So yes, this is definitely cause for excitement. I mean, you can even see some of the Indy queue building under all the trees! (Check out this shot and this one.) But...there's a dark side to this recent development.
The old photos are gone.
Sorta.
Before, there were numerous batches of Bird's Eye photos of the park available, taken in various years, with various levels of image quality, various resolutions, various camera positions, and various times of day. All of these worked together to provide a more complete view of the park than what would normally have been available. But you won't find many of these on the site anymore. While the current photos are absolutely awesome, it's still a real shame to have all those old ones missing.
If you, like me, would love to see the old photos return in addition to the current ones, please send feedback to Microsoft! Because...I'm pleased to say...the photos are not actually GONE gone. They still exist on Microsoft's servers, and you can still access them...if you have the URL for each photo. Luckily, I bookmarked some of the most helpful ones, mostly along the west side of the park, and I've found a few after the fact, too. So here are all the old links I have...if you have some, PLEASE share them! =D (The initial letter indicates which direction the camera is facing, of course, and I've indicated which shots are newer, though they're all older than what you currently see on the site.)
- W New Orleans Square - old but high-res
- W Critter Country - old but high-res
- N west half of the park - newer but lower-res
- N western backstage areas - newer but lower-res
- E west half of the park - newer but lower-res
- E from Splash to Innoventions - old but high-res
- E southwest quadrant - newer but lower-res
- E western backstage areas - old, but nice view of doors on HM show building
- E from Pirates to a very yucky Space Mountain - old, but high-res
- N Splash Mountain and ROA - old, but high-res
- S DCA and a little of DL's southwest quadrant - newer, and actually not too bad resolution-wise
- S part of west side - old and ugly!
- W old but amazingly high-res shot of Indy show building
- E whole park - newer, but very low-res and generally weird
- N western parts of both parks - newer, but low-res
- N Fantasyland, Toontown, and back of house - newer, but low-res
- S town square and DCA - newer, but low-res
- N Tomorrowland to back of house - old, but higher-res
- N Main Street to Toontown - newer, but low-res
Goodness, I hope all that time I spent typing those up wasn't a waste. =P You'll notice, of course, that all these old photos disappear if you try to navigate to adjacent photos, change directions, or zoom. And I tried to see if there was any pattern in the URLs, so I could perhaps generate URLs for other photos of the park...but no luck. The key is the &scene= parameter near the end...but if you just change one digit, you end up in the midwest or something. =(
So yeah...thank Microsoft for the new photos...but demand that the old ones come back, too! :D
2 comments:
I haven't got permalinks but I did do screen captures of all of disneyland from all four directions at maximum resolution (plus some parts of DCA that I was interested in). Do you want me to email them of should we arrange another way to transfer the files? I also have a plan of pixie hollow if you're interested
Ed
Wow, that'd be awesome if you could email me them! No rush or anything, but I'd love to see 'em. Same goes for the Pixie Hollow plan, though I may already have the one you're talking about - it's a color site plan with BLAB in gray to the right and a label that says TOMORROWLAND NORTH ENTRANCE at the top right corner...
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