We have recently become obsessed with a long-lost Magic Kingdom river that may or may not have ever existed.

The park is famous for losing its water ways. The Castle Hub once featured an elaborate meandering river plied by Swan Boats that circled the Swiss Family Treehouse in Adventureland before returning to dock. Most of the moat was filled in to create more fireworks viewing space. Over in Fantasyland, submarines traversed an entire lagoon before the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train filled it up with a mountain. And we can’t forget the iconic Rivers of America, doomed to extinction so that we can get another Pixar Cars ride.

But over in the Southwest corner of the park, the Jungle Cruise has remained remarkably intact. Unlike its Disneyland cousin, which has been altered several times over the years (most notably by the arrival of the Indiana Jones Adventure), the Jungle Cruise is still running the same basic course from when the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971.

But what if there was once a tributary to this mighty Magic Kingdom river? A lost little stream that spun off from the impenetrable jungle and meandered its way into civilization. Could such a thing have been possible?

Enter the map.

The Short-Lived Magic Kingdom River Map

You have probably seen this map before, or others like it. It has that distinctive early Walt Disney World caricature style. It’s not to scale. You wouldn’t use this for survey work. It’s more of an advertisement for the resort than a useful wayfinding tool.

And yet, all the important geographical landmarks are there. We see the Castle moat in all its glory. The Rivers of America are prominent, as is the Jungle Cruise.

And then, way down in the corner, partially obscured by a fanciful title scroll, there is this.

A thin blue line, clearly a branch of the main Jungle Cruise river. If we follow it to its source, passing behind the prominent Adventureland title card, it curves around a building that we should recognize. The cow-horned ceremonial house of the Enchanted Tiki Room (known in 1971 as Tropical Serenade).

We have already said that this map is a caricature. You can’t trust it. And honestly, with that title card in the way, we cannot even be sure that the Jungle Cruise tributary and the Tiki Room stream are intended to connect.

And so, this whole topic of a lost Magic Kingdom River might have been just an interesting observation about a tiny corner of a 50-year-old cartoon map. Something to wonder about, but ultimately chalked up to a bit of artistic license.

Except that it’s not the only map.

Here we are, still in that caricature style. But yet even less cartoony. And there is no title card obscuring the little Magic Kingdom river. It clearly shows some sort of waterway connecting the Tiki Room and the Jungle Cruise. Did it really exist?

The Tiki Room River

Here’s the thing. Even today, there really is a river in front of the Enchanted Tiki Room. Like all Magic Kingdom Rivers, it has been encroached upon by time. The Magic Carpets reconfigured the entire plaza in front of it. The Jack Sparrow interactive pirate adventure has reduced its footprint. But traces of the river remain.

It’s barely a stream now. A lava rock bed. But it’s there, hidden beneath a ton of old growth foliage. You might not realize it, but you even have to cross a bridge to get to the attraction. The river doesn’t go far. Just a small stretch of a few yards in front of the show building, before abruptly terminating at the walkway to Caribbean Plaza.

So the map was right about one thing. There was a river of some kind in front of the Tiki Room.

The Jungle Cruise Connection

If the Tiki Room river existed, then we need to turn our attention to the Jungle Cruise. Judging by that map, it should be just to the left of the queue building and loading dock.

Uh-oh.

The queue building still exists today. The same one from Opening Day. But unfortunately we’ve got a massive problem. Namely, the popularity of the Jungle Cruise.

This ride was (and still is) one of the big E-ticket attractions of the park, and it packed in massive lines in 1971. Remember that giant open Sunshine Tree Plaza in front of Tropical Serenade, before Aladdin’s Magic Carpets moved in? Well it was often jammed with overflow queuing from the Jungle Cruise.

Things got so bad that a second queue building was quickly constructed off to the side, definitely in use by 1974. And it is still in use today. Even though we cannot trust the scale of our caricature maps, this building would appear to inhabit the same space as our Jungle Cruise tributary river.

We prove nothing by this observation. Maybe the construction of the second building had no impact on the route of the tributary whatsoever. Maybe the tributary was originally further west, or was rerouted, or never existed in the first place.

The Pirate Problem

You would not think it should be so hard to prove or disprove the existence of this “lost” Magic Kingdom river. But there are two big factors working against us.

The biggest is the Pirate Problem. Hardcore Disney World fans should be aware that when Magic Kingdom first opened, there was no Pirates of the Caribbean. That ride was left off the plans, in favor of a similar Audio-Animatronic adventure called the Western River Expedition, planned for Frontierland. In fact, the entire Caribbean Plaza that we know today was non-existent in 1971.

But public demand proved to be too overwhelming. How could Magic Kingdom not have the Pirate ride? Plans were quickly drawn up and construction began in earnest. The ride opened in 1973, only two years after the rest of the park.

There is no question that if the river ever did exist, Pirates of the Caribbean is what caused its destruction. This timing means that we only had a window of only a few months for guests to catch a glimpse of the lost Magic Kingdom river before construction took over. Which leads us to the second problem.

The Cost of Pictures

If you’re visiting the park in 1971, you definitely wanted to photograph Tropical Serenade. You were certain to take pictures of the Jungle Cruise. But the weird dead-end spot in between them, where Caribbean Plaza would eventually go? Yeah, nobody was taking pictures of that.

It is fascinating to go on a treasure hunt of early Walt Disney World construction and Opening year photos. Literally all of them cut off right before the spot we want to see. Giant Tiki Room Pagoda, check. Jungle Cruise queue and dock? Check. Roaming Orange Bird, leaky tikis, Sunshine Tree, Steel Drum Bands… Not as frequent, but still gets a check.

But not that unassuming section of a few yards between two of Magic Kingdom’s most beloved attraction.

Maybe this is proof in and of itself. If nobody bothered to photograph that area, then maybe there never was any picturesque little river in the first place. Of course, every picture cost you money back then. It wasn’t the free-for-all digital camera phone universe that we have today. You had precious limited film, and you needed to save it for yet another look at those fiberglass bathing elephants, printed off in photo albums to preserve the memory of your family vacation. Nobody was having fond recollections of a basic stream.

Did The Magic Kingdom River Ever Exist?

Maybe some enterprising searcher will come forward to confirm or deny the river’s existence. We know there are historians out there with access to more source material than we have. But for now, we are content to enjoy the chase, all started from a tiny little fragment of an old map.

In our imagination, the river can take on mythological proportions. Remember that the Jungle Cruise is basically at ground level, but the Tiki Room and the rest of Adventureland is perched at a higher level, built on top of the infamous Magic Kingdom Utilidors.

That means that if it did exist, the river probably had an elevation change. Maybe there was once a beautiful John Hench waterfall, trickling over lava rock, past orchids and waxy bromeliads, through a bamboo forest to the mighty waterway of the World-Famous Jungle Cruise. In the imagination, anything is possible.

Or maybe it was just an over-exuberant brush stroke on some mapmaker’s canvas.

We know what we’re hoping for.