I have been lucky enough to visit Walt Disney World for ten years. Only recently did I find out that when you walk down Main Street, you are actually on the first floor of a building.
Walt Disney World logo used with permission. Abby's Labs is independent of Disney and was not paid for this story.
My family has been going to Walt Disney World in Florida for the past ten years. I know, I am very lucky.
For most of those years I thought I knew it pretty well. Which ride to go on first. Where the good churros are. How long you can survive in the Florida heat before you need a sit down in the air conditioning.
Then I found out I had been walking on top of a secret the whole time.
## It started with a cowboy
At the first Disney park, Disneyland in California, Walt Disney once saw a cast member dressed as a cowboy walking through Tomorrowland, the space-age part of the park, to get to work.
It sounds tiny. To him it ruined the story. A cowboy does not belong in the future.
So when Disney planned Magic Kingdom in Florida, they designed a way for that never to happen again.
## The utilidors
Under Magic Kingdom there is a network of corridors called the utilidors. That is short for utility corridors.
Cast members use them to get to the right land already in costume, without walking through the wrong story.
Rubbish is taken away through them. Deliveries come through them. There are costume rooms, offices and places for staff to eat.
## The twist: it is not really underground
This is the bit I love.
Florida has a very high water table, which means if you dig down, you hit water quite quickly.
So instead of digging tunnels, the builders made the corridors at ground level, then piled the earth from digging the lake on top and built the park up there.
Which means when you walk down Main Street towards the castle, you are actually standing on the first floor.
## What happens after everyone goes home
When the fireworks finish and the last people leave, the night crew arrives.
Rides get inspected and tested, sometimes running empty again and again. Paths are washed. Paint is touched up. Light bulbs are replaced. Flower beds get swapped.
By morning it looks brand new. The only clue is that the ground is still a little wet.
## Why this matters
A place feels magic when all the boring parts are hidden well.
That is true of theme parks, but it is also true of hospitals, airports and even schools. Somebody is always doing the work you are not supposed to notice.
I wrote a longer adventure about how the whole resort runs, with a chapter for each of the four parks. It is linked below.