Most visitors to Walt Disney World (WDW) fly to Central Florida and land at Orlando International Airport (although some fly into Sanford or even Melbourne). From there, they take ground transportation via rental car, ride-sharing, bus, shuttle, or, not yet, but maybe one of these days, maybe even train.
It’s been that way for decades, but did you know that there was another option for the first few years that WDW was open?
There was an airport right on WDW property.
Well, it’s not an actual airport. The original plans were for it to eventually become an airport, but it never got further than an airstrip, which is how it was originally built.
It was called Walt Disney World Airport, Lake Buena Vista Airport and/or Lake Buena Vista STOLport (IATA: DWS). STOL stands for:
Short
Take
Off &
Landing
and the only planes that could fly into/out of it were small commuter turboprop planes that could carry up to 2 or 3 dozen people.
It was mainly used for small, private planes, although the now-defunct Florida-based Shawnee Airlines offered scheduled passenger airline service from McCoy (now Orlando Int’l Airport/MCO) and Tampa International Airport (TPA) for a relatively short period (slightly more than a year).
Passenger service, including private planes, was discontinued by the 1980s and flight operations ended entirely after the no-fly zone over WDW enacted after 9/11.
FUN (possible) FACT! According to Wikipedia, the runway featured a set of grooves, like those on the side of a highway, that played “When You Wish Upon a Star” when driven over at roughly 45 miles per hour.
Here’s some more info about the STOLport that includes some more original footage of it:
This video has footage of what the area looks like nowadays (well, circa 2018, anyway)
And this page has a bit more in-depth information, as well as photos.
After the STOLport was decommissioned, it was paved over with concrete and used for storage and parking, which are its two primary purposes to this day.
I know the STOLport was there because I saw small planes during my first visit to WDW in 1979. However, by my second visit in 1983, I had not seen any more planes there.
I got to see the STOLport “up close and personal” in late 2019 when I was part of a large singing group that performed for a group at the Contemporary Resort Hotel Convention Center. There were well over 100 of us involved, so Disney had us park at the STOLport and then bused us to the convention center so we didn’t take up a bunch of guest parking spots at the hotel.
By that point, I knew what used to be there, so I looked around carefully. Honestly, there wasn’t much to see – just cars, trucks and freight containers on a long, narrow strip. It’s still cool to see, though.
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