my kids asked what the abandoned thing in bay lake was and i didnt have an answer. so i looked it up. now im not sleeping.
ok im in line for cosmic rewind. extended evening hours. resort guests only. fireworks just ended. wife took the kids back to the resort. im standing here alone with my phone
let me just type something out because i havent been able to shake it
last summer we did fort wilderness for the first time in years. did hoop de doo with the kids. they loved it. on the way back to the boat my youngest pointed across the water at something rotting on the shore and asked what it was
i didnt know what to say
it was a water park. my parents took me there in 1986 when i was 12 with my brother mike who was 10 and my sister carolyn who was 4. we played tetherball at the campground for an entire afternoon. then the next day we went to the water park. it was called river country. i mostly remember the rocks you could climb and the floats. mike probably tried to push me off something. carolyn was too small for most of it. you dont remember a swimming hole the way you remember space mountain. its just water and sun and your siblings
i tried to tell my kids that. they wanted to know why disney just left it sitting there. didnt have an answer
so i looked it up when we got home and i havent been able to put it down
ok heres what i found
river country opened june 1976. disneys first water park. themed like an old time swimming hole. huckleberry finn vibes. they liked to talk about how the water came straight from bay lake. they pumped it up, ran it through filtration, sent it back down through the slides and into the swimming areas. natural lake water. that was the whole sales pitch
the first official ride down the parks signature slide, a thing called whoop n holler hollow, was taken by an 18 year old named susan ford. yes that susan ford. president gerald fords daughter. opening day. summer 1976. there are pictures
four years later in august 1980 an 11 year old boy from long island goes to river country with his family on vacation. swims for a few hours. days later he comes down with what turns out to be naegleria fowleri. the brain eating amoeba. it kills 97 percent of people who get it. he dies a week after his swim
his name was never publicly released. all the AP stuff from the time just calls him “an 11 year old boy from new york.” thats it. thats what we know about him. the boy who died at disney
his family sued. CDC investigated. they cleared disney. the amoeba breeds naturally in florida lakes during hot weather and could have come from anywhere. disney made a statement saying they were “of course concerned” but “knew of no action that could be taken.” they didnt chlorinate or change the filtration. kept it open
(side note the line just moved like a foot.)
two years later, august 1982, a 14 year old named howard pueppke goes down whoop n holler hollow. same slide susan ford rode on opening day. he comes off the end of it into the lagoon and drowns. the slide had warning signs that said strong swimmers only but no depth markers at the exit. his family sued. disney didnt change the slide
seven years after that in 1989 another 13 year old drowned on the same slide in the same way
we went in 86. between howard pueppke and that 1989 boy. mike and i went down that slide laughing
ok this part. this is the part
theres a book called realityland by david koenig. its a history of walt disney world. in it koenig describes a disney lifeguard who testified UNDER OATH in a deposition that on some days at river country, up to 75 people needed to be rescued from the lagoon. seventy five. river countrys daily capacity was 4000. so on a busy day almost 2 percent of guests had to be pulled out of the water by staff. the bay lake water was dark and the lifeguards couldnt see below the surface so they were rescuing kids based on other guests pointing and screaming. that was operating normal. seventy five rescues a day
i was in that water. mike was in that water. our parents had no way to know
the park ran like that for another 12 years after the 89 drowning. then in november 2001 it closed for the winter the way it did every year. and it just never reopened
disney went radio silent. no announcement. no closure date. you would call the resort and ask about river country and the cast member would say they “didnt have any information.” this went on for FOUR years. the gate stayed locked. the slides grew over with vines. the music kept playing inside the empty park because they apparently never cut the power. lights cycled on and off automatically
(battery at 28 percent. wife says the kids passed out on the bed with their costumes still on)
in 2005 disney finally said it was permanently closed
the part i think is most important and that nobody really talks about is the reason they actually closed it. florida passed a law sometime around 2000 that required water parks to use chlorinated municipal water only. you couldnt use natural lake water anymore. it was illegal. river countrys entire concept was illegal under that law. they would have had to chlorinate the lagoon and that would have destroyed the natural swimming hole thing they had built the whole park on. so they shut it down. they just didnt tell anyone they were doing it. for four years
then they let it sit and rot for fourteen more years.
urban explorers got onto the property and photographed the slides covered in moss. a guy named seph lawless took a kayak out onto bay lake and disneys security boats chased him off. he wrote afterward that he asked cast members why the park had closed and got different stories from each one. one said it was pollution from fireworks. another said it was bacteria. none of them mentioned the law. none of them mentioned the kids
in 2018 disney announced what was finally going on the site. a hotel. called reflections - a disney lakeside lodge. supposed to be themed around four disney films. bambi, brother bear, the fox and the hound, pocahontas. i read that list when it was announced and didnt think anything of it. then i went back and looked at it again
bambis mom dies. brother bear is literally about a man transformed after his brother dies and learning about reincarnation. fox and the hound ends with two friends who can never see each other again. pocahontas ends with kocoum being killed and her white love interest leaving forever
four disney movies about loss. a grief hotel. on the site of a water park where three children died and disney never named them
then in 2022 they cancelled reflections. covid. replaced it with a vacation club tower called lakeshore lodge. opens 2027. so the grief hotel never got built. just timeshares
my kids asked me on the ferry why disney just left it sitting there. i didnt have an answer that night and i dont really have one now. but ive been thinking about it for six months and figured id finally put it somewhere
mike and i went down that slide. carolyn was too little. we swam in that water at the same age howard pueppke was when he drowned in it
(ok i can see the loading bay. theyre about to call us. battery at 24 percent. just gonna hit post)
next time youre on the ferry to magic kingdom look out the right side. construction now but if you know what to look for you can still see where the slides came down to the water
idk. been carrying this for a while