Magic Kingdom

Orlando, Florida’s Magic Kingdom Park is a theme park located at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake (Florida), which is near Orlando. The park, which is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Parks, Experiences, and Products division, first opened its doors on October 1, 1971, as the first of four theme parks to be built on the resort’s grounds.

WED Enterprises was tasked with designing the park after Walt Disney came up with the idea. The park’s structure and attractions are based on those found at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and are devoted to fairy tales and the characters of the Disney franchise.

Cinderella Castle, which was inspired by the fairy tale castle featured in the 1950 film, serves as the park’s representative structure. According to official figures, the park welcomed 20.9 million people in 2019, making it the most visited theme park in globe for the thirteenth year in a row and the most frequented theme park in North America for at least the past nineteen years.

Despite the fact that Walt Disney was heavily involved in the creation of EPCOT, he passed away before the vision could be realized. Walt Disney Productions began building on Magic Kingdom and the full resort in 1967, following Walt’s death. The park opened in 1968. The park was designed to be a larger and more enhanced version of the California-based Disneyland Park.

A set of tunnels dubbed utilidors, a combination of the words utility and corridor, were erected beneath Magic Kingdom to allow personnel, referred to as “cast members,” and VIP guests to move around the park without being noticed.

Since Florida’s high water table prevented the tunnels from being built below, they were constructed at the current grade, resulting in the Magic Kingdom being erected on its second floor, giving it a height of 108 feet above the surrounding terrain (33 m).

The soil extracted from the Seven Seas Lagoon, which was being created at the same time as the utilidors, was used to fill in the area around the utilidors. They were constructed during the initial building phase and were not expanded as the park grew in popularity. The tunnels were originally supposed to be incorporated into all following Walt Disney World parks, but they were put on hold mostly due to financial restrictions. Future World at Epcot and Pleasure Island at Disney Springs each feature a smaller network of utilidors than the other.