In 2005, Disney officially announced that River Country would be closed permanently. River Country then sat abandoned for 17 years, rotting and gradually being reclaimed by nature.

The "forgotten" water park of Walt Disney World is Disney's River Country. Opened in 1976 as Disney's first water park, it was themed as an "old-fashioned swimming hole" and was located on the shores of Bay Lake near Fort Wilderness. Unlike the high-concept Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach, River Country used a natural filtration system with water drawn directly from the adjacent lake. The park featured rustic slides, a rope swing, and a sandy-bottomed lagoon. However, it closed "indefinitely" in November 2001 and was never reopened, eventually being officially shuttered in 2005. For nearly two decades, the park sat abandoned and overgrown, becoming a legendary site for urban explorers and a source of eerie nostalgia for Disney fans. Much of the site was finally demolished in 2019 to make way for a new resort, Reflections – A Disney Lakeside Lodge, though the project has faced delays. Today, River Country remains a piece of "lost" Disney history, representing a simpler, more natural era of theme park design.