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Coordinate format - Because a lot of amateur benchmark hunters are also involved in the sport of geocaching,I've used the geocaching standard "decimal minute" format (DDD MM.MMM) for coordinates. If you prefer to use degree/minute/second format, you can perform the conversion in your GPS receiver or use the handy conversion tool at Geocaching.com.
.loc files - Thanks to Jeff Boulter's wonderful GPS Coordinate Grabber page, I was able to quite easily create .loc files for all of the benchmarks on this page. With the proper software, you can export these files from your computer to your GPS receiver--no more having to manually enter all the benchmark coordinates! Choose the Disneyland .loc file or the Walt Disney World .loc file, whichever you need. (Use your browser's method for downloading a text file rather than opening it in the browser.)
Deriving coordinates from Google Maps -Have you found a new benchmark at one of the Disney parks, but don't know the coordinates? Sam Mirsky has a nifty web page at www.samirsky.com/geocaching that lets you determine the coordinates for any place shown on Google Maps just by clicking on the location. Or try the LatLng Tooltip and LatLng Marker features from Google Maps Labs. Click "Maps Labs" near the bottom of the Google Maps window for more information.
Have you heard of waymarking? It's an offshoot of geocaching in which people post the coordinates for interesting places that other people might want to visit. When you visit the place, you can take a photo of it to prove you were there, then post your photo and log that you found the waymark. It's just for fun; there are no prizes for how many sites you visit. But it gives us the opportunity to turn Disney benchmark hunting into more of a Hidden Mickey-style game.
There are now waymarking categories for Disneyland/DCA Benchmarks and Walt Disney World Benchmarks. I have put links on this site from every benchmark for which there is an equivalent waymark. So it's really easy to find out where you can log the benchmarks you see at Disney properties!
The management groups for the Disneyland and WDW benchmark waymarking categories have established the following policy regarding who gets to make waymarks from new benchmarks reported on my Disneymarks website:
The finder of the benchmark will have one month after the date on which the new benchmark is published on this site to make a waymark of it. After one month, the original finder's exclusivity expires. If someone else then finds the benchmark and submits the necessary documentation, his or her waymark submission will be approved.
So if you find a new benchmark and think it may take you longer than one month to create a waymark, please let me know, and I will hold off on publishing your benchmark here until you tell me that you've created the waymark for it (or are about to). See the relevant waymarking category for waymark creation rules. Note that both closeup and location photos are required to create a waymark, so keep that in mind when you're hunting for benchmarks at any of the Disney parks. Only a location photo is required to log the finding of an existing waymark.
Aerial photos - Lloyd's Maps of Disney Survey
Markers page offers fascinating visual insight into the locations of the DL and WDW benchmarks.
Marker types - Lloyd's Types of Disney Survey Markers page provides both photos and written descriptions. It covers nails, scribed Xs, and other survey markers besides the disks that I'm tracking on this page (including the possible "center of Disneyland" golden spike behind Sleeping Beauty Castle).
Previous and unfound benchmarks - Lloyd's Unaccounted Disney Survey Markers page is an excellent compilation of information about survey marks that have been mentioned on Web pages or in Internet forums. Some of them were at Disneyland and Walt Disney World and are almost certainly extinct, because no one has seen them recently. But others--such as the ones at Hong Kong Disneyland--are brand new and ready for someone to find (see below). If you're headed to Florida or California and want a challenge, please print out this page from Lloyd's website and go hunting! And if by chance you have old photos of the disappeared ones, please let me know. Even though they're gone, we'd like to document their existence.
A Disney engineer posted to a public forum the following information about survey marks at Hong Kong Disneyland: "There are 11 markers at HKDL, one each at the three hotel locations, one each in the center of the five (future expansion...) lands in the MK, and three that mark specific locations used for monitoring the stability of the land (remember the land is man made). The latter of these have (what looks like) a telescope outline on them and sets of numbers that refer to notes on the architectural drawings." If you get to Hong Kong Disneyland, please look for them and let me know if you find any!
Here's some miscellaneous stuff you may enjoy.
Disneymarkers - Have you been wondering what the Disney benchmarks folks look like? Okay, maybe not. :-) But if so, click here to see a photo of us. (Photo copyright 2006 Larry Klementowski.) From left to right: Larry Klementowski, Julie Klementowski, Patty Winter, Nick Enicks, Meg Lee-Lim, Lloyd Lee-Lim.
In March, 2007, Rhonda and Bill Rushing visited Disneyland, where Larry and Julie and I met up with them. Rhonda and Bill are president and vice president, respectively, of Berntsen International, the company that makes the Disney survey marks. Click here to see a photo of Larry and me with them. (Photo copyright 2007 Patricia F. Winter.)
Caching Now - Caching Now is an online magazine for geocachers and benchmark hunters. The magazine is published by Berntsen International, so you won't be surprised to learn that I wrote an article about Disneymarks. I'm the contributing editor of the magazine, and I think we're offering excellent articles, so please check it out.
Surveying at Walt Disney World - In April, 2006, the first and current chief surveyors of Walt Disney World, Don McKinney and Bud Joiner, gave a presentation at the annual conference of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM). I was kindly invited to their by ACSM conference chair John Hohol. John worked for many years at Berntsen International, and came up with the idea for the Disney benchmarks. My report on the ACSM talk includes some historic photos of WDW as well as images of the different kinds of WDW and Disneyland benchmarks.
An article I wrote about surveying at Walt Disney World (partly based on the above-mentioned presentation and partly on subsequent interviews) was published in the September 2007 issue of The American Surveyor. You can go straight to my article and download a PDF version that has all the photos from the printed magazine. You can also see a closeup of Nick Enicks' cover photo of Spaceship Earth.
Historic WDW photo - Many thanks to John Hohol for providing me with an historic photo of early surveying at Walt Disney World. The photo was taken in the Magic Kingdom (the first of the WDW theme parks) near the hub at the end of Main Street. Notice that the buildings on one side of the street are nearly finished, while the other side still has only the internal structures built so far. Cinderella Castle is nearly done, though! The Magic Kingdom opened in October, 1971, so we speculate that this photo was taken earlier that year.
The main people who provided input for this site (Larry, Lloyd, Nick, and Patty) are aware that the term "benchmark" should only really be applied to survey stations created for vertical (elevation) control. As far as I know, the marks at Disney properties are primarily for horizontal control, so technically, we should call them "survey markers," "survey monuments," "survey stations" or some such.
However, this site was started by geocachers who started doing "benchmark hunting," which is what the hobby is called on the Geocaching.com website. As it happens, the four of us have gotten into it more seriously, and thanks to professional surveyors and knowledgeable amateurs on the Benchmark Hunting forum, we've educated ourselves about surveying terminology and procedures. For example, those of us who've tromped around looking for a metal disk that turns out to be 1/4 mile from its published coordinates are well aware of the difference between the terms "scaled coordinates" and "adjusted coordinates"!
Nonetheless, this site is primarily frequented by amateurs: geocachers, waymarkers, or other visitors to the Disney resorts who aren't familiar with surveying terminology. So I've chosen to forego terms such as "survey monument" and "control station" in favor of more recognizable terms such as "benchmark" or just "mark." I hope the professionals who visit this site will understand the reason for this and not get too upset at the mangling of accurate terminology.
