Greetings from Dionland U.S.A.

This postcard backdrop for Dinoland U.S.A. is usually covered up by smiling families and research ready Goofy and Pluto. The shelter was added in the fall of 2009 as an extension of Chester and Hester’s and as a photo-op location for the most child-friendly land in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. While the details of the small structure play perfectly with others in the vicinity, the real story is the oversized postcard backdrop.While billed as Dinoland U.S.A. on the picture, the image displays a much earlier incarnation of this corner of Diggs County. The lodge turned restaurant has not appear to have been overrun with researchers and paleontologists yet, Chester and Hester’s still functions as a gas station and there is no dig site present. While the level of detail is amazing, further down the road the little red shack that now houses Trilo-Bites is even included in the artwork, there has been some artistic licensing going on here. The water tower, while it could have been moved, is most certainly closer to Restaurant/Restaurantosaurus than it is to Chester and Hester’s.

It is difficult to find a time when this meet-and-greet area isn’t going to the dogs, Pluto and Goofy that is, but if you find it uninhabited, be sure to stop. As you examine the simpler times that once ran rampant around this small thoroughfare, much in the way simpler times once resided in the sleepy swamps that would become Walt Disney World, think about the painstaking details that not only went into this piece of artwork, but also the planning that went into Dinoland U.S.A. itself.