50 Little-Known Disney World Facts To Intrigue Or Concern

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.

The stone lantern in the Japan pavilion in EPCOT was presented to Roy by the then Emperor of Japan as a token of friendship

Disney is the second largest buyer of explosives (for their fireworks shows) in the world. The first is the U.S. Department of Defense.

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.

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 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.

The female ballroom dancers in the Haunted Mansion are wearing older versions of princess dresses.

The daily popcorn sales in Magic Kingdom cover the daily cost of the Magic Kingdom fireworks

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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