Daily Times

When Disney River Country opened in 1976, visitors flocked to Orange County, Florida to ride the winding slides and traverse the wooden bridges.

The park closed down 25 years later. After leaving the park empty and abandoned for 15 years, Disney is finally draining River Country’s 330,000-gallon pool.

As the Orlando Sentinel reports, the Upstream Plunge pool will be filled with cement, since standing water can attract mosquitoes – a growing concern due to the Zika virus. Disney says the work is not related to Zika, and doesn’t have any plans to re-open the long-closed park, the rest of which is still decaying.

A Cleveland-based photographer who works under the pseudonym Seph Lawless documented the abandoned park in his photo series “Dismaland.” Lawless captured ghostly portraits of the once-busy attraction.

Disney’s River Country was the first water park at Walt Disney World. Located near Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground, it opened on June 20, 1976, and closed indefinitely on November 2, 2001, following the September 11 attacks. On January 20, 2005, The Walt Disney Company announced that River Country would be closed for good. Since then, the park had become severely overgrown with trees, and is in extremely poor condition.

Along with Discovery Island, it is one of only two Disney parks in their history to close permanently.