![]() ![]() ![]() When they showed the concept art, a gigantic Indian Palace… surrounded by jungle… staffed with men and women in loincloths and tribal gear… well, suffice it to say, everyone flipped out. They intended to sell everyone on how lucrative this project was going to be. A group of stuffed shirts from the Disney Company actually held a city meeting. Knowing full well what was going on, people started calling it “Mickey Mouse Highway”. The land grabbed by the Government was supposedly for some fictional highway project. At one point a home that had just been constructed was immediately condemned with little to no explanation. The local Government claimed “eminent domain” on people’s homes, then turned around and sold the properties to Disney. Disney bought up a ton of high-priced land for the project, and there was actually a scandal surrounding some of the purchases. Mowgli’s Palace was a controversial undertaking from the start. Mowgli is an abandoned child, in the jungle, essentially raised by animals and simultaneously threatened and pursued by other animals. If you haven’t seen it anywhere else, you’d know it as the Disney cartoon from decades past. If you’re unfamiliar with the character of Mowgli, then you might better remember the story “The Jungle Book”. The concept was a Jungle-themed resort with a large palace in the center of the whole thing. Near the beachside city of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Disney began construction of “Mowgli’s Palace” in the late 1990s. I sincerely doubt those reasons were legitimate. It wasn’t because of sand, and it obviously wasn’t because “foreigners are lazy”. ![]() That’s where the factual nature of their story ends. In 2020, a 42-year-old man was arrested after sneaking onto the island and camping for days.Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule. The property is off-limits, though that hasn’t stopped a handful of rule-breakers from attempting to visit. From afar, it blends in with the wooded shoreline of the lake - and with very little visible from the outside, it doesn’t draw much attention (except from in-the-know guests). Today, Disney’s Contemporary Resort, Disney’s Wilderness Lodge, and Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort are all located around Bay Lake, so the island isn’t really hidden at all, but many guests have no idea that it used to be a Disney attraction. According to the story, tickets to Discovery Island at the time cost USD 12.67 for adults and USD 6.89 for children. The tropical island was home to exotic birds and animals, with one of the largest walk-through aviaries in the world and giant tortoises, according to D23, the official Disney fan club.Ī 1999 Orlando Sentinel article about the park’s closure traces the island’s pre-Disney history as a family residence in the early 1900s, and later, a hunting retreat. Its name was changed to Discovery Island in 1977, and the 11.5-acre nature preserve - accessible by boat - operated until 8 April 1999, about a year after Animal Kingdom opened. The original theme was based on the 1950 Disney pirate adventure film “Treasure Island,” with a wrecked ship visible on the shore. On 8 April 1974, then Treasure Island opened just a few years after Walt Disney World first welcomed visitors in 1971. By Elizabeth Rhodes More about the abandoned island at Disney World Located in Bay Lake near Magic Kingdom and several Disney hotels, Discovery Island was once a tropical rain forest oasis that welcomed guests for 25 years before closing in the late ’90s. There’s an abandoned island at Walt Disney World, and it’s hidden in plain sight. ![]()
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