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." (This is also the name of Banksy's 2015 art exhibition, a fake apocalyptic theme park near Bristol, England.)
Lawless captured ghostly portraits of the once-busy attraction. Take a look.
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River Country in Orange County, Florida was Walt Disney World's first water park.
It is only one of two Disney parks, along with Discovery Island in Orange County, to close permanently. Both parks were left to deteriorate.
Lawless took about 150 photos of the decaying park, he tells Business Insider.
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