There is a lot of water at Walt Disney World.
Yeah, there’s the water rides and the pools and the water parks, but beyond that, there’s
also just a ton of little ponds and lakes scattered all over the property.
Have you ever wondered what they’re for, or how many there are?
Of course you haven’t! I get it. Why would you? I mean you’re at Disney World.
You’re going to the Magic Kingdom.
What, are you gonna pay attention to a pond on the side of the road?
Well today we are going to pay attention to that pond as we talk about the water bodies
of Walt Disney World.
So buckle up!
As a preface, we’ll be talking about the recorded waterbodies of the Reedy Creek Improvement
District, which is the governing district that Disney World sits within, and essentially
runs themselves.
It includes naturally occurring bodies of water as well as utilitarian manmade ones.
So no pools or water rides like Small World or Pirates of the Caribbean.
Let’s start at the top.
In terms of total acreage, the 428 cataloged bodies of water on Walt Disney World and Reedy
Creek property add up to 2228 acres.
That sounds like a lot, and I guess relative to say, I don’t know, my backyard, it is a lot.
But in the grander scheme, especially in a region that’s so heavily populated with
lakes and ponds, it’s actually not that much.
For instance, nearby Lake Apopka is over thirteen times that combined size at 30,909 acres.
The largest lake in Florida, Lake Okeechobee, is over 143 times larger than all of the water
bodies at Disney World combined, at just over 320,000 acres.
Another way to visualize it is San Francisco.
Disney World is often touted as being the size of the city of San Francisco.
So if we think of Disney World as the city, then all of the water bodies at Disney World
combined would take up the Presidio, Marina District, and Cow Hollow.
All in all, Disney’s water area makes up just a little over 9% of all their land.
The area of the entire state of Florida, by comparison, is 18.5% water.
So relative to their home state, Disney is a pretty dry place.
Of course, it definitely doesn’t seem that way every afternoon in the summer.
Seriously, bring your sandals.
You’ll thank me.
So how do the 428 bodies of water of Disney World break down?
Starting at the bottom, it includes 5 creeks, which is actually one creek split into separate
segments, and it’s the district’s namesake: Reedy Creek.
It’s actually a little weirder than that.
The 11 acres of Reedy Creek that are designated as creek are only counting the segments left
to nature.
The rest of Reedy Creek as well as Bonnet Creek, which are both wider and have maintained
landsciping, are classed as canals by the district.
There are ten reservoirs on property that total at three acres.
After that, Reedy Creek lists themselves as having 42 lakes, which represents the largest
category at a combined 863 acres.
That includes Bay Lake at 423 acres, the Seven Seas Lagoon at 173, World Showcase Lagoon
at 37 and Hourglass Lake at 30.
Going back to canals for a second, the district has 97, amounting to 795 acres of coverage.
They range from those maintained and widened creeks that I was just talking about to ditches
off to the side in parking lots which aren’t actually ditches- or well they are but they
aren’t but we’ll talk about that in a minute- to the canals that run through Fort Wilderness
Reedy Creek also classifies the waterways of the Jungle Cruise as a canal, with a reported
acreage of 2.9 acres.
The Rivers of America?
Also a canal.
7.8 acres.
Lastly, there are a total of 274 ponds on Disney and Reedy Creek property.
That, itself, breaks down to 19 borrow pits, 35 ponds, and 220 retention ponds and totals
out at 555 acres.
So what’s the difference between those last three?
Well, a borrow pit is when a construction team digs up earth from one spot to use it
somewhere else.
They don’t always have to be filled with water and made into a pond, but in the case
of Reedy Creek’s 19 borrow pits, they are.
Personally, I think that means the Seven Seas Lagoon should also be classed as a borrow
pit since the dirt dug up to create that was used to fill in the space between the Magic
Kingdom’s utilidors and the top layer that the park was built on, but I guess then it
would be a Borrow Lake… or Borrow Lagoon… or a really big borrow pit- I don’t know.
Meanwhile, a retention pond is a manmade pond that’s dug up in order to help regulate
stormwater runoff to prevent flooding.
It’s typically always filled with water but fluctuates depending on how much or little
it rains… which is basically what regular ponds do, they’re just not man-made with
the express purpose of preventing flooding.
Retention ponds also have the added benefit of letting that stormwater runoff sit for
a while before it moves on to sewer systems or canals, which allows some pollutants or
other debris to settle at the bottom rather than entering the other water systems.
Finally, there are ditches and dry ponds.
Dry ponds or as they’re sometimes called, detention ponds, are similar to retention
ponds, except on a day-to-day basis they’re empty.
They’re designed to take on water to prevent flooding in extreme weather, but unlike retention
ponds which hold on to some of that water, dry ponds are designed to drain within a few days.
Disney World has 18 dry ponds, and in the event they’re all full at the same time
it would add another nine and a half acres to that overall total.
As for ditches, Reedy Creek lists 11 of them, totaling two and a half acres.
What’s the difference between a ditch and a canal?
Well, it depends on who you ask.
In some cases, the distinction is that a canal is made to connect two bodies of water while
a ditch is well… just a ditch.
Honestly, if there’s one thing I learned making this video it’s that the classification
of water bodies is, pardon the pun, fluid.
When is a pond a lake, or a lake a pond?
There’s no actual universally accepted black and white definition.
There are a few common schools of thought with some involving water temperature and
other sunlight and plant growth, but ultimately it can vary depending on who’s is doing
the labeling.
In any case, this is how Reedy Creek labels Disney’s waterbodies.
These hundreds of retention ponds and dozens of lakes and canals are cool.
Yeah not the way Space Mountain or Rise of the Resistance is cool, but these little ponds
and streams that thousands of tourists drive past every day are a neat reminder that it
takes a whole lot of logistical planning and design to keep one of the largest vacation
destinations in the world running smoothly.