River Country Water park; opened at Walt Disney World on June 20, 1976, and closed September 1, 2001. The Disney designers longed for an old-fashioned swimming hole, so they created one next to Fort Wilderness campground. It meant building miniature mountains for the waterslides, since Florida has no mountains to offer. Bay Cove, the swimming hole, was actually part of Bay Lake and held 330,000 gallons of water. The popularity of River Country convinced Disney executives to build Typhoon Lagoon some years later, to be followed by Blizzard Beach.
