Starbucks has been making inroads at Walt Disney World for the past year: First at Magic Kingdom and then at EPCOT. Well, downtown Hollywood Studios just got a new addition, and (I’ll understand ifyou’re not surprised): It’s a Starbucks!
But, wait, stay – where are you going? This Starbucks is a different sort of animal. Both the Magic Kingdom and the EPCOT locations are regular Starbucks-décor: Your typical Seattle coffee house with brown and green color schemes. Outside of the hustle and bustle of always being busy, there is nothing to separate them from the Starbucks you can find on the street corner in your own downtown, or the one on your block, or the one opening next month in your guest bedroom.
The Starbucks at Hollywood Studios is decorated to represent a Trolley Station in old Los Angeles:
Isn’t that lovely? Above the serving area is a balcony of machinery that looks to be either actual decommissioned and refurbished machinery from the time, or ingenious replicas. Strategic lighting at the balcony level makes it appear as if it’s a working station, with desk lamps and indicator lights flickering occasionally. All of the doors in and out of the serving area are large double doors, where one might have expected a few well-placed rails to deliver a derelict trolley car in for repairs.
If you decide to grab yourself a warm cup on a chilly night, or a frosty Frappuccino to keep you cool on a hot day, make sure to pick the right-hand side cash registers as you walk through the front door. The reason here is that the waiting area for your drinks includes a wall-mounted switch board for the Los Angeles area:
You only get the switch board. In order to get my wife included with the switch board, you need to be as cute as I am.
Once again, either the attention to detail here is flawless, or someone has wiped the cobwebs off of an actual switchboard used at a trolley station from the time. Unfortunately, Disney Magic doesn’t seem to have extended toward the operation of the switch board, as pushing the buttons and flipping the switches doesn’t light anything up, or make the trains run in any particular direction. Who knows, however, as I may have inadvertently caused the infamous trolley crash of 1923, while I sipped quietly on my Chai and flipped a bunch of switches at random.