Walking onto Dumbo’s Pinewood set is legitimately like walking into a circus.
As I visit in late 2017, the core of the Medici Circus – the new Dumbo’s birthplace – is remarkably intact, a bustle of tents and stalls cut through with a train track, taking up the bulk of one of the legendary studio’s main spaces. Far from the blown-apart, half-open buildings of a traditional set, this feels like a real place (albeit built inside a whole other real place).
Camera operators have to navigate the gaps between attractions, and tents jostle for space with mixing desks and make-up stations. It might not be being used like a circus – peek inside most of the structures and you’ll find craftily-stored equipment – but it was constructed, at least in part, by trained circus builders, right down to working stables. Going by the smell, they were working recently.
Source: IGN.com Visiting Dumbo’s Real-Life Circus Set