Walt Disney World was always more than just theme parks.
Even back in the 70’s when it first opened it offered guests other activities like golf,
camping, and boating.
It was just a way to round out a vacation destination.
However once the 80’s and 90’s rolled around, that attitude changed.
People were making Disney World one stop out of many on their Florida vacation, but why
not change that?
Disney’s thinking was that if people were coming to Florida for other experiences, they
could offer their own Disney version of that experience and keep them on property.
Local night clubs?
Pleasure Island.
Beaches and waves?
Typhoon Lagoon.
Cruises?
The Disney Cruise Line.
Timeshares?
The DVC.
Many people made trips out to Daytona for the Daytona 500.
Well, Disney had an answer for that too, and it was the Walt Disney World Speedway.
In the mid 1990’s, there was a rift in the world of racing.
A man named Tony George felt that Indy racing was getting too expensive.
He argued that the variation between oval and street tracks, along with the lack of
standardization among the cars lead to this sort-of arms race of increasingly expensive vehicles.
It reached the point where the average IndyCar season cost a team as much as fifteen million
dollars to participate.
He tried to work with CART or the Championship Auto Racing Team to change the series to help,
but they were unable to come to an agreement.
So in 1995, he started his own series.
IRL was the Indy Racing League.
George claimed that it was going to return the sport to it’s true form by lowering
the number of races, focusing on oval tracks, and limiting the car specs to lower the costs
to participate.
He claimed his league would lower that $15 million cost down to $3 million.
Now George wasn’t just some random fan.
You see, he was the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the world famous Indy 500.
So he not only had the resources to make the Indy Racing League a reality, he had the pull
to give IRL racers preferential treatment when it came to the next Indy 500.
The qualifying rules of the Indy 500 were changed so that 25 of the 33 car spots were
given to participants of the IRL.
The racing community didn’t like this.
His goals were noble, sure, but to many it felt like a kid taking his ball and going
home because he didn’t like the rules of the game.
Many big name drivers spoke out against the changes to the Indy 500 and pledged to not
partake in the IRL.
Some were just contractually bound to the other IndySeries anyway and couldn’t switch
over even if they wanted to.
CART countered by establishing the US 500 in Michigan to compete with the Indy 500.
So it looked like regardless of public outcry, the IRL series would be moving forward, though
with a shortage of big name racers.
This is where Disney enters the picture.
The Indy Racing League partnered with The Walt Disney Company to build a 1.1 mile tri-oval
track just south of the Transportation and Ticket Center in order to host the inaugural
Indy 200 in 1996.
It might not have been the first thing people expected out of Disney, but it wasn’t much
of a stretch either.
Disney World had moved more into the world of sports those past few years with their
own marathon, bike tour, and even mini-Olympics.
So racing didn’t feel far out of place.
General manager of Disney Motorsports, Michael Waggoner, claimed that he had been pitching
the idea of moving into racing to Disney for four years before it finally happened.
By hosting the first of the five races, Walt Disney World would lend a novelty to the new event.
On the flipside, by kicking off the series in January, the event would benefit Disney
by bringing in more guests during what was normally their slow season.
Disney sold package deals for hotel stays, park tickets, and race tickets for the event,
and later claimed that most of the attendees for the race were from the Midwest and purchased
said packages.
The Speedway itself was a barebones facility.
It was built in under a year at a cost of just $6 million.
There were no permanent bleachers or sky boxes, nor were there any garages for the cars.
It was more or less just a track.
That track was made up of 3.2 million paving bricks, including one cornerstone brick from
the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, often known as the Brickyard.
The track in Disney gained the nickname of the Mickyard.
Using temporary bleachers and sky-boxes able to seat over 55,000 guests, the first Indy
200 was slated for January 27th, 1996, with a prize purse of $1 million.
As expected, the series struggled to attract many big name racers, but according to Disney
that wasn’t a problem.
They claimed that their research showed that people were going to the races for the cars
and competition, and less-so for notable racers themselves.
And it seems that Disney was right, as the inaugural event was attended by over 55,200
guests and was broadcasted on ABC, which Disney had just acquired over the previous six months.
The race itself went well, and averaging 139 miles per hour and winning by just .866 seconds,
Buzz Calkins was the first winner of the Indy 200.
Over the following 4 years the Walt Disney World Speedway saw continued use.
The Indy 200 would take place there up until the year 2000, and a couple of NASCAR Craftsman
Truck Series races would be held at the speedway as well, not to mention a number of smaller
supporting races for both events.
After the IRL race in 2000, Disney and the Indy Racing League failed to settle on an
agreeable date for the 2001 race, causing the IRL to go with a different venue.
Disney didn’t know it at the time, but it would mark the end of professional races at
the track.
With the rise in popularity of stock car racing, and the continued rift between the IRL and
CART, the racing scene was starting to struggle.
However that wasn’t the end of the speedway’s use.
Introduced in 1997, the Walt Disney World Speedway became one of the permanent homes
to the Richard Petty Driving Experience.
The experience allowed guests to pay anywhere from $99 to $1250 to get into the passenger’s
seat of a stock car and experience the speeds of the vehicle firsthand, or even drive it
themselves.
Eventually the offerings expanded to the Indy Racing Experience, and the Exotic Driving Experience.
So what happened to the Speedway?
Well, the very decisions that made it a low risk investment for the Walt Disney Company
also made it really easy to get rid of.
The facility had only cost them $6 million to build and didn’t involve any large permanent
structures, and it was squeezed right below the TTC parking lot in order to avoid laying
new utilities.
As the popularity of the parks continued to grow, that land found itself becoming more
valuable for extra parking space, and without any professional races, it became harder to
justify keeping around.
So it was decided in early 2015 to close and demolish the track in order to expand the
parking facilities at the TTC.
With the announcement there was virtually no surprise.
If anything people were more surprised the speedway had lasted as long as it did.
The Walt Disney World Speedway was one of the more interesting projects for Disney in the 90's.
It certainly wasn’t the only instance of Disney trying to dip their toes into a new
venture, but usually when they did it either involved a major investment, or extreme success,
or extreme failure.
The Speedway had none of that.
It was built on the cheap.
It saw some professional use, but that just petered out without any fanfare.
The use after that was small and sparse, and then one day it was just removed.
It felt like an afterthought, not just for guests who visited, but to Disney as well.
But even as an afterthought, it was a testament to how willing Disney was to try something new.