can also do some other effective things like catching water. Whether it's just rough with pitting, or molded as cobblestones, a texture can catch and hold water -- sprinkler water from nearby irrigation or rain and morning dew -- and that sparkly reflective bit of water is just magical. It makes an expanse of walkway look visually interesting and clean, and as humans we have an innate attraction to seeking water and moistness (for survival), plus it makes us feel cooler.
But not all walkways can be plussed up, budget-wise. So designers have to be strategic in choosing where to spend more. Deciding where to have enhanced walkways can be driven by factors like whether the texture helps -- or is necessary -- for placemaking (to sell the theme), whether it's encountered in the initial perception-setting moments or later, how fast or slow guests are moving across the walkway, and where their eyes are likely aimed (at the area 30-feet in front of them or at some 100-foot-tall landmark hundreds of feet away?).
In Celestial Park there are long, wide open walkways criss-crossing the world, and plazas, many of those have circular graphical patterns in varying colors. That all looks great. But the walkways in front of the entry retail at Celestial Park look to be very plain concrete (perhaps there are qualities to the concrete I can't see in the video).
It looks very
pedestrian (excuse the pun) and on par with what I'd see in a neighborhood strip mall. I think that was unfortunate in a few ways. First, this is where the park is making its first impression with guests, so plussing up this critical entry moment can pay dividends on putting guests into the mindset that the park is super-high-quality, that "no expense was spared."
Moreover, having high-quality finishes around retail, especially, is helpful in enhancing the perception of quality of the merchandise itself, and therefore value-for-money. A high-end shopping center or retail street often has an elevated Euro-urban look...some pictures from some Caruso projects (my favorite shopping center developer) for that reason:
Meanwhile the front of non-high-end retail is usually plain, gray concrete (the nearby grocery store, Walmart, Costco).
So with this entry "urban" area of Celestial Park, I think a more elevated Euro-urban walkway texture, like stone pavers would have been a strategic place to spend a bit more. To not clash visually with the brick walls, I would have avoided small, similar sized cobblestones, and would have instead gone with larger stones with some subtle patterns. Celestial Park is filled with patterning so these motifs could be continued, along with mimicking the shapes of the architecture above by reflecting the ceiling in the walkway below...that is, if there's a circle rotunda above you, define a circle in the walkway directly below.
