Riverdale man brings Disneyland to life in his basement
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- Riverdale resident Travis Larson has painstakingly re-created parts of Disneyland in his basement, photographed Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
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- Riverdale resident Travis Larson has painstakingly re-created parts of Disneyland in his basement, photographed Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
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- Riverdale resident Travis Larson has painstakingly re-created parts of Disneyland in his basement, photographed Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
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- Riverdale resident Travis Larson has painstakingly re-created parts of Disneyland in his basement, photographed Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
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- Riverdale resident Travis Larson has painstakingly re-created parts of Disneyland in his basement, photographed Wednesday, April 17, 2024.
RIVERDALE — When he worked as a railroad conductor, Travis Larson was often on the go, running trains from here to Green River, Wyoming, on a regular basis. Between trips, however, he was able to squeeze in frequent visits to Disneyland, and all he had to do was walk downstairs.
In 2005, Larson began the process of converting the basement of his Riverdale home into a slice of Disney’s Fantasyland, an idea that grew out of his desire to create something truly unique in his living space.
“I went through a couple of iterations of what I wanted down here,” Larson told the Standard-Examiner. “Initially, I had a couple of ideas for, like, an Old West, or a 1920s-type area.”
In the end, though, his appreciation of Disney, all things fantasy and German-style architecture pushed him toward the Fantasyland concept.
Flash forward to now and exterior sections of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, Peter Pan’s Flight, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, Geppetto’s Workshop and the Village Haus Restaurant have been lovingly re-created in his home.
Larson worked on the project, on and off, over a period of approximately 12 years before the space was presentable by his standards. And while there are still plans for tweaks and improvements, he has managed to capture the feel of the actual location in Southern California.
He has largely done it on his own, too.
“My kids were kind of too little to know. My wife just kind of rolled her eyes,” Larson said of his decision to embark on the build. “She was like, ‘don’t.’ Because what she initially wanted was an area to entertain and something that you could decorate for various seasons.”
Now, the family has its own Magic Kingdom to decorate; a place that has been given life by Larson’s incredible attention to detail.
Countless hours of research and planning went into many of the space’s components. In some cases, the actual manufacturers and/or design documents for the Disneyland originals were used as resources. Larson also took photographs and shot video during family vacations (or enlisted others to capture footage in his stead) to help guide his efforts.
When one walks through Larson’s version of Fantasyland, crowd noise ripped from his own footage plays alongside familiar music.
“You can hear my daughter at one point because I sat down outside of the carousel and I was just videotaping everybody,” Larson recalled.
Meanwhile, details like weathering or damage that can be seen on the actual theme park structures are present in his slightly downscaled recreation.
There are even a handful of hidden Mickeys to be found.
Although capturing the look and feel of park features in a way that feels true to the source was important to Larson — who, in some cases, used the same or very similar materials in his own construction — not everything is as it appears in his basement.
Sometimes, brick is actually molded mortar. Features that look like stone, wood, iron or glass might be EVA foam, MDF, PVC pipe, plexiglass, polymer clay, et al. Components that one would expect to have cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to build (and required hours or days of work to do so) were made on the cheap with found materials.
“Surprisingly, a lot of this, actually, is just recycled stuff,” Larson revealed. “Like, stuff that I just had laying around, or some of this material came from a friend of mine who was a contractor.”
Throughout the process, Larson developed an appreciation for the work that Disney’s architects, imagineers, artists and others did to make the park in California what it is.
“There are so many different methods. It was interesting, as you’re going along, to kind of relive what they would have done, because it’s similar,” he said. “There was a lot of time when you could step back and say, ‘Whoa, this is actually kind of cool.'”