Every year during the holidays, guests at Walt Disney World flock to the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa to see the handmade, life-size gingerbread house that stands in the luxurious lobby of the hotel.
The house stands 16 feet tall and takes over 840 hours of labor to create. It’s comprised of 5,000 gingerbread shingles, 1,050 pounds of honey, 800 pounds of flour, 700 pounds of chocolate, and 600 pounds of powdered sugar.
From mid November until late December the house is on display seven days a week. Guests can walk around the house, purchase exquisite treats (including gingerbread shingles), and grab a commemorative pin that changes every year with each new house.
Next to the gingerbread house is a decorated five story Christmas tree which matches wonderfully with the gingerbread house, and turns the entire lobby into a holiday wonderland.
It’s no big surprise to see Disney using post and rope crowd control around the gingerbread house, considering they’re truly the crowd control capital of the world. But it’s still refreshing to see a company using line management equipment not only for crowd control purposes, but also as a complement to the area it’s protecting.
The post and ropes contribute to the elegant ambiance – the gold posts working with the color of the gingerbread, and the ropes pulling all the holiday reds on the house.
And of course, the equipment acts as a barrier to keep guests from coming too close, and for forming lines when the photographers are taking pictures of passing families by the house.
Kudos again to Disney on a truly magnificent holiday tradition and a wonderful execution of crowd control strategy.