Is the Walt Disney World Resort ready to fully part with the now abandoned remains of River Country?

Today the Walt Disney World Parks and Resort filed plans to conduct geotechnical boring for an undisclosed “Project 89”. The work is to be done to determine current conditions in Wetlands and to collect data and assess the suitability of subsurface

soils. According to the plans for the areas impacted from the borings. Disney is planning to conduct the borings on either side of the old River Country site.

Since the tourism decline after September 11th in 2001, Disney’s River Country was closed for what would have been its usual closure at the end of the warm weather season. Disney left the reopening of the park in limbo with then Disney World spokesman Bill Warren saying to the Orlando Sentinel in April of 2002 that River Country could be reopened if “there’s enough guest demand.” With tourism increasing and the tastes of the guests changing tied into the modern Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach waterparks as well as a 2004 requirement from the Florida Department of Health, River Country was never to reopen.

Since the park closed, it’s been left abandoned and only time has told what Disney has done with the property. River Country has had moderate work done, in the form of draining and filling Upstream Plunge, the 330,000gallon pool during the Zika virus outbreak. Disney said the work at River Country was unrelated to Zika. Rumors have circulated that Disney was considering to place another Disney Vacation Club property in the spot, and went as far as Engineers who were reportedly spotted on the site to determine what needed to be done to clear away the remnants of its attractions. Plans also did surface along with a video of CGI plans for a Fort Wilderness DVC on the property that never came to fruition.

Plans for the future site are currently unknown, but given the past, it’s entirely possible that we are to see a new hotel if not a DVC Expansion.

What do you think? Would you like to see another Resort or DVC property at Walt Disney World?

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