#5: River Country, Disney World, Florida
Only two Disney parks have ever closed, and Disney World’s River Country is one of them. The very first water park at Disney World, River Country, opened in 1976. It was built artificially to look like a natural lagoon and advertised as “an old-fashioned swimming hole” with a pleasantly rustic water theme.
The water park had a few deaths, one of which involved a boy dying from an amoebic infection of the brain that he had gotten from the water and the other two from drowning. In 1989 and 1995, two bigger water parks were opened (Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach), contributing to the decline of River Country. In 2001, the park was temporarily closed down, and it was expected to reopen a year later, but it never did. It has sat abandoned since then.