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Disney
World History
The
site features new facts and information about Walt Disney's life, ideas,
and creations of the Wonderful World of Disney.
Here you can read all about the history of Walt
Disney and the Disney Company. This is just a brief guide
to the life of Walt.
Walt Disney World
Resort
Owned and operated by The Walt
Disney Company, the Walt Disney World Resort is home to four theme
parks, two water parks, six golf courses, more than twenty resort
hotels, and various shopping and entertainment areas in Orange and
Osceola Counties, Florida, USA. The Walt Disney World Resort opened on
October 1, 1971. It is the largest theme park resort in the world.
Contents
* 1 Concept
* 2 Properties
* 3 Popular attractions
* 4 Development
* 5 Development timeline
* 6 Business
* 7 Park closures
1. Concept
Walt Disney's concept for Disney World was of a larger, more expansive
version of Disneyland, so that it could constantly expand and not be as
constrained by the need for land that Disneyland suffered from. Walt
Disney World also was to be a sort of "Disneyland of the future" where
breakthroughs in science and technology could coexist with the original
Disney vision of themed entertainment.
Walt Disney also envisioned this project as incorporating a working
community where his ideas about urban planning could be tested. He
called this concept the "Experimental Prototype Community (or City) of
Tomorrow," or EPCOT. The theme park that eventually opened under the
Epcot name bore little resemblance to this vision, though the
neighboring planned community of Celebration, which was founded by the
Walt Disney Company, incorporates a few of the ideas.
Although he participated in much of the planning for the project, Walt
Disney himself died in 1966 and never got to see the realization of his
vision. The resort was originally to be named "Disney World," but before
its opening Walt's brother Roy renamed it to "Walt Disney World" in his
honor.
2. Properties
Most of the Walt Disney Company's Central Florida land, and all of the
public areas, are located in the Cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena
Vista, located southwest of Orlando and a few miles northwest of
Kissimmee. The land within Walt Disney World is part of the Reedy Creek
Improvement District which allows the Disney Corporation to exercise
quasi-governmental powers over the area.
Walt Disney World Resort's claim to being the largest theme park resort
in the world will be passed on to Dubai Land, to be twice its size, in
2006.
Walt Disney World Resort features four major theme parks, each with a
main attraction that serves as its symbol:
* The Magic Kingdom (Cinderella Castle)
* Epcot (Spaceship Earth, the giant golf ball-looking geodesic
sphere)
* Disney-MGM Studios (the giant Mickey sorcerer's cap, though
formerly the 'Earful Tower' water tower represented it)
* Disney's Animal Kingdom (the Tree of Life)
There are also two water parks, Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach. (A
third, River Country, has been closed indefinitely.)
The Downtown Disney area contains many shopping, dining, and
entertainment venues, including Disney Quest (a "virtual theme park"
inside a building), and a permanent Cirque du Soleil show (La Nouba).
Another notable aspect is the large number of hotel resort complexes on
the Walt Disney World property. The non-themed hotels are owned by
private, non-Disney hospitality companies such as Marriott and Hilton.
The themed resorts include:
* Disney's All-Star Movies Resort
* Disney's All-Star Music Resort
* Disney's All-Star Sports Resort
* Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
* Disney's Beach Club Resort
* Disney's Beach Club Villas
* Disney's Boardwalk Inn
* Disney's Boardwalk Villas
* Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort
* Disney's Contemporary Resort
* Disney's Coronado Springs Resort
* Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground
* Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa
* Disney's Old Key West Resort
* Disney's Polynesian Resort
* Disney's Pop Century Resort
* Disney's Port Orleans Resort Riverside (formerly named Dixie Landings)
* Disney's Port Orleans Resort French Quarter
* Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa (formerly the Disney Institute)
* Disney's Wilderness Lodge
* Disney's Yacht Club Resort
* Shades of Green (named because of its location between two golf
courses; it's currently leased by the United States Department of
Defense and used for vacationing active and retired military personnel
and their families)
* The Villas at Disney's Wilderness Lodge
* Walt Disney World Dolphin (operated by Starwood Hotels)
* Walt Disney World Swan (operated by Starwood Hotels)
The Walt Disney World resort also includes five world-class golf
courses. The five 18-hole golf courses are the Magnolia, the Palm, Lake
Buena Vista, Eagle Pines, and Osprey Ridge (the last two are part of the
Bonnet Creek Golf Club). There are two miniature golf courses: Fantasia
Gardens and Winter Summerland.
Walt Disney World paved the way for many other theme parks and
attractions in the area, including Sea World and Universal
Studios, and helped make Orlando a popular tourist destination for
people from all over the world.
When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the Walt Disney World Resort
employed about 5,500 cast members. Today it employs more than 57,000
cast members, spending more than $1.1 billion on payroll and $478
million on benefits each year. The largest single-site employer in the
United States, Walt Disney World Resort has more than three thousand job
classifications.
The Walt Disney World Resort also sponsors and operates the Walt Disney
World College Program, an internship program that has US college
students live on-site and work for the Resort, providing much of the
theme park and resort "front line" cast members.
In a March 30, 2004 article in the Orlando Sentinel, Walt Disney World
president Al Weiss gave some insight into how the parks are maintained:
* More than 5,000 cast members are dedicated to maintenance and
engineering, including 650 horticulturists and 600 painters.
* Disney spends more than US$100 million every year on maintenance at
the Magic Kingdom. In 2003, US$6 million was spent on renovating its
Crystal Palace restaurant. 90 percent of guests say that the upkeep and
cleanliness of the Magic Kingdom are excellent or very good.
* The streets in the parks are steam cleaned every night.
* There are cast members permanently assigned to painting the antique
carousel horses; they use genuine gold leaf.
* There is a tree farm on-site, so that when a mature tree needs to be
replaced, a thirty-year-old tree will be available to replace it.
There is a fleet of Disney-operated buses on property, branded Disney
Transport, free for use by resort and park guests, though drivers rarely
check. Taxi boats link some locations. Two monorail lines also operate
at Walt Disney World Resort: one links the Magic Kingdom, the
Contemporary and Polynesian and Grand Floridian resorts, and the
Transportation and Ticket Center (with an express track in the other
direction, only stopping at the TTC and the Magic Kingdom); the other
links Epcot and the Transportation and Ticket Center.
Walt Disney World Resort covers a total of 47 square miles (122km2),
about the size of San Francisco or twice the size of Manhattan. Less
than one-fourth of the property has been developed. Another fourth has
been set aside as a wilderness preserve.
3. Popular attractions
* Magic Kingdom
o The Haunted Mansion
o Pirates of the Caribbean
o "it's a small world"
o Space Mountain
o Splash Mountain
o Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
* Epcot
o Test Track
o Mission: SPACE
o Soarin'
o Spaceship Earth
* Disney-MGM Studios
o Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show
o Rock 'n' Roller Coaster
o The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
o Fantasmic!
* Disney's Animal Kingdom
o Kilimanjaro Safaris
o Primeval Whirl
o DINOSAUR (formerly named Countdown to Extinction)
4. Development
In 1959, the Walt Disney Company, under the leadership of Walt Disney,
began looking for land for a second resort to supplement Disneyland,
which had opened in Los Angeles in 1955. Market surveys revealed that
only 2% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi
River, where 75% of the population of the United States lived.
Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up
around Disneyland, and wanted control of a much larger area of land for
the new project.
Walt Disney first flew over the Orlando, Florida site, one of many, on
November 22, 1963. He saw the good road network, including Interstate 4
and Florida's Turnpike, with McCoy Air Force Base, soon to become
Orlando International Airport, to the east, and immediately fell in love
with the site. When later asked why he chose it, he said, "the freeway
routes, they bisect here."
However, the decision had not been made yet; no land had been purchased.
If the news of Disney's new resort was leaked, land prices would soar.
Thus everything was to be done in complete secrecy. To avoid a burst of
land speculation, Disney used various dummy corporations and cooperative
individuals to acquire 27,400 acres (111 km²) of land. The first
five-acre (20,000 m²) lot was bought on October 23, 1964 by the Ayefour
Corporation (a pun on Interstate 4). In May 1965, major land
transactions were being recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in
Osceola County. Two large tracts totaling $1.5 million were sold, and
smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by
exotic-sounding companies such as the Latin-American Development and
Management Corporation and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation. In
addition to three huge parcels of land were many smaller parcels,
referred to as "outs". Much of the land had been platted into five-acre
(20,000 m²) lots in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to
investors. In most cases, the owners were happy to get rid of the land,
being mostly swampland. Yet another problem was the mineral rights to
the land, owned by Tufts College. Without the transfer of these rights,
Tufts could come in at any time and demand the removal of buildings to
obtain minerals.
After most of the land had been bought, the story was leaked to the
Orlando Sentinel on October 20, 1965. A press conference was soon
organized for November 15. At the conference, Walt Disney explained the
plans for the site, including EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow, which was to be a futuristic city.
The Reedy Creek Drainage District was incorporated on May 13, 1966 under
Florida State Statutes Chapter 298, which gives powers including eminent
domain to special Drainage Districts. To create the District, only the
support of the landowners within was required.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966. From then on, his brother Roy
Disney headed the project. For the past few years that the project had
been in pre-production, it had been known simply as Disney World, but
Roy Disney added "Walt" to the name to make it Walt Disney World. In his
own words: "Everyone has heard of the Ford cars. But have they all heard
of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the
man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt
Disney World is here."
On February 2, 1967, Roy Disney held a press conference in Winter Park,
Florida. The role of EPCOT was emphasized in the film that was played,
the last one recorded by Walt Disney before his death. After the film,
it was explained that, for Walt Disney World to succeed, a special
district would have to be formed: the Reedy Creek Improvement District
with two cities inside it, the City of Bay Lake and the City of Reedy
Creek (now the City of Lake Buena Vista). In addition to the standard
powers of an incorporated city, which include tax-free bonds, the
Improvement District would have total immunity from any current or
future county or state land-use laws. The only areas where the District
had to submit to the county and state would be property taxes and
elevator inspections.
The laws forming the District and the two Cities was signed into law on
May 12, 1967. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that the District
was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public projects within the
district, despite the sole beneficiary being The Walt Disney Company.
Construction of drainage canals was soon begun by the Improvement
District, and Disney built the first roads and the Magic Kingdom.
Disney's Contemporary Resort, Disney's Polynesian Resort, and Disney's
Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground were also completed in time for
the park's opening on October 1, 1971.
On opening day, Roy Disney gave an opening dedication, after which he
asked Walt's widow Lillian what she thought of Walt Disney World. She
replied, "I think Walt would have approved."
5. Development timeline
October 1, 1971 Magic Kingdom
Disney's Contemporary Resort
Disney's Polynesian Resort
Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground
1972 Disney's Village Resort (Tree house and Vacation Villas)
1973 Disney's Golf Resort (later Disney Inn, now Shades of Green)
1974 Discovery Island
1975 Disney's Village Resort (Fairway Villas)
March 1975 Walt Disney Village Marketplace (now Downtown Disney
Marketplace)
June 1976 Disney's River Country Water Park
1980 Walt Disney World Conference Center
Disney's Village Resort (Club Lake Villas)
October 1, 1982 Epcot
1988 Disney's Grand Floridian Resort
Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort
May 1, 1989 Disney-MGM Studios
June 1, 1989 Disney's Typhoon Lagoon Water Park
Pleasure Island
1990 Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts
Walt Disney World Swan
Walt Disney World Dolphin
1991 Disney's Port Orleans Resort
Disney's Old Key West Resort
1992 Disney's Dixie Landings Resort (now Port Orleans Riverside)
Disney Vacation Club at Walt Disney World
Bonnet Creek Golf Club
1994 Disney's All-Star Sports Resort
Disney's Wilderness Lodge
1995 Disney's All-Star Music Resort
April 1, 1995 Disney's Blizzard Beach Water Park
July 1995 Disney's Fairy Tale Wedding Pavilion
1996 Disney Institute
Disney's Boardwalk Resort
1997 Disney's Coronado Springs Resort
March 1997 Disney's Wide World of Sports
September 1997 Downtown Disney West Side
April 22, 1998 Disney's Animal Kingdom
June 1998 Disney Quest
1999 Disney's All-Star Movies Resort
April 2001 Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
December 4, 2003 Disney's Pop Century Resort
May 17, 2004 Disney's Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa
6. Business
The trade magazine "American Business" reports (as quoted by the Orlando
Sentinel) these attendance figures for the four theme parks in 2004:
* Magic Kingdom, 15.17 million visitors
* Epcot, 9.4 million visitors
* Disney-MGM Studios, 8.26 million visitors
* Disney's Animal Kingdom, 7.82 million visitors
7. Park closures
The first closure of the Walt Disney World Resort parks was during
Hurricane Floyd in 1999, which ended up avoiding the area.
The parks closed partway through the day on September 11, 2001 to avoid
the possibility of guests being the target of additional terrorist
attacks. The parks re-opened the following day.
Hurricanes Charley and Frances came through the area in summer 2004,
each closing the parks.
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