The Disney Castles — The Most Famous Castles in America
Cinderella Castle & Sleeping Beauty Castle
When you wish upon a star, you might find this castle in Walt Disney World. Named after the fairy tale and movie of the same name, Cinderella Castle is one of the most iconic castles in the entire world. Though its façade of turrets and towers look like stone, the 189 ft. tall castle is actually made of fiberglass and gypsum plaster supported by a steel frame.
Cinderella Castle
Cinderella Castle presides over the Magic Kingdom where the roads, in a hub and spoke system of six themed lands radiate back to it. The six themed lands, built to promote the Disney company’s shows and movies: Main Street USA, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Liberty Square, and Adventureland all converge on Cinderella Castle in an innovative urban design that’s been copied by theme parks all over the world.
Inside the castle, a mural lined walkway, the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and the restaurant, Cinderella’s Royal Table could be found. On the walls of the central walkway in Cinderella Castle are five mosaics telling the story of Cinderella and her glass slipper. The mosaics are all hand-tiled and the gold is actual gold. The Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique gives a princess style makeover for little girls lucky enough to visit Cinderella Castle, while in Cinderella’s Royal Table, visitors can dine inside the iconic castle. Guests go up the circular stairway (or elevator) up to the second floor. Characters like Cinderella and her Disney Princess friends like Belle and Snow White greet guests and even take pictures with them. Food is served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with such menu items like the Traditional Breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and potatoes as well as slow-roasted pork tenderloin during the dinner time.
Unbeknownst to many Disneyworld guests, however, there is a world underneath Cinderella Castle and the Magic Kingdom. Walt Disney didn’t want to repeat what happened in Disneyland when costumed characters from the various lands like Tomorrowland would traverse the other themed lands and destroy the illusion. So for Disneyworld, he built an elaborate set of tunnels where employees like the costumed characters and the custodial staff could easily go from one part of the Magic Kingdom to the other without being seen. The Magic Kingdom itself is actually built on top of these tunnels, and so the Kingdom is built at an incline. At Cinderella Castle, at the epicenter of the Magic Kingdom, guests to Disney World are actually at the third story roof of the tunnel system and not at ground level.
But can you stay there? The answer is unfortunately no, but Cinderella Castle holds the only hotel room in the entire Magic Kingdom — and it’s a suite that’s invite only. Dubbed the “Most Exclusive Hotel Room in the World,” the Cinderella Castle Suite is a palatial suite fit for Cinderella herself including a parlor, a bedroom, a royal bath complete with jacuzzi, and the “throne” — a Cinderella themed toilet closed off by a canopy. The Castle Suite was built for Walt Disney and his family when they stayed at the Magic Kingdom, but back then, it was more utilitarian. In 2005, Disney completely overhauled the secret room into the Cinderella Castle Suite, which had previously been turned to storage space and call center after Walt’s passing. Regular people can occasionally win a prize and stay at this magical castle suite, but other than that, it’s completely closed off to the average person. But a Jonas brother did get to stay there. Kevin Jonas and his wife Daniella got to stay at the Cinderella Castle Suite …
Sleeping Beauty Castle
All the way across the country in the Happiest Place on Earth is the other iconic Disney castle, Sleeping Beauty Castle! While both Cinderella Castle and Sleeping Beauty Castle is patterned after the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, the Disneyland Castle bears the closer resemblance to its German counterpart especially when comparing both of their turrets and base. And Sleeping Beauty Castle also bears a resemblance to another Gothic masterpiece, Notre Dame! The bells of Notre Dame doesn’t ring at the castle, but its gold spire resembles the Notre Dame’s stone spire in Paris designed by 19th century architect Viollet le Duc. Sadly, Notre Dame suffered fire damage in 2019, but the French government has vowed to restore the famed cathedral exactly as it was before.
Sleeping Beauty Castle rises a surprisingly short 77 feet, but to be later copied by other theme park castles, the castle looks much higher due to Disney Imagineers pioneering the use of a movie-making technique called forced perspective where doors and windows are made progressively smaller when staring from the ground level. Constructed using a steel frame, wood, stucco, and fiberglass for the turrets, the castle wasn’t even named Sleeping Beauty Castle at first. The Disney company couldn’t figure out what to call it and had the preliminary title of Fantasyland Castle before finally settling on Sleeping Beauty Castle to promote their now classic movie.
Sleeping Beauty Castle has another feather in its cap compared its sister castle — a working drawbridge. It’s only been raised twice, once in 1955 for the Disneyland opening and the other in 1983 for the Fantasyland rededication. During the 1955 opening, a gallant knight on horseback strutted before an assembled crowd of families and children and proclaimed, “Open the Fantasyland Castle in the name of the children of the world!” With that, the drawbridge lowered and park-goers streamed in to explore the Happiest Place on Earth.
Inside, Disneyland guests will find the story of Sleeping Beauty told through diaromas and animatronics including the shape shifting Maleficent turning into a dragon! But it didn’t always look this way. During the ’70s, things got weird when Disney “updated” what was then considered an “outdated” pop-up storybook aesthetic and introduced slightly unnerving marionette puppetry style. After escaping the ’70s, the pop-up storybook aesthetic of the movie mercifully returned and guests can once again have an experience that Walt Disney originally intended. No word yet on whether a Jonas brother has toured the castle, however.
Today, both Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty Castles stands proudly on both of America’s coasts, a symbol of American ingenuity and imagination, and they stand as one of the most iconic castles not just in America but the whole world.
