Have you ever wondered what happens to all of Disneylands water?
Where does it go when they need to drain it? How do they refill it? How do they maintain it?
Well, when Disneyland was under construction in 1954, the surrounding city of Anaheim was not
equipped to handle the massive rainwater runoff that Disneyland would experience.
Back then, the land around the park was all farmland so water would simply just
soak into the ground. But inside the park, the paved walkways and rooftops would end up
redirecting that water away from the ground beneath it. In modern cities
today that rainwater runoff would go into our system of sewers and end up out at the ocean,
but Disneyland was far from the ocean and there were no rainwater sewer systems anywhere near it.
Admiral Joe Fowler, the man Walt Disney had put in charge of constructing the park
had suggested that Disneyland's system of rivers, ponds and canals were the perfect place to store
rainwater runoff. Hot days would cause the water to evaporate, but rainy days would replenish it.
And so the gutter systems all over the park were designed to drain into the interconnected
waterways. Today, the area surrounding Disneyland is all modern cityscapes so any new areas of
Disney development shed their rainwater runoff into Anaheim's sewer system. But places like Main
Street USA, Fantasyland and parts of Frontierland, still drain into the park's river system. If
Anaheim goes through a particularly long drought, and the rivers evaporate to dangerously low
levels, it can make running the various boat rides impossible. So Disney will purchase
water from various sources and have it trucked in and pumped into the rivers to top them off.
If the weather has been very rainy and the river levels get too high,
Disney will hire trucks to pump out some of the water and deliver it to Orange County's
groundwater basin where it is dumped into the natural groundwater system.
But what about when Disney needs to drain the rivers for refurbishments?
Well, there was a time where the Rivers of America would have to be emptied every 7 years for
servicing. That required Disney to hire a group of trucks to pump out the water and deliver it
to the Orange County groundwater basin, where it was stored until Disney needed that water back.
It is not necessary for Disney to filter or chlorinate their outdoor rivers or ponds
simply because nature takes over and does the work for them, that being said, you wouldn't want to
get splashed with that water. However, Disney does have water rides that allow people to get wet.
These rides are filtered and chemically treated for safety, but what happens when
these rides need to be drained? You can't just pump chemically treated water into the ground!
Well, rides like "it's a small world" have a type of tank basin located out back that can be filled
with all the water located on the ride. In Pirates of the Caribbean, if the Blue Bayou area needs to
be drained, all the water can go downstairs into the main show level since that area is so large,
the water level would only rise by a few inches, this means the ride doesn't need a storage tank,
but when everything needs to be pumped out, they will store the water in a facility off property.
Splash Mountain itself contains a massive storage pit in the ground to hold all its water,
for when the ride needs to undergo maintenance. Over at California Adventure, the Grizzly River
Run has its water storage pit out in the open, that's right, if you are over at Pacific Wharf,
that tidepool area with all the crystal clear water is the storage pit for Grizzly River
Run. So next time you see birds pooping into it, people throwing half-eaten food into it,
or even children puking into it, just know that even though the water is filtered and treated,
those atrocities still happen in that water on a daily basis.
I think what's worse is the lagoon over by Pixar Pier, that lagoon is
like Disneyland's Rivers of America, it is not chemically treated, it is actually just
a man-made lake festering with bacteria and the rotting carcasses of birds and small fish,
and every night you can be sprayed with it during the World of Color nighttime spectacular!
And so...that is the story of Disneyland's water, where it comes from, how it is moved around and
what surprises you may find lurking just beneath the surface of the happiest place on earth!