Disney theme parks now on Google Street View

Google has announced that all of Disney’s US theme parks are now available on Google Street View. Users can also take visual Street View tours of parks outside the US, such as those in Paris and Shanghai.

Street View allows users to virtually view and walk around almost all of the park’s attractions and rides. It’s a great way for prospective visitors to see the park physically before they go and preview new attractions. Mind-boggling in scope, Street View coverage now extends to every continent around the globe, including Antarctica.

Pandora ‘World of Avatar’ Attraction at Disney Animal Kingdom park, Florida 

However, as extensive as it is today, there’s limited or no coverage in much of Africa, parts of Asia and India. And when Street View launched in Europe in 2008, it immediately raised privacy concerns, which have largely persisted in places like Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Google was fined in Germany and France in 2011 and 2013 in connection with the (unintentional) personal data collection, as the company was mapping WiFi locations with Street View vehicles. To date, there is uneven coverage in Europe, and privacy remains a contentious issue.

Street View began as a research project at Stanford University before Google acquired it and officially launched the street-level photography 2007. In 2012, Google announced that Street View vehicles and photographers had covered more than 5 million miles.

Bing has a comparable initiative, though not as expansive. And Apple has collected some of this type of imagery, chiefly in the context of research on autonomous vehicles.