disney magic kingdom game park layout clear

While the stylized maps above do a great job of highlighting WDW’s many attractions, they generally downplay an important fact. What’s Missing from Walt Disney World Maps? Will WDW eventually build over its entire property? The answer is somewhat complicated.

Looking at the map above, one might wonder whether this sprawling entertainment empire is bursting at the seams. It’s the largest theme park in the world, covering 580 acres, and combines elements of both a zoo and theme park. In 1998, WDW added a fourth theme park called Animal Kingdom. To make this happen, Disney entered into a licensing agreement with MGM to help increase the variety of film representation within the park.Īpproximately 11 million visitors pass through Hollywood Studios every year. The park featured “imagined worlds from film, television, music, and theater, drawing inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood”. Hollywood Comes to Floridaĭisney-MGM Studios opened in 1989, in a location just south of Epcot. Ultimately, the company was uncertain about the feasibility of operating a functional city, so the idea was scrapped in favor of the current iteration. Though the scope of Epcot was impressive at the time, it was still vastly scaled down from Walt Disney’s original vision for a fully functioning “city of the future”. Surrounding the nearby lake were pavilions themed after various locations in the world. The park was anchored by Future World and “Spaceship Earth”, the iconic geodesic sphere structure that sat at the entrance of the park. The site, which was twice as big as the Magic Kingdom, is best described as a permanent world’s fair. The first major Disney World expansion was Epcot Center, which opened in 1982. The original master plan for Walt Disney World did not include plans for the Seven Seas Lagoon, and it was likely added so that the displaced earth could be used to fortify swampy sections of the property to make them suitable for building. However, these projects were scrapped after the 1973 oil crisis as tourism declined. These areas were all connected by a monorail system.Īs these maps depict, there was a plan to develop three unique themed zones around the Seven Seas Lagoon: Persian, Asian, and Venetian. When Walt Disney World finally opened in 1971, it included the main Magic Kingdom site, as well as two golf courses and two hotels-Contemporary Resort and the Polynesian Village Resort. Using shell companies to preserve his anonymity (and to keep the price down), Disney began acquiring the sprawling properties that would become today’s Walt Disney World (WDW).

Disney magic kingdom game park layout clear