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How far did Aladdin and Jasmine travel on their magic carpet ride in Aladdin (1992)?

We can suppose that Agrabah is really Baghdad. They pass by the pyramids and the sphinx, pass by some Greek-looking architecture, and end up in China. Besides Giza, are there any other specific locations that appear in the film which we could use to nail down their itinerary?

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4 Answers 4

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In the scene: A Whole New World & Aladdin and Jasmine's firs kiss you'll see them travel to the next cities:

In this order:

  • Start in Bagdad (Agrabah)
  • First city: Caïro
  • Second city: Athene (Olympus)
  • Third city: China
  • Back to Bagdad (Agrabah)

So in miles:

  • From Bagdad to Caïro it's: 804.377 miles.
  • From Caïro to Athene's it's: 856.443 miles.
  • From Athene to China it's: 5968.128 miles.
  • From China back to Bagdad it's: 3357.658 miles.

Total of 9325,786 miles, which is 15008.40 km. So as you say it would be over a time of ' +- 8 hours'. They would fly at a speed of 1876.05 km per hour.

Then again Andrew Martin his answer is correct too, we are never sure of what places they visited and if you look at the last scene where Aladdin kisses Jasmine, they stayed in China for 'X' amount of time. So the time above is only calculated for if they would fly all night without stopping. Andrew's right, it's an animated, fun film for a reason! :)

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    It is a fun film, and calculating average ground speed for a hypothetical trip is part of the fun :-) Feb 25, 2016 at 21:15
  • If you wanted to get a better handle on speed ranges then you might want to factor in timezones and what speeds are needed to start in Agrabah hit the other cites, go to China (when still dark) and return to Agrabah. That should give you a min/max. Of course the carpet could use the same magic that Santa uses to visit all the homes in the world in one very busy night....
    – Erik
    Feb 25, 2016 at 22:15
  • @Erik I'm not stopping you :D
    – Decypher
    Feb 26, 2016 at 7:10
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    Video links are dead.
    – Valorum
    Feb 15 at 7:50
  • The script explicitly states that they're at the Forbidden City in China. I'm not even going to point out that it wasn't built until thousands of years after the Sphinx.
    – Valorum
    Feb 15 at 13:29
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We don't know.

I assume you are referring to Disney's Aladdin. The scene in question is a montage. We're not shown every place they went to, and the passage of time between the areas is thus very difficult to gauge.

MoviePilot did remark:

While Aladdin and Jasmine take their romantic ride together they somehow manage to travel from Cairo to Athens in under one second. That's around 1100 kilometers!! Travelling that far at such speed would apply around 99 million newtons of force!

So...even if Aladdin and Jasmine could manage to hold onto the carpet, their skin should have been torn from their bones. Hmm, suddenly that's not sounding so romantic...

So, it's basically impossible to gauge their total distance travelled and their overall ground speed (which, as the analysis above shows, is certainly Physics-defying).

Ultimately it's an animated, fun film and this is magic - so the realism was irrelevant to Disney and wasn't focussed on.

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  • Sound like a Gothic scene.
    – Ankit Sharma
    Feb 25, 2016 at 10:14
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    I don't follow why it's impossible to calculate minimum average ground speed. If we calculate a minimum distance traveled based on the landmarks, and a maximum flight time, then we get a minimum average ground speed. Feb 25, 2016 at 17:00
  • @DietrichEpp: Two problems: we don't know all the distance they travelled (as it was a montage) and we don't know how long they flew for (other than very rough estimates). Feb 25, 2016 at 17:05
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    @T.J.L.: Read the question again. It doesn't presuppose it. It merely says: Perhaps they could be in flight for eight hours total that night. That's certainly not a definitive starting point. No parameters are stated at all! No, all we have to go on is a montage which is obviously unclear. But look, this is an animated film and we really, really don't know. People can upvote whatever they want, but it seems pointless to continue arguing about this. Hopefully the other answer gives the OP what they want. Feb 25, 2016 at 20:59
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    @T.J.L.: I appreciate that it takes a while to express questions exactly, and it takes a while to understand the community standards of a new site. I've edited the question to remove the part about speed, since it was just an unimportant / trivial followup question to the main question. In the future, if you think that part of the question is inappropriate, I would be more than happy to just edit it out of the question altogether, or delete the question myself. Feb 25, 2016 at 21:41
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The film script makes it abundantly clear that they went to various destinations, including those that we see, as well as some that we don't.

In a romantic, picturesque MUSICAL MONTAGE we follow Aladdin and Jasmine as the Carpet takes them on a magical tour.
The Carpet takes them down, amongst a herd of running horses.
Aladdin turns it into a race, urging the carpet ahead. Jasmine cheers when they pull ahead of the lead horse--then strokes the surprised horse's mane, waves 'bye-bye' to it.
They sweep past the pyramids, around the Sphinx. A worker is startled by the Carpet; his hammer blow misses the chisel, and the Sphinx's nose crumbles away.
They cruise past Grecian temples, over a still pond. The Carpet whips quickly through the tree branches--creates a cascade of falling blossoms. Then moves slowly through the cascade, near to the water. Jasmine trails a hand on the surface; the Carpet flies an intricate pattern--the wake left by Jasmine's trailing hand makes a beautiful design.

The carpet follows the terrain of the land, rising up over a hill-- and before them is the Great Wall of China. They both look at it in shared wonder.

EXT. FORBIDDEN CITY - NIGHT

Aladdin and Jasmine are perched atop a building against a background of twinkling stars. The Carpet sits away from them, nearer to the roof's edge, dangling its feet, applauding the--FIREWORKS from a street festival. MUSIC can be heard.

Given the significant distances, thousands of miles, between these places, and utterly ignoring the anachronism involved, we can conclude that they traveled a magical route over a magical timescale.

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I see this montage as more of the young couple's infatuation with one another as they imagine all the places they will go and see together. Both of them have more than likely spent their whole life in Agrabah and "neighboring areas" and never really had the opportunity to go anywhere else. So in their reality they probably only really flew around the city.

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  • Can you offer any proof or evidence to back up this theory?
    – Valorum
    Feb 15 at 7:50
  • This script makes it pretty clear that they went to these actual places.
    – Valorum
    Feb 15 at 13:27

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