For you Trivia buffs - how much area

[Henlady]

is included in the entire WDW property? How many acres or square mile?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

 

[marybeth200]

27,400 acres in FL. Not all of the land had been used yet. He slowly started buying the land under dummy company names to keep it a secret (and probably to keep prices for soaring). It wasn't until he had almost gotten all his land before word got out.

If anyone has a better answer or if I'm mis-stating, please correct me! Thanks!

PS- I love Trivia!!!

 

[bradk]

i don't think there is an exact count readily available anymore as the land is constantly changing, but it's around 44-47 square miles depending on who you ask, or 'about the size of san francisco or twice the size of manhattan'

 

[chip n dale fans]

47 square miles

 

[Mickey28]

31,000 acres or approx. 47 sq miles however only 7,100 acres are actually developed.

This info comes from a Disney trivia site.

 

[goNsoon2WDW]

I think I read somewhere the Walt had the belief of maintaining the environment to some extent and had an agreement that for every acre of development, there would be 2 acres of nature maintained. My numbers may be off, but I think that is what it was. Does anyone know if this is accurate? I honestly can't recall where I saw it.

 

[bradk]

1/3 of the property is set aside for conservation purposes

 

[CanadianGuy]

Given that some large areas of the property have already been lopped off and 'sold' -- the entire community of Celebration, FL for example (4900 acres) .. and further adjustments will be made for areas of property underneath the Four Seasons development etc. .... it's virtually impossible to say how much remains in control of the Walt Disney Company and the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Disney continues to buy and sell property in small parcels at the very edge of their existing property as suits their business needs year to year.

The estimates in this thread are quite possibly as close to accurate as we could hope to get.

Having read the RCID documents.. I do believe that quite a bit more than 1/3 of the property is either reserved for conservation or is part of an active floodplain (boggy marsh etc). But those documents are very difficult to read.

For example.. it says this ..

The RCID shall require that at least 30 percent of the area within its boundaries but outside the designated Wildlife Management Conservation Area (WMCA) be set aside as open space. The area designated as open space shall be defined on an Open Space Map to be contained in the Recreation and Open Space Element of the Comprehensive Plan..

But that excludes the WMCA -- which is NOT an insignificant amount of space... 7700 acres.

And it also says this

Development in the 100-year flood plain shall generally be discouraged.

The 100 year flood plain includes land that is NOT part of the WMCA and is also not an insignificant amount of land mass either. Now the Treehouse Villas are located in that 100 year flood plain and are being redeveloped with a minimal ground footprint and an elevated platform which has minimal impact on the floodplain. That's rare. Normally, no further developments in the flood plain area are encouraged.

A quick eye ball of the resources maps available here:

http://www.rcid.org/uploads/RCID Comp Plan - Future Land Use Element.pdf

On pages 2A-14 and 2A-15 indicates that at least 50% of the available not-currently-developed land is blocked out for either conservation purposes or is part of the 100 year flood plain .. which essentially amounts to the same thing = generally not available for development.

Originally, 27,400 acres were acquired. Since then, land has been bought, sold and lopped off. Immediately assume the reduction of 5000 acres for Celebration and at least 900 acres dedicated to the Four Seasons Project (info here) .. that 6,000 acres gone. That leaves about 21,400 acres.. add to that maybe 3500 acres in net additions over the years.. and then subtract the already developed land, the 200 acres for the Western Development, the Wildlife Conservation Management area, the 100 year floodplain and keep in mind the 30% open space rule noted above ....

You are left with somewhere between a conservative 5,000* and a very generous 8,000 to 10,000* acres left on which future development can occur. Plenty. The MK is about 125 acres. Epcot is 260 acres + 140 acres for parking, DHS is 135 acres with a similar amount for parking.. and AK is a whopping 500 acres with about 125 for parking.

Assuming you double the noted size of the parks to include land used for support structures, access roads, service roads, necessary infrastructure, etc.. There's plenty of rooms for more resorts and parks in the remaining land.

And if you do any digging on Google Earth at all, you'll see there's lots of undeveloped land still adjacent to Disney property. While it wouldn't be cheap, Disney could if they so chose, acquire some of that land... as they do each year in small parcels here and there. In fact, RCID and Disney own a bunch of land (thousands of acres) over in Lake County, Florida which is non-contiguous to the main parcel we are all familiar with... wonder what they got in mind for that? If anything.

ANYWHO .. this is interesting as all get out .. but not particularly a trip planning thread. So I've moved this to the ThemeParks Community Board.

Knox

Footnote:

* None of this includes "re-developable" land like Discovery Island, River Country etc. That is land that is already considered developed but clearly could be 'redeveloped' ...

 

[CanadianGuy]

Actually further digging in the document I noted above details all the land use as of 1999 ... You can see in the teal-highlighted section that my back-of-napkin numbers (lowball numbers) were within the range. Again, keep in mind that in each of the 9 years since this chart was assembled, Disney added and subtracted land at the edges of their tract.

And yeah, to get to my lowball number from the previous post, you'd have to subtract the 1,050 acres for the Four Seasons and Western Development...

Of course one way to read this chart is that the only developable land is "vacant land" which means only about 2500 acres remains... !

 

[Henlady]

You guys are great. I knew I could count on you for an answer.
DD's DF is going to WDW for the first time ever with us in September and he was trying to get a grasp of just how big the place was when I showed him a map of everything. He wanted to know how much area it covered. When I told him, he was duely impressed. Thought he could just walk from park to park. Now he understands the scope of things a little better.

 

[CanadianGuy]

44 sq miles.. not exactly convenient walking distance.