I’ll bet that when you woke up this morning, you didn’t expect your day would involve a picture of former Disney CEO Dick Nunis on a waterslide. Yet here we are.
This picture, from May of 1976, shows Nunis testing out the “Whoop-‘N-Holler Hollow” slide that was then under construction for River Country. River Country, which would open that June, would be Disney’s first water park.
My favorite thing about the photo is the clamps on the side holding the track into place. It’s obvious that the structure around the slide had yet to be installed or completed, so this must have been more of a wild ride than usual. Nunis, though, was no stranger to aquatic adventures; he was an avid surfer and had been the one responsible for the installation of the briefly-operational surf machine in the Seven Seas Lagoon.
River Country was closed in November of 2001 and continues to rot away on the shores of Bay Lake today.
I miss River Country and was glad I got to go before its sad demise. It wasn’t that hard to get to with transportation by both boat and car/bus. It also helped introduce a lot of people to the Fort Wilderness Area of the property. I think that area is still one of the best kept secrets of WDW and don’t really mind it staying that way. Which brings up another lost Fort Wilderness treasure-the Fort Wilderness Railroad.
[…] Splashin good funRyan at the Main St Gazette shares a striking similarity between Goofy and Dick Nunis (check out this link to see why). […]