Legend has it that there is a secret basketball court located inside that most famous fake mountain located in the Los Angeles area…Disneyland’s Matterhorn. Truth or fiction?
Truth.
Instead of a secret Bondian evil villain lair with shark tanks and stolen Rembrandts, the secret room in the Disneyland Matterhorn is actually a half-court basketball court.
Size and Placement of Matterhorn Basketball Court?
As you can see, it’s clearly not even a half-court. Maybe a one-third court.
Not only that, but it’s clearly an “improvised” board and hoop and is attached to the side of the stairs.
Tony Baxter, Senior Vice President, Creative Development, Walt Disney Imagineering, says that there was an empty space in the upper two-thirds of the mountain, and it needed to be filled with something. Walt Disney himself even gave the “OK” to build the basketball court in the Matterhorn.
Not to Satisfy Building Codes
Rumor has it that local building code indicated that only sports-related buildings could be over a certain height (or something of that nature), so tacking on a basketball hoop was the loophole.
That appears to be false. The City of Anaheim is going to let Disney build a ground-breaking (in more ways than one) park with a whole slew of unconventional structures…but hold them to some archaic building code? Nah. I don’t see it.
Here is a close-up of the Matterhorn basketball court backboard, with a Disneyland sticker on it:
Video: Disney Fact or Fiction
This video confirms the rumor of a secret basketball court in the Matterhorn. Skip ahead to minute 5:00 to see the actual court; there is a lot of filler before that.
