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Beachin’ Bertha

In the early days of Walt Disney World, watercraft were a fundamental element of new parks. When the Magic Kingdom opened alongside the rest of the resort in 1971, any number of rafts, launches, steamships, and ferries took to the waters of Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon for shakedown cruises. The Rivers of […]

Watercrafting – Layin’ Keel, 1975

One of the many operational issues facing Walt Disney World when it opened in 1971 was inadequate transportation capacity. Walt Disney Productions simply ran out of time before the resort’s debut, and so the Magic Kingdom opened without enough operational monorails and watercraft to bring visitors in from the Transportation and Ticket Center. Every moving […]