Facebook Twitter Email. CNN — It changed acres and acres of orange groves. It changed Orlando. It changed Florida. It changed an already legendary company. And it changed the entire theme park industry. Walt Disney World Resort opened on October 1, And on its 50th anniversary, it continues to be a major driver in the travel world, weathering big shifts in tourism trends, notorious Florida hurricanes and a pandemic.
Back in '71, there was just the one theme park, Magic Kingdom, along with a couple of adjacent golf courses and resorts. Since then, three more major parks have been added : Epcot in , Hollywood Studios in and Animal Kingdom in In addition, the water parks Typhoon Lagoon and temporarily closed and Blizzard Beach were added to the resort.
Once Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon had been filled with water, the surrounding areas served as the setting for one of the hotels, the Polynesian Village Resort. The dirt removed for the creation of the lagoon became the earthen foundation for the Magic Kingdom theme park. Visitors to the Magic Kingdom rarely realize that they are actually on the second floor of the park.
The construction company in charge of this phase of the project created a nine-acre ground-level floor which is comprised of corridors and massive rooms.
These corridors are called "utilidors" as they provide housing and access to the park's utility systems and the incredible network center that controls virtually every automated aspect of the park, right down to the gift shops' cash registers. The visible part of the Magic Kingdom is built on top of that ground floor, hiding it from view. Cinderella's Castle at the center of the Magic Kingdom is further elevated by several more feet to make it visible from miles around.
The Magic Kingdom was designed in the same wheel-shaped configuration first employed at Disneyland; at the center hub of the wheel stood Cinderella's Castle. Winding "spokes" meandered from the castle through the rest of the park, leading visitors to six different themed "lands", including: Main Street, USA; Adventureland; Frontierland; Liberty Square; Fantasyland; and Tomorrowland.
Cinderella's Castle is a masterpiece of design and construction. Standing feet tall, the Castle is made of fiberglass veneer crafted around a ton steel framework. It features ten spires; portions of the castle are finished to look like solid granite and other parts look like brick. The facade bricks nearer the top of the Castle are actually smaller than the ones closer to the ground.
This technique of designing higher features to be disproportionately small makes the Castle look taller than it actually is; several buildings throughout the Magic Kingdom were constructed with smaller windows, balconies and doors on their second and third floors to employ this same design technique.
Many believe the Castle was designed to be disassembled in the event of a hurricane. While this is not the case, Cinderella's Castle was built to withstand hurricane force winds. One of the Castle's towers includes an unfinished apartment. This apartment was to be used by Walt Disney and his family when they visited the park. Because Disney died before the building was constructed, the room was never used for this purpose.
It has been left largely unused, although for some time it served as home for a Disney call center. Building the City of the Future In , Disney's Imagineers entered a new phase of Disney World's development with the planning of two new concepts that Walt Disney had envisioned more than a decade before. The first was a World Showcase, capturing the cultures of different countries around the world. The second was an amazing and daring vision of what the city of the future would be.
Initially, Imagineers planned these two attractions as separate parks, or as attractions within Magic Kingdom. One of the most recognizable buildings in America, Spaceship Earth was the world's first geodesic sphere building. The building, standing 18 feet above the ground on massive steel pylons, is feet tall and weighs more than 15 million pounds. So massive is the building that construction crews drove its pylon legs - feet into the ground to provide sufficient stability.
The sphere's external surface is covered by an intricate faceting of 11, alucobond triangles. The building surface is covered with gutters between the triangle facets; rainwater is captured in these gutters and channeled to a nearby lagoon to eliminate run-off from the building and conserve water resources.
Inside, a steel skeleton forms the building's shape, an interior sphere skin provides the interior "walls" for the ride and attractions. A second sphere, the exterior skin, is mounted to the skeleton two feet away from the interior skin with smaller framework pieces. With advancements in technology, designers and builders were able to incorporate five times more special effects into EPCOT than were built into Magic Kingdom.
Construction Continues Through the s and s Since EPCOT opened its gates in , Disney World has continued to expand with new construction of theme parks, hotels, shopping areas and more. Initially, a replica of Hollywood's Chinese Theater was the icon at the park's center hub.
Construction crews worked from the original Mann's Chinese Theater plans and recreated the lobby precisely, then included stars on a walk of fame around the building for added effect. In Disney added a foot tall Mickey's Sorcerer's Hat as the new centerpiece for the park. Constructed of fiberglass with a concrete foundation, the ton hat was designed after the cap worn by Mickey Mouse in the movie Fantasia. Walt Disney envisioned a playground theme park that powered the imagination and let people run away from their troubles.
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