Magic Kingdom, River Country & Discovery Island Helicopter Photo Update

As we all know, the Magic Kingdom is a no fly-zone. This only applies to aircraft that are flying under 3,000 feet. For these photos, we elevated the helicopter up to above 3,000 feet and grabbed some amazing photos! We hope that you enjoy them.

Starting off with the former Walt Disney World Speedway. It has mostly been removed. Notice that it seems like the back stretch of the track has been turned into a road.

Approaching the Magic Kingdom area, beautiful sights.

Getting closer to the resorts area-

The area looks extremely pretty from up at 3,000 feet!

The Wilderness Lodge, Bay Lake Tower, Contemporary and Space Mountain all in one shot.

The Wilderness Lodge

First stop- Walt Disney World’s River Country, River Country was a water park that operated until 2001. The park has since been abandoned and left to rot, Florida nature has reclaimed a lot of it.

A closer look at the defunct park..

Disney’s other abandoned theme park is Discovery Island. Discovery Island operated from 1974-1999. It was basically a zoo theme park, similar to Animal Kingdom. The park closed in ’99 and has sat untouched since.

An overhead shot of the island. There’s a few visible buildings and structures.

A closer look-

Heading towards the Magic Kingdom-

The castle and Main Street USA..

Heading towards the bone yard area:

The bone yard and boat service area-

Above the boneyard-

Some former Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes can be seen in the bone yard

Zooming into the boat service area-

A clearer shot. The boat with the red roof is one of the former Discovery River Boats from Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

Looking at the administration buildings and the Monorail Depot

An upclose of the Monorail Depot

An above angle

The parks steam trains and the monorails are stored here-

The Magic Kingdom power plant-

Work going on in the CM parking lot by the power plant.

The firework launch site-

Backstage Fantasyland

Haunted Mansion and It’s A Small World show buildings

The full park-

Another shot of the park, breathtaking to see from this height.

The Magic Kingdom entertainment area, notice the Electrical Water Pageant floats.

You can see that the Frozen float from Disney’s Hollywood Studios has been moved to the Magic Kingdom.

Another angle.

The parade storage building. Notice the float from Move It Shake It Dance & Play It! heading towards the building.

Here you can see Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain

A big overhead view of the full park

A shot of the Cinderella’s Castle

Leaving the Magic Kingdom, here’s a shot of the Grand Floridian, the Contemporary and the Seven Sea’s Lagoon.

This is a picture of what used to be the Polynesian Resort wave machine..

Now lets move over to the transportation hub where the busses are stored.

Zooming in-

One last shot for this photo update, looking off towards Epcot and Kissimmee.

I hope you enjoyed this photo update. You can see our previous helicopter photo update that looked at Disney’s Hollywood Studios by clicking here. Our next photo update will cover the changes at Epcot, including the Frozen ride and the Soarin’ expansion. Last but not least to top off our helicopter photo series will be Avatar land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.