Originally Posted By TongaToast I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere on the site, but does anyone know what has replaced these two long gone attractions? Are they sitting abandoned for the time being?
Originally Posted By trekkeruss In the grand scheme of things, Animal Kingdom replaced Discovery Island, and Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach replaced River Country. I don't know what Disney has done to these former sights; not much, I imagine.
Originally Posted By CTXRover Discovery Island is currently just another island in the middle of Bay Lake with nothing to see or do on it. If you didn't know it was something to visit before, you wouldn't even look twice at it. River Country does sit abandoned with simple construction wall across its entrance. However, you can only really see the remnants of it from the boats that take guests to and from Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground. Again though, if you didn't know what you were looking at, it would just look like some rocks and trees. The concept of Discovery Island, a natural bird and small animal habitat, was overshadowed and became unnecessary when Animal Kingdom opened in 1998. All of the animals and caretakers were moved to the much better facilities at the new park and the island was subsequently closed. River Country was closed for a number of proposed reasons. The most likely are that River Country had limited accessibility requiring guests who wanted to visit to utilize the same transportation that was being provided primarily for guests at Fort Wilderness (the boats and buses). It was also an inferior product compared to Disney's newer and bigger waterparks and would have taken an enormous amount of work to make it worthy of a similar entrance fee which is important with the ticket strategies used today. Third was the situation of using filtered swamp water from Bay Lake, which like many natural bodies of water in Florida, are unsafe to have guests swimming in. This last one though is debated from time to time since the water was being filtered. In short, they both do sit abandoned, but essentially DAK replaced Discovery Island, while Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach replaced River Country.
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb I think I read somewhere (here?) that River Country suffered a fair amount of hurricane damage, which ultimately sealed it's fate. Which was shakey anyway for the reasons stated above.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss Disney could take advantage of their Pirates franchise and turn Discovery Island into a PotC adventure, with a separate fee, of course.
Originally Posted By a1stav ^^^^ Great minds think alike. <a href="http://mb.laughingplace.com/MsgBoard-T-87580-P-1.asp" target="_blank">http://mb.laughingplace.com/Ms gBoard-T-87580-P-1.asp</a>
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 River Country closing was a financial decision, pure and simple. Because of its beautiful lake location, and use of natural unchlorinated water, it required extra work. But there never was a 'safety' issue with the place. That's just an Internet/urban/CM myth that Disney encourages at RC decays and falls apart in the Florida sun/humidity.
Originally Posted By TarzanRocked99-06 Spirit is right River country was up and running in 2001 and then 9/11 hit and attendance dropped. Disney used the opportunity to close and or make seasonal all sorts of things one of which was River Country. They said at the time time it would only be closed for the 2002 season and then it mysteriously never re-opened. Sound familiar? sad sad sad
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 ^^Yep. I am so thankful that I was able to spend parts of five days there in May 2001. I saw the writing on the wall when it became seasonal (closed six months a year) and then only opened four days a week, even in summer.
Originally Posted By a1stav A shame really, I understand that the capacity was low, but it would have made a great park for guests staying at the campground and the lodge. Having an exclusive water park would have been a great selling feature of those resorts.
