Magic Kingdom - History

History

Although Walt Disney had been highly involved in planning The Florida Project, The Walt Disney Company began construction on Magic Kingdom and the entire resort in 1967 after his death. The park was built as a larger, improved version of Disneyland Park in California. There are several anecdotes relating to reasons for some of the features of Walt Disney World, and Magic Kingdom specifically. According to one story, Walt Disney once saw a Frontierland cowboy walking through Tomorrowland at Disneyland. He disliked that the cowboy intruded on the futuristic setting of Tomorrowland and wanted to avoid situations like this in the new park. Therefore, Magic Kingdom was built over a series of tunnels called utilidors, a portmanteau of utility and corridor, allowing employees (called cast members) to move through the park out of sight from guests, maintaining the show's cast. There's about 6,000-8,000 'cast members' currently employed at the Magic Kingdom theme park.

Because of Florida's high water table, the tunnels could not be put underground, so they were built at the existing grade, meaning the park is built on the second story, giving Magic Kingdom an elevation of 107 feet (33 m). The area around the utilidors was filled in with dirt removed from the Seven Seas Lagoon, which was being constructed at the same time. The utilidors were built in the initial construction and were not extended as the park expanded. The tunnels were intended to be designed into in all subsequent Walt Disney World parks, but were set aside mostly because of financial constraints. Future World at Epcot and Pleasure Island each have a smaller network of utilidors.

Magic Kingdom opened as the first part of the Walt Disney World Resort on October 1, 1971, opening concurrently with Disney's Contemporary Resort and Disney's Polynesian Resort. It opened with twenty-three attractions, three unique to the park and twenty replicas of attractions at Disneyland, split into six themed lands, five copies of those at Disneyland and the unique Liberty Square. The Walt Disney Company promised to increase this number with a combination of replicas and unique attractions. While there is no individual dedication to Magic Kingdom, the dedication by Roy O. Disney for the entire resort was placed within its gates.

Since opening day, Magic Kingdom has only been closed for five incidents: Hurricane Floyd, the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Charley, and Hurricane Wilma.

Magic Kingdom had often been used as an unofficial nickname for Disneyland, before Walt Disney World was built. The official tagline for Disneyland is "The Happiest Place On Earth", while the tagline for Magic Kingdom is "The Most Magical Place On Earth". In 1994, in order to differentiate it from Disneyland, the park was officially renamed to Magic Kingdom Park, but is known as Magic Kingdom. Like all Disney theme parks, the official name of the park does not start with an article ("the"), though it is commonly referred to that way, and a sign on the railroad station at the front of the park states "The Magic Kingdom".