I have recently have been learning things about abandoned Disney attractions in my free time and River Country has to be my favourite so far.
River Country was the first water park Disney had. It opened on June 20th 1976 and closing on November 2nd 2001.
River Country was located in the Northern Corner of Fort Wilderness which before it had just been horse pastures.
River Country was very unique. A major portion of the 5 acre park, had water fed directly from Bay Lake into the swimming hole which was literally called ” The Old Swimming Hole.” It was made like this to make it seem as if it was just part of the lake, but really it was using a confluent water filtering system. The filter helped prevent flooding in the the swimming hole from when the lakes water level changed. Water was pumped from Bay Lake up into a artificial mountain, filtered then pumped back down into the swimming hole.
This is a picture of “White Water Rapids” it was one of the most popular slides in River Country. White Water Rapids was basically a fast paced lazy river that went down a 330 foot path with sudden drops. River Country also had structures in the swimming hole to swing off and land into the water along with a zipline! There was also a normal chlorinated regular pool with a slide that wouldn’t be able to be used now because of how big of a drop there is from the bottom of the slide to the water. River Country also included a nature trail over a swamp and a volley ball court in the actual lake.
River Country was an ideal family water park at the time and grew in popularity within a few years millions of people had visted. But with that over time the park began to become to small it was only 5 acres, so it could only hold 4700 guests a day. To solve that problem Disney started construction on Typhon Lagoon, which when it opened it completly dwafed River country. Typhon Lagoon is 56 acres which is 51 more then River Country so you can see why not as many people wanted to go there anymore. To make matters worst for River Country in the early 1990’s Disney opened another water park called “Blizzard Beach”.
With the new water parks and Disney raising River Country’s admisson price guests didn’t see much value in going there anymore because there were bigger and better Disney water parks to go to. Also on colder days the park had to close because the lake was to cold for people to swim in. River Country also hadn’t overly been updated at all and the 1970’s waterpark design wasn’t excatly cutting it anymore. These things all lead to River Country closing on November 2nd 2001.
In 2019 Disney started to take down River Country after it just being there empty for around 18 years. They are now working on making a 1700 room Hotel ontop of where it used to be. It’s said to open in 2022 but may be deplayed a year or two because of the pandemic.
I hope you enjoyed reading about River Country! Here are a few links where you can learn more about it.