River Country

[TinyTinkerBell]

What is River Country Water Park and when was it created? And why was it closed?

[Josette]

River Country was a lake at by the Fort Wilderness Campground. It was opened in the 1970s. I think it was the first one to ever open. It closed because of the competition between BB and TL. People like to ride water slides instead of swimming in a lkae. I guess it got boring. PLus it was cold...water i mean

[JuniorMickey]

River Country was a water park that opened on June 20, 1976. It was announced not too long ago that the park would be closed permanently. There are different theories on why it closed. One is bacteria levels in the water. Another is because the water is not heated (unlike BB and TL) the park was only popular during the summer months. Another theory is that because of BB and TL many people found it to be not as good a value as there wasn't as much to do at RC.

[SorcererMickey]

Here is some history on River Country and Discovery Island:

This is an aerial view of Discovery Island and River Country. DI opened on April 8, 1974 as Treasure Island. The name was changed to Discovery Island on January 1, 1978. It officially closed on April 8, 1999 (exactly 25 years later) but continued to operate until July 9, 1999 after all the animals had been relocated to AK and other zoo's around the country.

River Country opened on June 20, 1976. It was the first and only water park at WDW until June 1, 1989 when Typhoon Lagoon opened, followed by Blizard Beach on April 1, 1995. It closed on September 1, 2001.

http://www.disneyguest.com/images/boards/discovery_island.jpg

:ears: :ears: :ears:

[tajainaz]

River Country was a fun water park, but very unsophisticated compared to TL, BB and other off property water parks. It's one of two water parks that I've experienced personally!

[missdisney]

River country was a really fun water park, there was two pools, one was a regular pool that had rock formations with a slide that went thru them and the other was a lake pool, that was kind of set up like a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn kind of theme. My kids who are 25 and 23 still talk about it. We all really liked it, and was sad to see it closed. It really went well with the Fort Wilderness theme.

[Josette]

They said that they were just going to make it another pool for the Fort Wildeness but then i guess changed their minds. :( Wonder what it will become...probably nothing

[pluto]

It probably needed some serious upgrading as the park was very old. I mean it was probably a mixture of things.. water condition being an important issue plus the lack of exciting slides etc.... Probably a decision which was based on serveral issues rather than just one

[Michael UK]

If you travel past it now on the boats its liek a kind of ghost town - very eerie. Everything is still there. The cages for the animals etc but all grown over. And the pools are still in place.

[pluto]

yeah I noticed that to Michael.... we got one of them speedboat things and went round and you can see it all kind of overgrown. Yeah it's quite strange and sad really

[Josette]

Wow i remember being out on those boats, too bad I was too young to remember anything, and not only that but it was still in operation then, :)

[babybelle]

We were in RC and DI years ago (probably 1993) - I remembered a girl with a parrot at DI and some kind of sip slide at RC

[susieh]

We have good memories of River Country. Our eldest son especially enjoyed the water drop slide (those who remember it will know what I mean!). The very last time he rode it his trunks split from top to bottom as he hit the water - we managed to get him out without embarrasing him or anyone else and all went and got changed giggling like mad.

We were sad to see it go as it had a different atmosphere from the other 2 water parks.