Heard of the 'musical road'?
I stumbled across this story on the BBC site today, about a musical road.
Basically, it's a road that has been groved to "play" the Lone Ranger theme when a car drives over it at 55 mph. Sounds like a cool idea right? Shame the residents are begging for the groves to go, as apparently it's driving them nuts.
However, this story personally reminded me of one of the weirder (and most unknown) Disney stories I've heard in a while. It concerns the short-lived STOL-port just off the Transportation and Ticket Center over at WDW. This long strip of asphalt, that looks just like an airstrip, actually DID used to be an airstrip, a very long time ago. It hasn't seen any airplanes in years but apparently, this was the place where Imagineers experimented:
"What sort of experiment?," you ask. Well, the guys at WDI reportedly discovered that -- if you set up different raised areas of asphalt along a roadway at very specific intervals -- as you drove a wheeled vehicle in the right direction over this specially treated section of road, the vibrations that would then resonate inside the vehicle would almost sound like music.
As the story goes, the Imagineers allegedly used the 2000 foot long airstrip at the old Lake Buena Vista STOLport to field test this musical-speed-bump idea. And -- to this day -- I've had WDW bus drivers swear to me that they actually took part in the field trials of this project. And that -- were you to begin rolling down that old runway at at least 20 MPH -- the vibrations that you heard inside your vehicle sounded just like the opening bars of "Zip a Dee Doo Dah."
(from Jim Hill media)
So see - Disney got there first! It's a shame the experiment did not go any further because it would be very cool to drive up on World Drive and suddenly listen to "When you wish upon a star" or something. And the best parts - there are no residents to complain!
Basically, it's a road that has been groved to "play" the Lone Ranger theme when a car drives over it at 55 mph. Sounds like a cool idea right? Shame the residents are begging for the groves to go, as apparently it's driving them nuts.
However, this story personally reminded me of one of the weirder (and most unknown) Disney stories I've heard in a while. It concerns the short-lived STOL-port just off the Transportation and Ticket Center over at WDW. This long strip of asphalt, that looks just like an airstrip, actually DID used to be an airstrip, a very long time ago. It hasn't seen any airplanes in years but apparently, this was the place where Imagineers experimented:
"What sort of experiment?," you ask. Well, the guys at WDI reportedly discovered that -- if you set up different raised areas of asphalt along a roadway at very specific intervals -- as you drove a wheeled vehicle in the right direction over this specially treated section of road, the vibrations that would then resonate inside the vehicle would almost sound like music.
As the story goes, the Imagineers allegedly used the 2000 foot long airstrip at the old Lake Buena Vista STOLport to field test this musical-speed-bump idea. And -- to this day -- I've had WDW bus drivers swear to me that they actually took part in the field trials of this project. And that -- were you to begin rolling down that old runway at at least 20 MPH -- the vibrations that you heard inside your vehicle sounded just like the opening bars of "Zip a Dee Doo Dah."
(from Jim Hill media)
So see - Disney got there first! It's a shame the experiment did not go any further because it would be very cool to drive up on World Drive and suddenly listen to "When you wish upon a star" or something. And the best parts - there are no residents to complain!
Comments
LOL- sneaky enabling