50 Little-Known Disney World Facts To Intrigue Or Concern
Disney is the second largest buyer of explosives (for their fireworks shows) in the world. The first is the U.S. Department of Defense.
In the vehicle loading area on the Dinosaur ride there’s three pipes running along the ceiling and walls that are yellow, white, and red. There’s also chemical formulas written next to them. These are the formulas for mustard, mayo, and ketchup and are left over from the days that McDonald’s used to sponsor the ride!
The Seas with Nemo and Friends aquarium is surprisingly large. At the time of its opening in 1986, it was the largest saltwater aquarium in the world. Today, it is the second largest aquarium in the US and 6th largest in the world. Pretty neat.
When they built Gaston’s Tavern they built it in the wrong spot and it was covering a manhole by a couple of inches. To fix this they installed a playful mini door that they can open to be able to access the manhole when needed.
Alright.
I used to work at Disney World.
If you were to get on top of the castle on a clear night. (Which I have as my job pertain to it once in a while).
You can see Universal Studios, almost all of the Disney theme parks, and you can see the Orlando I.
Cool stuff.
Walt’s brother Roy essentially willed Walt’s vision into existence. Without Roy a lot of Walt’s plans for Disney World would have been changed. For example, the Magic Kingdom would have ended up right by 192 and I-4. Roy is also the the reason it’s called Walt Disney World and not Disney World. The man loved his brother.
In the original Haunted Mansion ballroom scene in California, the women lead the men in the dance because the imagineers forgot the Pepper’s Ghost trick would flip the image. This was done intentionally in WDW.
DeSantis got married there.
On the haunted mansion the crow is the narrator. You only see him in rooms where the doom buggies play the audio. The first half of the ride the ghost don’t interact with you because you’re still “living”. When you’re going down backwards, it’s the bride throwing you out the window and that’s when the ghost start to sing and interact with you because you died.
The center of Disney property is in Epcot and there’s a star (maybe a compass) on the floor.
One of my favorites is the fact that the monorail track in the Contemporary isn’t connected to the building at all. To prevent vibration from the passing monorails from being felt by hotel guests, the concrete track supports have their own foundations completely separate from the building foundation.
Minnie Mouse has over 365 different individual special event and holiday costumes. I’m sure Mickey has just as many, it was just that they specifically mentioned Minnie.
Buzz Lightyear is the most expensive costume and NASA helped design it. It’s made from fiber glass and costs about $8,000. The cheapest costume is Eeyore at between $300-400 because he and the other Pooh characters are mostly made of carpeting.
The daily popcorn sales in Magic Kingdom cover the daily cost of the Magic Kingdom fireworks
The American section of EPCOT has a flag from the rubble of the WTC on 9/11.
A ghost of an imagineer who was killed while working on Pirates of the Caribbean supposedly haunts the ride. Crew members say “good night George” when closing the ride in order to protect against ride closures the following day.
One of Walt’s original Carrolwood Pacific train cars is in a very understated display case in the Boulder ridge building at wilderness lodge. Easily one of my favorite spots in all of disney world to sit in some peace and quiet.
WDW is one of the largest private wildlife reserves in the US. and since the incident with the toddler being attacked more than 250 alligators have been removed from the park for guest safety
This is probably old news to a lot of you, but the water around Tom Sawyers island is exactly the way Disney wants it. They go to great lengths to make the water murky and whatever color you’d call it. The water is constantly being treated. What looks like stagnant bayou swamp water is actually run through a treatment process and returned to the lake. The treatment equipment has the capacity to treat every drop of water in the lake once a day. The reason the water is so murky is to hide the tracks on the bottom of the lake that guide the boats on the surface.
There is not one single brick on the castle at all.
The trash system at Disney World was originally designed to be part of Walt’s original design for EPCOT as in the city he hoped to design and found.
There are no restrooms in Liberty Square because Disney wanted authenticity. There were no bathrooms/toilets in colonial times.
The Castle is 3 feet under the legal requirement to have a blinking light on the top for planes.
Only 1 US flag on Liberty Square is real. The rest have things like 49 stars, 12 stripes or have a blue area one stripe too big. Therefore they are legally fake flags and don’t have to be raised and lowered at night or in bad weather per flag etiquette. (Edit: there is no law saying you have to raise or lower real US flags at night or in bad weather. Disney respects US flag etiquette is all)
They have a airline runway. They used it for their own airline. The last time it was used to land planes was 9/11/2001 due to the terrorist attacks and all air planes being grounded.
Disney has a evacuation plan for terrorism, and other emergencies. They almost used in California recently when Murphey caught fire.
Disney World has a program with Easter Seals and other associations to help handicapped people become certified to Dive. They teach them in the Living Seas aquarium. You can also pay to dive in it
You can purchase a real car at Test Track.
You can purchase a real sword in the Great Britain Pavilion at EPCOT.
You used to be able to ride in a real race car at Walt Disney Motor Speedway. It was called Richard Petty Driving Experience.
Not necessarily Disney World fact per say, Pete The Cat is Disney’s oldest CONSECUTIVELY owned character. Oswald is oldest if considered NON-CONSECUTIVELY owned, meaning they lost ownership for a time. Alice Little from Alice in Wonderland is second.
Outside the Land pavilion, the mosaic on either side is completely symmetrical — except for one emerald tile on the right side (facing the entrance) not far from the door, maybe 6′ off the ground
Germany was supposed to have a boat ride, the Rhine River Cruise. They built the loading dock for it before the ride idea got scrapped. Now, if you go behind Sommerfest, there’s a mural along the back wall. It’s actually a tapestry; if you push on it it’s hollow, and if you tore it down you’d see the railings for row assignments
Former Imagineer here, the reason why Stitch will never have a major attraction overhaul is because it shares the same building as Cosmic Rays. Due to the asbestos in the facility and building code changes since the 70’s, both Cosmic Rays and the attraction would have to go down and be brought up to code. Cosmic rays generates Millions a week and they cannot lose that revenue.
They can re-theme Stitch all they want and not trigger code change requirements.
My favorite story/fact is that Disney’s Hollywood Studios is the only place to have Audrey Hepburn’s handprints. All of the handprints in the park in front of the Chinese Theater are real. And when placing her handprints she began to cry. When asked, she said that no one had ever asked her to do this before. When word got back to the real Chinese Theater they were shocked and apologized for not asking sooner and offered for her to come down and place them in the real location. Her response was, “No, they’re where they belong.”
This story always brings a tear to my eye. DHS has always been my favorite park and it’s little things like this that keep it special.
Bonus fact: in the Tower of Terror, at the exit where you can see your photo from the ride, there is a hotel “lost and found” scene. In the back left corner is a jar of pickled eggs that was not intended to be a part of the scene. It was accidentally left by an imagineer and the prop team glued it in place and painted it up. That is a very real, almost 30 year old, jar of pickled eggs.
The backstory for Animal Kingdom is really a fun walkabout and if you can find a CM who will take you on the “tour” it’s great. It’s been a minute since I did it (former DAK CM) but basically an ant lands on Discovery Island (the main hub of the park where the tree is) and he’s really lonely. So he starts dreaming and wishing for friends to come join him, and they all start to show up at the tree of life. Eventually they all need a place to call their own so they build their own islands (Dinoland, Asia, Africa, Pandora) but come visit the tree often enough to leave their images on it. Right past the exit to Its Tough to Be A Bug there is an entrance to a little walking path you can take. At the end of the path there is a bench in a “cave” kinda, and if you look through one of the holes it’s centered directly on the ant on the tree.
DAK employees have bikes backstage they can take to get from one side of the park to the other. There are also busses. DAK is f*****g IMMENSE, as mentioned here already, and to circumvent it is ridiculous. I worked in Dinoland and was lucky to get to use the front side entrance but it was a TREK to get to the back of the park from cast parking. Also, DAK doesn’t have costuming attached to the park like EPCOT or how MK has it in the Utilidors. I never worked at Studios so not sure their costuming situation.
Trying to think of any other weird facts from my time there.
I worked at Sum of All Thrills, which was in Innoventions and sponsored by Raytheon, and we had a very specific script for explaining what Raytheon did and we were not permitted to discuss their warfare programs 👀 also because it was a sponsored ride it cost Raytheon money to upkeep it and it was NOT upkept properly. Not in a dangerous way for guests, obviously, but things like hydraulics on the hoods not working right (putting more strain on cast who had to lift/shut them), programming glitches that would cause the ride to shut down, etc.
There used to be a Subway backstage at EPCOT.
One of my favorite stories connected to the Nixon thing is there’s a transcript available where Nixon talks about wanting to go see Disney World while he was in the area for something else since he was a massive Disney fan (Bob Gurr actually tells a fun story about when he and Walt accidentally kidnapped Nixon at Disneyland). Anyway, while he was visiting the property, he heard the national correspondents convention was happening and wanted to ‘surprise them.’ This is why he ends up giving the quote.
I was floored when my dad showed me the transcript of the conversation, especially knowing the end result. All because he just wanted to see Disney World. LOL
As far as little-known facts, one I don’t see mentioned much is Reagan’s second inaugural parade was at EPCOT. It was freezing in DC when they were supposed to do it, so a few months later it was held in EPCOT. [Here’s more of the story](https://allears.net/walt-disney-world-chronicles-the-presidential-inaugural-parade-at-walt-disney-world/) if interested in reading.
OK, someone mentioned a youngster dying of a brain amoeba at River Country.
So I have a super sad one, too- In 2004, cast member Javier Cruz, who was playing Pluto, died when he was run over by a float preparing to enter the parade route behind Splash Mountain in MK. An oversized Pluto shoe got caught on the edge of the trailing float (second float in a unit, being towed by the first) and he was dragged under. It’s believed that that parade unit was far enough back behind the railroad tracks that guests didn’t see what happened. OSHA fined Disney a pithy $6,500. or something like that. But after that I think Disney’s big-boy floats are now mostly single units… so the potential of a trailing unit hitting a CM is reduced. Also I think they now have E-stop buttons on all corners of the floats if you look real close.
The voice of Uncle Orville in Carousel of Progress is Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and many other Looney Tunes characters!
The tower of terror in Hollywood studios is painted the color that it is because it can be seen in the distance when looking at the Morocco Pavilion in EPCOT.
Inside the haunted mansion, in the ballroom scene, the glass windows that make it work are 3 stories tall. There is a spare window in a crate to the far right of the ballroom. They have no idea how they would install it if one of them broke, but, darn it, they have it! They would probably need to take out part of the roof and move it with a crane.
The book on the little table in the front left of the library is “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, good luck seeing it in the dark.
The imagineering office behind HM is full of extra parts, sculptures, heads, skeletons etc. The housekeeping staff left a note for them to please leave the lights on when they left as the staff was, er, not happy, about all the spooky stuff. Not only did they not leave the lights on, the cry of “Challenge Accepted!” was heard. They wired up *everything* to groan, sign, talk, move, clank, whatever. The next day was a note: “Clean your own offices.”
Mr. Toad in the cemetery was bought/painted/installed by one of the imagineers in secret and (sorta) without permission.
Tower of Terror has to be dusted regularly. Dust put *on*. And cobwebs resprayed.
ToT exit has a chalk square drawn on the wall as referenced in “Little Girl Lost” ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Girl_Lost_(The_Twilight_Zone)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Girl_Lost_(The_Twilight_Zone)) )
The tram driver at MK last night said that you could drop Disneyland Park and California Adventure on MK’s parking lot and still have parking spaces left over.
When Disney was buying land in Florida, there were 10 different shell companies who purchased the land (so prices wouldn’t go high). One of them was called M.T. Lot Company.
Lots of people don’t know that WDW actually has its own [decommissioned airfield](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World_Airport).
The music video for the beach boys “Kokomo” was shot at the Grand Floridian resort before it officially opened to guests.
So that magical fairytale land they are singing about is actually just Disney world, in a way.
Edit: Grand Flo, not Poly!
If you parked in a different spot at EPCOT every day, it would take you about 31 years to park in all of them.
Hollywood studios was originally a large hidden mickey when viewed from above! It’s a lot harder to see now since so much has been built off the main center, but you can still see the eyes and nose markings in the central plaza, and the general shape
“If you can dream it, you can do it” is often misquoted to Walt Disney
But it actually comes from Horizons that was at Epcot
The utildoors technically aren’t underground, due to the fact that it was built in Florida’s marshland.
They’re on the ground floor, and the ENTIRE PARK WAS BUILT ONE FLOOR OFF THE GROUND
In 1980, an 11-year-old boy died of an amoeba brain infection at the now-defunct River Country Waterpark.
Go away green and blending blue, used to hide things they do not want you to see by using colors that make your eyes not pay attention to them
In the barbershop, where you can get a very respectable haircut, there is a hat rack with a smoky mirror in the back. The barber said this was an original fixture from one of Walt’s trains.
Also, Main Street is modeled on Marceline, MO where Walt grew up.
There is actual gold on the mosaic heading into the Land pavilion at Epcot.
There are lots of hidden Mickeys but there are a few other characters hidden through out the Disney world, Donald, Minnie, etc…
This is an old one and I don’t think it exists anymore but there used to be a basket ball hoop/half cort in Cinderella castle.
There is a red space ship in Tomorrowland kind of between the People Mover and the speed way, the building is one of the original ticket booths for the park where you would purchase A,B,C,D, or E tickets for rides.
While it does run on a guiding track, the Liberty Belle is a fully functional steamboat. The waterway around Tom Sawyer Island is connected to Seven Seas Lagoon by a series of locks and movable bridges behind Frontierland and Adventureland, which is also where the Electrical Water Pageant barges are stored. When the Liberty Belle needs refurbishment, she is taken to maintenance docks hidden in the northwest corner of Bay Lake, north of the Contemporary, where all the other area watercraft are serviced.
That magic Kingdom “street level” is actually second story. The first floor is all utility and service corridor. I want to go so bad! Also probably not a little known fact but I find it fascinating.
My favorite fun fact is that Maelstrom was originally going to be a Mt. Fuji ride in Tokyo pavilion. but, since Kodiak was a sponsor of Epcot at the time they did not want fujifilm to get “advertised”
The Art of Disney gallery is one of my wife and I’s favorite places to visit. Sometimes you get the chance to see some amazing historical Disney World/Company documents that are for sale. There’s been a check signed by Walt himself as well as currently the incorporation documentation for the Walt Disney Company on display/for sale. Technically, it’s in Disney Springs, so not in a park – but still a great treasure trove of history.
There’s a Wikipedia for everyone that has died in the parks most are heart attack related but a few are accident related
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_at_Walt_Disney_World
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