The tour wouldn't have been complete without a trip to view the decorative concrete around Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom.

Walt Disney World Tour of Concrete

If you think you've got fastidious clients who want a particular shade of this and just the right texture of that, hold on to your mouse ears. As sure as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is the longest word in the English language, few people are as meticulous as the folks at Disney.

For example, let's take the courtyard between the large likenesses of Lady and the Tramp at the new Disney's Pop Century Resort in Orlando, Florida. "We were given a tape of the movie and were told to watch it," says Steve Martin, regional manager of key accounts for L.M. Scofield Company, which supplied much of the stains, color hardeners, stamping tools, skins and other incidentals that were used to create the hardscapes at the resort. "All the colors and textures used for that streetscape were taken from that film. They had to match exactly."

To create Animal Kingdom, which features a safari ride, Martin says he was given five samples of dirt from the Serengeti, a plain in northwest Tanzania where there is a large wildlife reserve. Scofield developed custom-matched color hardeners and also matched the textures with concrete to make the park's hardscapes look like rugged terrain.

And, unless someone pointed it out, you probably had no idea it wasn't. The rudimentary-looking roadways have ruts, dips and deep tire tracks. "On the safari ride, the trucks are riding on cast-in-place concrete, not mud," Martin says. Joe Rhody, the lead designer for Disney, dubbed the rustic concrete "designer dirt."

Martin says he and others involved with Disney projects work closely with the Imagineering team — the master planning, creative development, design, engineering, production, project management and research and development arm of The Walt Disney Co. In short, Martin explains, "They're Disney's think tank."

From concept through installation, they're the ones behind the creation of all Disney resorts, theme parks and attractions, real estate developments, regional entertainment venues and new media projects. And, above all, "Those guys are all about detail. Everything has to be just so," he says.