A few weeks back we looked at all the bodies of water at Walt Disney World and how much space
it took up. But did you notice that around all of those retention ponds and canals and lakes
were well-manicured lawns? On top of maintaining all of the hotels and the
rides and restaurants and the water parks, Disney has a LOT of grass to keep trimmed.
But how much, and how long would it take YOU to mow it?
So the quick answer is that there is a lot of lawn and “too long” is how long it would
take for you to mow it. Between Walt Disney World itself and the Reedy Creek Improvement District,
there is an estimated 4338 acres of maintained landscaping which would
amount to roughly a sixth of the total land there.
The first half of that figure comes from Disney themselves, who shared that their 2,000 acres of
turf are maintained and result in 450,000 mowing miles per year to keep it in shape. That mainly
includes the landscapes at resorts and in and around all of the theme parks and water parks.
I originally wanted to try and use those figures to try and work out how often they mow their turf,
but without knowing what type of mowers they use it would kind of be difficult. Besides, it’s more
likely that it’s not a uniform number. They’d probably want to more regularly mow the lawns
at resorts that guests walk past all the time than they would the lawn out by a parking lot.
So what about the rest of that figure? Well, the other 2338 acres come from the Reedy Creek
Improvement District. It’s the governing district that Disney sits within. They’re often treated
as one and the same and for good reason. The district was formed specifically for Disney,
Disney is the majority landowner, and so they also get to handpick
who sits on the district’s council, giving them effective control over it.
That said, they are still, technically on paper, two separate entities. The landscaping
handled by the district mainly consists of that along all of the roads at Disney World, not to
mention the 706 acres of maintained landscaping around the district’s canals and waterways.
So even though it’s essentially all Disney World to us, you might see one person mowing
a lawn for one organization and another mowing a lawn for another organization.
The district also has regulations when it comes to mowing and caring for all those lawns.
For instance, in 2010 it was decided that landscaping could only be watered using the
district’s reclaimed water system, which uses treated wastewater from their own on-site plant.
In the cases where they couldn’t tap into that water system, rather than using potable water,
they would simply use high drought-tolerant plants.
Then you just let all the rain in Florida do all the work.
On top of that, they established what they called the low maintenance zone.
It’s essentially a 10-foot buffer at the edge of bodies of water that aren’t mowed or fertilized.
It makes things easier for them, keeps that waterline more natural,
and prevents anything from running off into the water system.
So back to that earlier question. How long would it take for you to mow 4338 acres?
You might be thinking “Rob, that’s a dumb question that nobody has possibly ever thought about or
asked.” Well, I’m all about dumb questions nobody thinks about, and that’s why I looked into four
different types of mowers and an online tool that ballparks mowing times to get the answer.
Starting at the top you’ve got the commercial grade mowers.
The John Deere Z915E which has a cutting width of 60 inches and tops out at 10 miles per hour.
If you were mowing non-stop, it would take you 367 hours or just a little over 15 days to complete.
Meaning even with that commercial mower, by the time you’re done,
you’d probably want to loop around and start over because it’s been two weeks.
If you step it down to one of those zero-turn seated mowers,
with a cutting width of 42 inches and a speed of 7 miles per hour,
you’re looking at a 748-hour mowing job, or just over a month at 31.2 days.
But maybe you don’t have either of those. Maybe you’re rocking the classic
self-propelled walk-behind mowers. 21-inch cutting width. 4 miles per hour top speed.
That’s a mowing job of 2619 hours or 109 days. So about three and a half months of non-stop mowing.
That’s a lot of gas though and maybe you want to be more environmentally friendly so maybe you
decide to mow those forty-three hundred acres with a manual walk behind reel mower. It’s powered by
your own two legs and a stubbornness that drove you to do alone what takes two organizations’
entire teams. That’ll take you 5238 hours non-stop. That’s 218 days or the greater part of a
year. By the time you’re done the area you started with will probably look like an abandoned field.
So uh I guess the moral of this story and video is um... don’t mow all of the grass at Disney
World alone? Disney has a lot of grass? Uh… find a new appreciation for the size of your lawn when
it comes time to mow it, because at least it’s not 4300 acres? I’ll have to think on this one.