Disney 30 Day Challenge - Favorite Castle

For my third day of my challenge, the TM selected “Favorite Castle” for me to write about...

I guess I've never really thought about it much, and it's certainly vague...

Do they mean my favorite Disney Parks Castle, which is pretty limiting. There's Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland (which I've just seen in person for the first time), and there's Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. You can also find Sleeping Beauty's castle in Paris and Hong Kong, and Cinderella's in Tokyo.

I suppose I could expand the park castles to include the new ones featured in the Fantasyland expansion, but they are hardly official.

I think they MUST mean just in general, from the Disney Universe “Favorite Castle”, because otherwise, you're either a fan of tradition (Sleeping Beauty) or scale (Cinderella).

So let's think about the candidates... Obviously the ones we've already discussed exist in the movies as well..

Other possible castle choices are
Prince Adam's(The Beast) castle in Beauty and the Beast
Prince Eric's castle in The Little Mermaid
The Sultan's Palace in Aladdin
Rapunzel's parents' castle in Tangled
Castle from The Sword in the Stone
Castle from Snow White
and...
I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of, but really... how many of them played major roles in the stories?

So, I guess my criteria is two-fold...

1) Which of the castles played a major part, or was even a major setting in the movie it's set in?
The clear answer and front runner to this is The Beast's Castle from Beauty and the Beast. That castle was amazing! It was vast, and had crazy rooms and dungeons, and a huge amount of the action takes place there, AND! It was enchanted.

2) Which is the most architecturally interesting? 

For me, it's a toss-up. First, we have Eric's castle from The Little Mermaid:

 

Eric's castle is a pretty darn different. It doesn't rely on the height and the impressive spires and towers of many of the other castles. It's still got the size you look for in a castle, but it's a castle built on a cliff by the ocean, and I feel like it's one of the few castles I always wanted to explore when I watched as a kid. It just seems cool. By the way.. does anyone know where The Little Mermaid takes place? Eric has an American accent. There are British accents elsewhere. Sebastian the crab has a Crab accent. Ursula sounds like a drag queen..

The other candidate is The Sultan's Palace in Aladdin:

 

I admit that I'm a sucker for this style of architecture. In fact, if I had all the money in the world, I'd probably build a mansion with a lot of Middle-Eastern accent to it. I love tile, I love the minarets, I love the fountains. It just seems awesome. I love how so much of it is open air. I love the amazingly high ceilings. It's pretty tough to beat...

So... The winner for me, provides the best combination of story and style, and... for that, I have to go with:

 

The Beast's Castle. It's got that sort of cool, woodland feel to it. I love how it just seems totally endless. Like there are whole sections of the castle where people (or Candelabras) forgot they existed at all. The towers are impossibly tall, and the spans connecting them are really cool.  When you factor in the huge role it plays in the story... It's gotta be the Beast.