Final Secret Stories of Walt Disney World

The Stories Behind the Story

In the five previous volumes of this Secret Stories series of books, hundreds of tales have been shared about the storytelling elements at the Walt Disney World theme parks, the WDW resort hotels, the water parks, the shopping areas and much more.

This book is designed to help Disney guests understand what they are seeing and why it is there. This volume concludes the first fifty years of the Florida vacation destination with a hundred more similar stories to enhance the understanding and appreciation of WDW.

As WDW enters its next fifty years, extreme changes are happening so quickly that it is more than challenging to try to document them. In the blink of an eye, the Confectionery on Main Street tossed out twenty years of theming and expanded into The Chapeau hat shop next door removing all of its theming as well.

Epcot has begun its massive transformation into four "neighborhoods": World Showcase, World Celebration, World Nature and World Discovery. Not only has the Magic Band been upgraded and made no longer complimentary for resort guests, Fast Pass has been eliminated and replaced by Genie+ and Lightning Lane.

So it seemed an appropriate time to conclude the Secret Stories series of books with this volume and let others document the next fifty years. As with previous volumes, this book shares the rarely told stories of WDW including:

Ariel the Little Mermaid at the Magic Kingdom, the music of Galaxy's Edge at Disney's Hollywood Studios, the stories of the Yeti at Disney's Animal Kingdom, the Norway pavilion trolls at Epcot and more are documented.

The detailing in the Art of Animation resort includes subtle references to the Disney-Pixar animated feature Cars, how pin trading began at WDW, the back stories of some of the locations at Disney Springs, Grand Floridian fun facts and much more fill the following pages.

Things that were advertised but never built like Dick Tracy's Chicago Land, the Buena Vista Street PeopleMover, the Epcot International Airport and the things that disappeared like the Mickey Mouse Revue, Walk Around the World Bricks, Cranium Command, Fort Wilderness Resort Railroad are in these pages.

The exciting thing about Walt Disney World is that it is a living entity and constantly growing so there is always something new to discover and this book will help remember many of the things before they are changed yet again.