5. Central Shops
When Walt Disney World was first built, Central Florida lacked many of the facilities that would be needed to run the massive resort, so Disney simply built them itself. Many of them are located at Central Shops, north of the Magic Kingdom. This is capable of fabricating everything from trash cans to ride vehicles, and is divided into sub-areas such as the Metal Shop, Maintenance Services and the Paint Shop.
4. The roundhouse
The building just to the left of Central Shops is the roundhouse where Monorail and Walt Disney World Railroad trains are stored and maintained (the train tracks run right into the Magic Kingdom to join the loop around the park). The junction with the spur that leads off to the roundhouse can be spotted as the train passes through the woods near Fantasyland.
3. The laundry
There are more than 2,500 Cast Member costume designs in use at Walt Disney World, with a total of around 1.8 million pieces in the extensive wardrobe. Roughly 13,000 pieces are manufactured every year. Mickey Mouse has almost 300 different outfits, while Minnie has more than 200.
That's a lot of laundry. When Walt Disney World opened, it featured the world's largest laundry facility - pictured above. And in March 2014 it began the construction of a new, state-of-the-art facility that is scheduled to open in spring 2015 and is expected to create 200 additional Cast Member jobs. It will be the fourth such facility on-site.
2. The nursery and tree farm
Not far from the wastewater treatment plant is Walt Disney World's tree farm, where horticulturists tend the thousands of plants that are needed to landscape the resort. The resort features plantlife from every continent except Antarctica, many of which require three years of acclimation to Florida soil before being planted "on-stage".
1. Disney's River Country
The Disney's River Country water park was located on the shore of Bay Lake, and boasted a rustic "wilderness" theme. Packed with rocks and boulders, it was designed to resemble an old-fashioned swimming hole. The water for its pools and slides came from Bay Lake via a filtering system, and abundant sand was used to enhance the natural feel of the park.
When Michael Eisner took over as Disney CEO in 1984, he took a more competitive approach than his predecessors. He decided to build a full water park, Typhoon Lagoon, to take on nearby Wet 'n' Wild. River Country's capacity was limited, and its days were numbered. It shut on November 2, 2001, but remains in place today - it was abandoned rather than demolished.
Comments
I feel the best way to reuses Discovery Island is that they should make it all Honeymoon Suites and make it part of the Wedding Packeges..or private Bungalows
If you take the all day back stage tour you can mark off a few of these. The tour takes you to the fabrication shops and the Avenue of stars as well as the nursery. Plus a few more. Great tour I suggest it to anyone, well worth the money
That's why it's called The 'Magic' Kingdom:-) Wish I could LIVE there - happiest place on Earth:-0
Yeah, I considered moving to Orlando awhile ago, then I came to the conclusion that I don't want to live in Florida, I want to live in Walt Disney World. As that's not too practical, I decided against it. (Hey, read "The Free Lunch" by Spider Robinson. It's about a kid who tries to live in a theme park (not Disneyworld) and finds out there's someone there already. That person helps with the provision that the kid help her ferret out a mystery. Seems there are move dwarven actors leaving at the end of each day than came in that morning.
We have a friend who worked years ago in the horticultural department at Disney World and told the story of multiple versions of the tree in Liberty Square being planted in the nursery just in case. They actually replaced that gigantic tree overnight one night because the current tree had developed an illness that couldn't be fixed. They carefully dug up one of the gigantic "back up trees", and slowly transported it to the Magic Kingdom backstage area. Then in the brief hours between park close and park open, they pulled up the old tree, planted the new one, replaced all the surrounding plants, flowers, etc, and cleaned up the mess. No one visiting the park was any the wiser. Crazy to think that such a thing would even be attempted, much less successfully done. :) I would imagine that doing such a thing now would be more challenging since the roots have likely grown under all the concrete that makes up the walkways.