Why Disney World doesn't have mosquitoes

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/why-no-mosquitoes-disney-world

by jbonniwell • 5 years ago

262 123 5 years ago

greenmatters.com

m3kw9• 5 years ago

Real world UX

2bitencryption• 5 years ago

Seriously. Everyone probably knows the famous use of forced perspective at Disney. [0]

Or the famous story how on the soft-launch days, Walt would hand children candy at the entrance, then watch how far they walked before they threw the wrapper on the ground. That's where they would place the garbage cans. (Yeah, sounds fanciful enough to be a fable, and perhaps it is. Even if the story is embellished, it definitely reflects the truth of the attention to detail at the Disney parks)

But did you know they do similar "real world UX" magic with music as well?

The different "themed" areas of the parks play different music to match the theme.

As you walk from one themed area to another, the "transition areas" play the treble from the area you are leaving, and the bass for the area you are entering.

Since all the music is in the same key and tempo, it produces a "fading in/out" effect as you travel, and never sounds dissonant or clashes, even though the themes in the different areas are totally different otherwise.

They also do crazy things with smell. In certain areas they emit (very subtle) scents to evoke certain sensations. This is something you may never notice, but once it's mentioned, you'll definitely notice it.

Here's an interesting article that describes some of this: https://factsandfigment.com/2020/05/01/the-illusion-of-fanta...

(that article describes the use of projected/highly directional sound, but not the "fade in/out" technique... I'm trying to find a source for it, maybe someone else can confirm)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_perspective

bingidingi• 5 years ago

yeah it’s a little bleak tbh, the scents are an attempt to influence your memory and make you hungry, and things like magic bands are meant to make you spend as much money as possible by making money more opaque

WalterBright• 5 years ago

watch how far they walked before they threw the wrapper on the ground

I'd throw those kids out of the park. Probably why I could never be Walt Disney :-)

easton• 5 years ago

The two fun facts I’ve always liked about this are:

- They change the texture of the ground in between lands/park areas so when you walk over it you realize something’s different and look around.

- they “invented” a color, Go-Away Green, which emulates the color of grass, and the fire hydrants and other structural stuff are painted with it. Look in a flower bed next time you are there and you’ll see them if you’re careful, but you don’t realize them until you know.

https://insidethemagic.net/2021/04/disney-go-away-green-lp1/

laurent92• 5 years ago

How much of it is fandom (=people admire Disney for it just because it sounds logical and because they like the Disney identity), how much of it is actually making a difference in the children’s mind. Maybe it’s only additional details to keep adults busy with something to notice. Maybe “whatever” would suffice.

We need A/B testing to check whether it increase sales ;)

Have they tried positioning the park West-East vs North-South to check the conversion rates!?

panda88888• 5 years ago

This is really interesting! Thank you for sharing the article. Looking forward to reading it this evening and learn something new.

beerandt2• 5 years ago

Disney World (Florida) was built on what's basically the top floor of a parking garage, so that all infrastructure and access could be "underground" and out of sight.

Which is an interesting enough topic on its own, but one thing this allowed was for trash cans to "bottomless": the trash dropped through to conveyor belts below.

No one has to see trash carts or be grossed out watching a trash can be emptied. It also prevented stinky trash drippings from falling on the hardscapes.

Along came the recycling movement, and Disney was quick to implement single stream trash collection and recycling, sorting all trash for recycling after it was collected.

But people were angry that Disney didn't have visible recycling bins next to garbage cans. They would interrupt employees and give them their recyclables. Employees, knowing it all got sorted anyway, would throw it away. Which made people angrier, even if they were told that everything would be sorted for recycling.

So angry, that Disney had to spend a huge amount of money installing "dummy" recycling cans next to the existing trash cans. Cutting holes through reinforced concrete slabs. Major construction.

These also emptied onto the same single stream garbage collection system, but visitors were pacified.

jimmaswell• 5 years ago

Wow, the Banjo Kazooie music effect in real life.

11thEarlOfMar• 5 years ago

"A clean environment is a pleasure to the senses."

I remember seeing this on a plaque on a porch on Main Street. It had an attribution, which I have forgotten, but could never track down who said it.

In any case, that simple concept permeates the parks and created a benchmark that no other theme park has matched (to my knowledge).

adrianmonk• 5 years ago

As you walk from one themed area to another, the "transition areas" play the treble from the area you are leaving, and the bass for the area you are entering.

That gives new meaning to the term "crossover".

kipple• 5 years ago

No standing water means no ideal spots to lay their eggs. In the ’60s, Potter accomplished this by digging drainage ditches built into the park’s base layers, effectively draining the swamp in its entirety.

Seems like this is the real meat, I wish the article had gone into more detail here.

jdgoesmarching• 5 years ago

Potter did what politicians could never.

zxcvbn4038• 5 years ago

The main gist is to keep the water moving which they do with a combination of levees, aerators, and architecture features designed so water runs off instead of pooling on walkways and buildings.

Then they double down by stocking their water features with fish that particularly like to eat mosquito larvae.

Then the finishing move is using a garlic oil infused spray to drive away the adults.

loloquwowndueo• 5 years ago

Aha, the garlic spray explains why the place is crawling with children but relatively few adults in sight. :)

elihu• 5 years ago

I don't know anything about how Disney does it aside from what I just read in the article, but mosquito fish I think are used in many places to get rid of mosquitoes. Guppies too, sometimes. I'm not sure if either is invasive in Florida.

Mosquito dunks are another approach. Basically, they're floating donut-shaped things that release a bacteria that's specifically harmful to mosquito larvae. That worked really well for me last fall; I had made myself a koi pond, but there weren't any koi for sale at the time and the mosquitoes were only too happy to fill the ecological void.

chrisseaton4• 5 years ago

Lack of standing water, if anyone was wondering.

treein3032• 5 years ago

Yeah not sure about that one: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/07/30/water-par...

yosito• 5 years ago

I just spent a week next to a swamp. I've never seen so many mosquitoes in my life.

seanmcdirmid4• 5 years ago

Try Alaska in the summer. They have mosquitos the size of small birds there. Crazy.

Tempest19814• 5 years ago

And CO2 traps, and hungry chickens and fish.

ketzo• 5 years ago

One of my chores as a kid was clearing out stagnant water in our backyard if it rained; if someone didn’t during peak season, you would immediately notice a massive increase in mosquitoes in the next days.

torgoguys2• 5 years ago

Disney World has mosquitoes. Go to the store near the entrance and they'll even give you complimentary insect repellent. They do a good job of controlling mosquitoes, but they're not miracle workers.

EDIT: it looks like Snopes wrote about this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/disney-world-mosquitoes/

chrisseaton4• 5 years ago

I don't think any reasonable person interpreted this as 'will never see even a single mosquito', come on.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

Being given insect repellent implies the problem is more than one mosquito here and there

teawrecks• 5 years ago

I agree. But it's worth noting that there are anecdotes on the snopes page about people getting "eaten alive" with dozens of bites every time they visit. We already know that mosquitoes are drawn to some people over others for a host of reasons. Maybe these people are the exception. A handful of guests being eaten alive out of millions is virtually zero.

torgoguys2• 5 years ago

No, nobody does. However, there are times you get lots of bites, in stark contrast to the article.

Considering its location smack-dab in the middle of Florida swamp territory, it’s hard to believe that there are no mosquitoes in Disney World, but trust us, it’s true.

DantesKite• 5 years ago

I did...

But I was blindsided by my hatred of mosquitos.

delecti• 5 years ago

I interpreted it exactly that way. It's phrased that way.

treein3032• 5 years ago

Two of the headlines when you look it up on Google are "Why Are There No Mosquitoes at Disney World?" and "This Is Why You Never See Mosquitoes at Disney World."

"No mosquitoes" and "never" are pretty definitive.

masterof02• 5 years ago

The article's title is clickbaity as hell, it should be something like "Why there is less mosquitoes in Disney World than it should" or something like that. "Why Disney World doesn't have mosquitoes" is implying(and wrongfully so) that DW doesn't have mosquitoes. If you want to imply something , then just say it. That meta game of click-baiting people to read your crappy article and then patronizing them because they point it out to you how bad is, is just disgusting and sad.

c3534l• 5 years ago

That's exactly how I interpreted it because that's what they said: they don't have mosquitoes.

Dylan16807• 5 years ago

I could maybe excuse "seeing a single mosquito".

But if supplies of insect repellent are needed, then there's a lot more than that.

Get it to the point where less than 1% of people get bit and we can start to talk about "doesn't have mosquitoes"

nkozyra2• 5 years ago

I'm not even convinced they have fewer than the rest of Florida.

Most metropolitans in Florida spray, and while you'll still get bites it's generally reasonable as long as you're not off in the woods.

I went to Disney last year and got attacked on the way out (the tram station outside of the park) as bad as I've ever been.

Sebb767• 5 years ago

the tram station outside of the park

Which is, as you said, outside the park, so I don't see this anecdote contradicting the original statement. In fact, it even helps to show how much mosquitoes Florida usually has, strengthening the original premise.

H8crilA• 5 years ago

Time to bring up this timeless piece, once again:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

verelo• 5 years ago

I am guessing the point you're making is: this is a PR piece to get people back to Disney World. Would make sense to me, but just clarifying the intent?

ec1096853• 5 years ago

It's not PR. It's bloggers blogging for page views by rewriting timeless classics such as these.

aaron6952• 5 years ago

Disney wages its battles along 86 miles of canals, service roads, firebreaks, power lines, fields and fences. They use the same two pesticides widely sprayed all around Florida that are considered safe by state and federal environmental authorities. Employees spray the same routes twice a day, far exceeding the routines of other mosquito districts in Florida.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2002-09-21-02092...

Plus chickens

jagged-chisel• 5 years ago

Sentinel chickens at that. So fancy.

aaron6952• 5 years ago

They thought they were going to be killing machines that continuously patrol the many sewers and caverns beneath the planet's ruined surface.

Instead they got stuck in a chicken coop waiting to get the West Nile virus.

FartyMcFarter• 5 years ago

I'm surprised that chickens eat mosquitoes efficiently, seeing as they can't fly much.

kbenson2• 5 years ago

All of a sudden I'm having a nostalgia flashback to the early 90's where I'm reading some humorous text doc I'd downloaded from the local BBS regarding the theory of chickens flying at light speed, or something along those lines.

JaimeThompson• 5 years ago

Was this it? https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-chicken-theory-....

klyrs• 5 years ago

My guess is that the chickens go after the larvae, not the flying adults.

spfzero• 5 years ago

The larvae hatch in water, then molt at the surface which takes a while (during which they can not yet fly). That's probably where the chickens find them.

uncomputation• 5 years ago

TL;DR

- All water is kept running

- Sloped buildings and structures drain water

- Carbon dioxide traps (and save the victims for analysis)

- Repellent plants

- Chickens at the park (which way mosquitoes)

floatingatoll• 5 years ago

typo: way->eat

masterof02• 5 years ago

I wonder if the author have been to Disney World. Ever. Getting mosquito bites when you are high or drunk, count too right? One thing is , I went to Orlando once, and don't remember anything(including mosquito bites), and another is "Why a huge attraction park , in the middle of a swamp, in Florida, doesn't have any mosquitoes". What a joke.

CuriousCosmic• 5 years ago

I'm going to have to disagree.

I grew up in Florida and only left in the past few years so I would go to the parks on a regular basis (once or twice a year). Disney World really doesn't have mosquitoes or at least any noticeable quantities. I legitimately can't remember ever noticing a mosquito bite while at Disney or Universal. I've gotten them at Busch Gardens but only in the animal habitat sections of the park.

tintt• 5 years ago

TL;DR – drainage ditches, carbon dioxide traps, roofs that don’t collect rainwater and chickens that eat mosquitoes.

miduil• 5 years ago

Yikes I thought this was going to be about why Walt Disney "World" (so TV productions) have mosquitoes and I already started imagining something along "it was too annoying to draw/animate mosquitos by hand" in my mind.

Reading about the actual article definitively makes much more sense. I think it is important to also acknowledge the history and importance of eradicating mosquitos for the sake of public health. For example, Italy had to deal with malaria at least until Mussolini. Eventually fully eradicating malaria with a combination of draining wetlands and use of insecticides such as the toxic, child-defect-causing DDT.

It's quite funny to see that they are using chickens as a canary method.

EMM_386• 5 years ago

Yikes I thought this was going to be about why Walt Disney "World" (so TV productions)

It is about Walt Disney World.

There are two of them. Disney World and Disney Land. This one is in Florida.

tylersmith• 5 years ago

They thought the article was referring to there being no mosquitoes in the Disney universe stories/canon, but then realized it was about the theme park in Florida.

Tempest19814• 5 years ago

And a few more Disney parks throughout the world.

drcross• 5 years ago

This blog post reads like and advertisment because it claims there's no mosquitoes when of course there is and also no mention of pesticides, when you can be sure there is.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 5 years ago

At least when I lived there, a lot of Orlando had similar mosquito control programs in place. It wasn't that you'd never see a mosquito, but in the relatively close in suburbs, you get much fewer mosquitos than you would otherwise expect. The cities in that area conduct municipal mosquito monitoring and spraying.

cassac• 5 years ago

They may not have mosquitos but boy do they sure have love bugs! When we went the year before covid there were so many at Hollywood studios that we skipped one of the toy story lines. They were literally everywhere.

Animats• 5 years ago

Dr William Gorgas did that for the Panama Canal Zone in 1904. Now that was a big job. 500 square miles of jungle.[1]

[1] https://www.insectweek.co.uk/news/mosquitoes-and-panama-cana...

hcurtiss• 5 years ago

LOL. And insecticides. Lots of them. “ But Disney tries really hard. Crews spray relentlessly. Every morning, every evening.”

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2002-09-21-02092...

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

Really cool. So much we can do with landscaping and building design than just look pretty and it's always a treat to learn sometimes we actually do cool things like this in those areas.

wombatmobile2• 5 years ago

Why Disney World doesn’t have mosquitos

TFA is actually about HOW Disney World purports to not have mosquitos.

WHY Disney World doesn’t want mosquitos is a different issue.

Disney World is some kind of fantasy expression of an ideal world. For the creators, this means an absence of irritants and an abundance of entertainment, sugar, salt, fat, and merch.

The difference between Disney World and the world is that one is an enclave and the other is a world.

The fact that mosquitos exist in both tells us something about the intelligence of species.

seanmcdirmid4• 5 years ago

I went to Disney World recently. We went to Disney Animal Kingdom, and the Asian section was beautiful, you really almost felt like you were in Nepal...except the lack of incense made it obvious it was all fake. Same goes with Epcot, visually everything clicks, but the smells are all missing.

wombatmobile2• 5 years ago

Would mosquitos have enhanced the feeling of authenticity or detracted from it?

realreality2• 5 years ago

What is Epcot supposed to smell like? The future?

closeparen• 5 years ago

I think there is a corollary to the law of headlines. An article that claims to say “why” something is, only explains how. And an article which claims to say “how” something is, only states that it is.

Talanes• 5 years ago

Except that "How Disney World deals with mosquitos" IS an answer to the "Why" in the headline. "Why Disney World Doesn't Want Mosquitos" is a separate question that has a self-evident answer to anyone who has ever been around a mosquito.

the_only_law• 5 years ago

I remember growing up I’d see the mosquitoes. Tons of them and you could tell when they bit you or landed in your arm.

Nowadays though, I feel like I don’t them. They seem invisible or not even there anymore, until I get home and am trying to figure out how they got to my ankles.

judge2020• 5 years ago

Those might not be mosquitos - I've had to deal with gnats when I head to the Georgia coast, and I barely feel them when they bite, so that might be the case for you as well.

throwawayboise2• 5 years ago

They are called "no-see-ums" by the locals.

cinbun8• 5 years ago

How is this hacker news material? The article is poorly written too. It's just paraphrasing a Sun article at best.

polynomial• 5 years ago

Personally I'm still waiting for the promised technology that scans the area for mosquitoes (using computer vision) and then takes them out individually with a low power laser.

The main benefit of this seems to be controlling mosquito populations while not bluntly eradicating all bug life (as other traps do) much of which contributes to a healthy ecosystem.

realreality2• 5 years ago

That will go well with the Amazin Laser

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/amazin-laser/2...

orionblastar• 5 years ago

It should read Disney World has a good mosquito control system. That does not mean it has no mosquitos but they limit the mosquitos by various means.

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

Half-joking: the person that will find an effective, low-cost method to repel mosquitoes will become a very rich person.

Nathan Myhrvold tried, but apparently failed [0].

[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/laser-shooting-mosqu...

quantified• 5 years ago

Not joking. More desired than a better mousetrap almost everywhere.

canuckintime• 5 years ago

'Nathan Myhrvold tried' is relevant to this topic as another example [1] of a submarine story:

Myhrvold, who has a Ph.D. in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, envisioned Intellectual Ventures as a merchant of ideas [patents], not a producer of products.
Not everyone appreciated paying for something IV was just sitting on and not “productizing.” The company has often been accused of being a “patent troll,” squatting under the bridge of innovation demanding its tribute to cross; CNET once called it “the most hated company in tech.” Myhrvold defended his patent business in an article he wrote, headlined “Funding Eureka!,” in the Harvard Business Review in 2010, which just so happened to come out the month after his ted Talk on the Photonic Fence. Maybe that wasn’t a total coincidence: Being known as the guy who shoots down malarial mosquitoes with laser beams is, if nothing else, a good way to change the subject.
The only problem was that if you listened carefully, it became clear that the TED demonstration was a little bit faked. Myhrvold swapped the invisible infrared laser used to fry the bugs in tests at the lab for a cool-looking nonlethal green laser pointer that aimed at a Lucite box of mosquitoes across the stage, targeting them for theoretical death. But, since he knew the audience’s insect bloodlust could not be disappointed, he followed up the nonlethal light show with those slow-motion kill videos of the more carefully stage-managed mosquito target practice filmed at the lab. One of the most vivid images was a close-up of an execution in which the mosquito was, it turns out, glued to a pin, disabling flight, to “control variables.” But the TED talk has now been viewed 847,000 times, and the crowd went wild, so it was easy to get carried away with thinking this was coming out soon. “We didn’t dissuade people from saying it’s ready either,” Makagon admits. “Or communicate with people how long it would take.”
And so, over the last seven years, “it got lots of attention,” says Myhrvold. “Lots of people who would kick the tires a little bit,” without actually deciding to invest in it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28093743

dredmorbius• 5 years ago

9 advertising placements in a single article.

Even with adblock, reading flow of the text is utterly disrupted.

rerbrerb• 5 years ago

Boils down to classic “Disney magic!” — mostly poison.

ChrisArchitect• 5 years ago

anything new here from the mostly 2018 mentalfloss article it is based on? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20368845

Why Disney World doesn't have mosquitoes

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