Wild Kingdom
In Orlando, faux nature clashes with the real thing -- as developers and Disney keep blurring the line.
By JAMES P. STERBA
June 3, 2006; Page A1
In his bright yellow Critter Control truck, Jim Widows patrols downtown Orlando, setting traps for the usual suspects: Dumpster-diving raccoons, squirrels in a condo roof, grub-munching armadillos pillaging a back yard, roof rats in a psychiatrist's attic. Across town at a Marriott resort, his colleague Sean Gainey traps feral cats and opossums in potted shrubbery while vacationers frolic in hot tubs not 30 feet away.
Orlando is one of America's most popular playgrounds. Seven of the 10 most-visited theme parks in North America are here, along with more than 100 smaller "theme" attractions, and hundreds of vacation resorts and hotels. Last year, 48 million visitors came to this virtual world, with its fiberglass mountains, cartoon critters and re-imagined landscapes. But keeping all this artificial nature comfortably faux isn't easy. Real nature keeps trying to crash the party.
For example: The tigers, zebras, giraffes and other imported wildlife at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom are segregated by enclosures and kept in pens and barns at night. Around the 500-acre theme park runs a chain link perimeter fence 8 feet high, topped with three strands of barbed wire and reinforced by six electrified lines. The fence isn't to keep the zoo animals in. It's to keep Florida wildlife out.
"Almost every animal species in Florida comes through the Disney property on a regular basis," says Jim Warneke, who heads a Disney pest-management team of 100 that keeps local critters, from mosquitoes to alligators, from alarming or harming customers. A job well done means visitors can mingle with Disney "cast members" dressed as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other cartoon animals and not be disturbed by the real things.
Nationwide, however, the real things -- wild animals and birds of many species, including such people-shy critters as bears, coyotes, moose, elk, cougars and turkeys -- are multiplying, spreading and learning to live near people. Conflicts are on the rise.
The cause, many people think, is sprawl encroaching into wild habitat. That's true only in part, say wildlife biologists. While sprawl is moving out, the forests in which many species once flourished is moving in, covering over millions of acres of abandoned farmland that once served as a buffer. Also, much modern sprawl is built, unconsciously, to be wildlife-friendly -- what wildlife biologists call "enhanced habitat," with more food, shelter, water, hiding places and protection from predators than exist in the wild.
People, meanwhile, make sprawl even more inviting, wittingly and unwittingly. They're increasingly ignorant of how wild nature works -- what author Richard Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder." Just as they treat pets as children, so to do many treat wild animals as pets, leaving out birdseed and pet food, tossing a cookie to a backyard bear.
That's certainly the case in Orlando, says Ed Carrow, who ran the local franchise of Critter Control Inc., a national wildlife damage-control firm, for 17 years until he sold it to employees last December. Orlando is a giant suburb of two million people sprawling across four counties and adding 925 new residents, on average, per week. The sprawl is every bit as man-made as its theme parks -- a veneer of new buildings, asphalt, sod carpets, installed shrubbery and potted palms over a landscape that is dotted with lakes and laced with swamps.
"It's great habitat," says Mr. Carrow, who has degrees in biology and ecology. The nearby Ocala National Forest, a wild preserve, "can hold maybe 20 raccoons per square mile, max," he says. "I pulled 26 out of one yard in Orlando last year." He explains why:
In the wild, home is a hole in a dead tree. In Orlando, the dead tree has been cut into lumber and used to build a house with easy access to the attic -- a veritable McMansion for raccoons, squirrels and roof rats. Ubiquitous air-conditioners all have drip pans -- a ready source of water. New suburban landscapes tend to have more critter-friendly "edges" -- patches of trees, shrubbery, lawns, fences, roadsides -- than can be found in many wild settings.
Then there are the people. Orlando is a city of newcomers and transients who know more about Amazon rainforests than the nature around them, and even less about the wildlife of Central Florida, Mr. Carrow says.
"In my experience, if you're under 40, you don't have a clue about wildlife," he says. And today's baby boomer retirees, among the first postwar generation to grow up in suburbia and watch nature on TV, aren't much more informed, he says.
One result: Orlando Critter Control grew from a one-truck business grossing $16,000 in 1988 to a 14-truck operation that took in $875,000 last year. Its technicians make about 170 stops a day. Sample charges: initial fee, $199.95; per skunk trapped, $79; per squirrel, $59; dead animal odor charge and removal, $360. Dozens of competitors have sprouted.
Most wildlife conflicts are people problems, says Mr. Widows, a 12-year Critter Control veteran. "Over the years, I've watched raccoons change their behavior, literally, as they lose their fear of man. They've become much more diurnal, wandering around in the daytime." When wildlife conflicts arise, it's usually the people's fault but it's the animal that suffers, he says.
People often befriend the wrong critters -- nonnative species such as feral cats and muscovy ducks that harm native wildlife, he says. To show a visitor how, Mr. Widows pulled up to Lake Lilly, at a suburban park. Retirees and young mothers with strollers walked around the lake. Some tossed bread. Muscovy ducks, an introduced species as troublesome as Canada geese elsewhere, gathered to eat it. But, according to local officials, the lake has "an otter problem."
No animal has been portrayed in nature documentaries as more playfully cute than otters. But they, too, are attracted to an easy meal. Here, when the otters spot the ducks, they sometimes swim up, bound ashore and snatch one. Then they'll proceed to eat the duck in front of horrified retirees, mothers and children.
"We hate the otters," said a retiree named Florence, who wouldn't give her last name. She and her husband, Don, walk around the lake for exercise. "We gave names to every duck. Now, half are dead." Asked if they named the otters, she said, "Yes, but you couldn't print those names."
Critter Control was hired by the town to oust the otters. But even if they do, Mr. Widows says new otters will turn up. "This is a people problem," he says.
It's the same for Florida black bears, a once-threatened but rebounding subspecies of the common black bear. They are turning up in backyards across Central Florida, including Orlando. The state received 2,105 bear-encounter reports, 591 from people reporting them in their garbage last year, while a record 139 bears were killed on Florida highways. Unlike alligators -- which killed three people in Florida in May, compared with only 17 people since 1948 -- Florida black bears have never harmed a Floridian, says Tom Shupe, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission who deals with bear-people conflicts in what he calls the central Florida "hot zone." But it's only a matter of time, and it will be a human's fault, he says.
It's usually young male bears, expelled from the nearby Ocala National Forest by older bruins, that make their way through swamps and turn up in the north suburbs of Orlando. They find food in Dumpsters, garbage cans, compost heaps, grills, pet dishes and bird feeders. Or worse, says Officer Shupe, the homeowner tosses the bear an Oreo (feeding bears is illegal in the state). Either way, the bear quickly learns to associate the smell of humans with food, and the people lose all sense that they are feeding a large, wild, potentially-dangerous creature. The bear gets bolder, and, perhaps, tries to get in the back door. At this point, says Mr. Shupe, people panic and dial 911. The police call him or other state agents.
"We interrogate these people later. They'll admit to illegal feeding. They'll eventually bring out three or four photo albums of their bear," Mr. Shupe says. "Before they get scared, [they say] it's our bear. When they call us, it's 'What are you going to do about your bear?' "
It's the bear that pays for human ignorance, Mr. Shupe says. If the animal is judged to be too aggressive, it's killed on the spot. Otherwise, it is tranquilized, tagged and moved, usually back to the Ocala National Forest. But since it has learned to associate the human scent with food, it usually turns up in some other back yard. If it happens a third time, state policy is to kill the bear.
Other wild critters fare little better. Because leg-hold traps are banned in Florida, Critter Control catches critters alive in cage traps. It relocates healthy raccoons, foxes, opossums, squirrels, otters and other native species, but euthanizes obviously sick animals. To comply with state law, it also euthanizes nonnatives including armadillos, pigeons, rats, mice, muscovy ducks and nonmigrating mallards.
Walt Disney World cage-traps and relocates all potentially troublesome wildlife in line with a company founded on "a concern for wild things and places," says Jacquee Polak, a spokesperson. After all, Disney has specialized in happy endings, and lots of people assume that relocated animals have a nice new life in the wild.
Wildlife relocations are controversial. Some animal-protection groups approve. Others don't.
"It's a popular myth," says the Florida wildlife commission Web site. "It's rare that relocated animals have a good chance of survival, and moving them may even effect the survival of animals in their new 'home.' " Relocated animals are already stressed from their ordeals, often can't find food and shelter in their new environments, fight with and can spread disease to local critters already there, it says.
Many states, including Massachusetts, Nebraska and California, and hundreds of counties outlaw relocation. Many state Audubon societies and other conservation groups also decry the practice.
"Most relocation just isn't humane," says Bob Noonan, editor of Wildlife Control Technology magazine. "It makes people feel good at the expense of the animal."
But Mr. Warneke argues that there is enough space on Disney World property -- at 47 square miles, it's twice the size of Manhattan -- to do that job well. That's because all around the property's four major theme parks, two water parks, 23 resort hotels, a camp ground, shopping malls, parking lots and golf courses is undeveloped scrub woods. About a third of its 30,000 acres has been permanently set aside for preservation. Besides, he says, most animals wandered out of the Disney woods, not the 'burbs, so re-adjustment might not be traumatic.
Mr. Warneke cites the Disney watchword, "environmentality," or managing pest problems in ways that do little or no harm to plants, animals and people. For example, his team practices "integrated pest management" (using "good" insects against "bad") as much as possible, but uses chemical foggers when mosquito populations flare up.
Trying to ensure that all wildlife experiences are happy ones, Mr. Warneke's team works behind the scenes to pre-empt guest encounters with unpredictable and potentially-injurious wild animals. Disney buildings were designed to minimize wildlife access, unlike many Orlando houses. Food isn't allowed to sit in garbage cans or Dumpsters. Signs urge customers not to feed critters -- advice routinely ignored inside and outside Disney.
Disney goes to some extraordinary lengths to avoid seeming to mistreat critters. It has special permits to relocate even invasive species such as armadillos. Florida requires that nonmigrating mallard ducks be killed so they don't breed with native spotted ducks. To get around killing mallards, Disney sterilizes them.
Orlando was a sleepy town before Walt Disney started buying up land in the early 1950s. But many of its swamps had already been drained to make way for cattle ranches and orange groves. By 1954, Disney had acquired some 43 miles of mostly swamp land for $200 an acre and dug 40 miles of canals to drain it. To build its first Florida theme park, Magic Kingdom, which opened in 1971, workers excavated dirt and piled it 12 feet above the surrounding swamp, according to "Married to the Mouse," a 2001 history of Disney's arrival and influence by Richard E. Fogleson, a professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. Disney engineers dug a mile-wide lake lined with new white sand, and created a jungle with 60,000 trees and shrubs imported from around the world.
While not a defender of Disney, Mr. Fogleson notes that much of Florida would be uninhabitable without such similar human "improvements on nature" as swamp drainage, mosquito control and air-conditioning. But the coming of Disney set off an explosion of development across central Florida that continues today. In a seven-county region that includes Orlando, bulldozers carve up undeveloped land at a rate of 62 acres per day, say regional planners. Wild nature is getting more distant.
But one place where people can see real nature is the Disney Wilderness Preserve, a 12,000-acre sanctuary for Florida wildlife, only 15 miles south of the theme parks. Its inhabitants include bald eagles, herons, bobcats, gopher tortoises, alligators, gray foxes, deer, coyotes, wild pigs and an assortment of snakes, turtles and other birds.
In a deal that allowed Disney to drain and build on 446 acres of wetlands adjacent to its theme parks, Disney paid $20 million for an 8,500-acre cattle ranch in 1993 and gave it to the nonprofit Nature Conservancy to manage and restore to wilderness. Another 3,500 acres were added later. In contrast to Disney World, the Nature Conservancy forbids wildlife relocations onto the preserve, says resident biologist Robert Mindick.
Admission to the preserve, which opened in 1995, is $3. It features four miles of trails and offers a swamp buggy tour on weekends. One visitor reported on his blog that the preserve "may not be for everyone" because it lacks "theme park thrills." But glimpsing a wild turkey was fun, he wrote.
The preserve doesn't advertise, but is listed in brochures and on Web sites of area attractions, including Disney Online's "environmentality" site. Still, the real nature of the preserve takes a back seat to the faux nature of the theme parks.
According to Amusement Business magazine, Disney's Orlando theme parks get, on average, 117,260 visitors per day. The Disney Wilderness Preserve, says Mr. Mindick, averages 15 visitors per day.
Write to James P. Sterba at jim.sterba@wsj.com
In Orlando, faux nature clashes with the real thing -- as developers and Disney keep blurring the line.
By JAMES P. STERBA
June 3, 2006; Page A1
In his bright yellow Critter Control truck, Jim Widows patrols downtown Orlando, setting traps for the usual suspects: Dumpster-diving raccoons, squirrels in a condo roof, grub-munching armadillos pillaging a back yard, roof rats in a psychiatrist's attic. Across town at a Marriott resort, his colleague Sean Gainey traps feral cats and opossums in potted shrubbery while vacationers frolic in hot tubs not 30 feet away.
Orlando is one of America's most popular playgrounds. Seven of the 10 most-visited theme parks in North America are here, along with more than 100 smaller "theme" attractions, and hundreds of vacation resorts and hotels. Last year, 48 million visitors came to this virtual world, with its fiberglass mountains, cartoon critters and re-imagined landscapes. But keeping all this artificial nature comfortably faux isn't easy. Real nature keeps trying to crash the party.
For example: The tigers, zebras, giraffes and other imported wildlife at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom are segregated by enclosures and kept in pens and barns at night. Around the 500-acre theme park runs a chain link perimeter fence 8 feet high, topped with three strands of barbed wire and reinforced by six electrified lines. The fence isn't to keep the zoo animals in. It's to keep Florida wildlife out.
"Almost every animal species in Florida comes through the Disney property on a regular basis," says Jim Warneke, who heads a Disney pest-management team of 100 that keeps local critters, from mosquitoes to alligators, from alarming or harming customers. A job well done means visitors can mingle with Disney "cast members" dressed as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other cartoon animals and not be disturbed by the real things.
Nationwide, however, the real things -- wild animals and birds of many species, including such people-shy critters as bears, coyotes, moose, elk, cougars and turkeys -- are multiplying, spreading and learning to live near people. Conflicts are on the rise.
The cause, many people think, is sprawl encroaching into wild habitat. That's true only in part, say wildlife biologists. While sprawl is moving out, the forests in which many species once flourished is moving in, covering over millions of acres of abandoned farmland that once served as a buffer. Also, much modern sprawl is built, unconsciously, to be wildlife-friendly -- what wildlife biologists call "enhanced habitat," with more food, shelter, water, hiding places and protection from predators than exist in the wild.
People, meanwhile, make sprawl even more inviting, wittingly and unwittingly. They're increasingly ignorant of how wild nature works -- what author Richard Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder." Just as they treat pets as children, so to do many treat wild animals as pets, leaving out birdseed and pet food, tossing a cookie to a backyard bear.
That's certainly the case in Orlando, says Ed Carrow, who ran the local franchise of Critter Control Inc., a national wildlife damage-control firm, for 17 years until he sold it to employees last December. Orlando is a giant suburb of two million people sprawling across four counties and adding 925 new residents, on average, per week. The sprawl is every bit as man-made as its theme parks -- a veneer of new buildings, asphalt, sod carpets, installed shrubbery and potted palms over a landscape that is dotted with lakes and laced with swamps.
"It's great habitat," says Mr. Carrow, who has degrees in biology and ecology. The nearby Ocala National Forest, a wild preserve, "can hold maybe 20 raccoons per square mile, max," he says. "I pulled 26 out of one yard in Orlando last year." He explains why:
In the wild, home is a hole in a dead tree. In Orlando, the dead tree has been cut into lumber and used to build a house with easy access to the attic -- a veritable McMansion for raccoons, squirrels and roof rats. Ubiquitous air-conditioners all have drip pans -- a ready source of water. New suburban landscapes tend to have more critter-friendly "edges" -- patches of trees, shrubbery, lawns, fences, roadsides -- than can be found in many wild settings.
Then there are the people. Orlando is a city of newcomers and transients who know more about Amazon rainforests than the nature around them, and even less about the wildlife of Central Florida, Mr. Carrow says.
"In my experience, if you're under 40, you don't have a clue about wildlife," he says. And today's baby boomer retirees, among the first postwar generation to grow up in suburbia and watch nature on TV, aren't much more informed, he says.
One result: Orlando Critter Control grew from a one-truck business grossing $16,000 in 1988 to a 14-truck operation that took in $875,000 last year. Its technicians make about 170 stops a day. Sample charges: initial fee, $199.95; per skunk trapped, $79; per squirrel, $59; dead animal odor charge and removal, $360. Dozens of competitors have sprouted.
Most wildlife conflicts are people problems, says Mr. Widows, a 12-year Critter Control veteran. "Over the years, I've watched raccoons change their behavior, literally, as they lose their fear of man. They've become much more diurnal, wandering around in the daytime." When wildlife conflicts arise, it's usually the people's fault but it's the animal that suffers, he says.
People often befriend the wrong critters -- nonnative species such as feral cats and muscovy ducks that harm native wildlife, he says. To show a visitor how, Mr. Widows pulled up to Lake Lilly, at a suburban park. Retirees and young mothers with strollers walked around the lake. Some tossed bread. Muscovy ducks, an introduced species as troublesome as Canada geese elsewhere, gathered to eat it. But, according to local officials, the lake has "an otter problem."
No animal has been portrayed in nature documentaries as more playfully cute than otters. But they, too, are attracted to an easy meal. Here, when the otters spot the ducks, they sometimes swim up, bound ashore and snatch one. Then they'll proceed to eat the duck in front of horrified retirees, mothers and children.
"We hate the otters," said a retiree named Florence, who wouldn't give her last name. She and her husband, Don, walk around the lake for exercise. "We gave names to every duck. Now, half are dead." Asked if they named the otters, she said, "Yes, but you couldn't print those names."
Critter Control was hired by the town to oust the otters. But even if they do, Mr. Widows says new otters will turn up. "This is a people problem," he says.
It's the same for Florida black bears, a once-threatened but rebounding subspecies of the common black bear. They are turning up in backyards across Central Florida, including Orlando. The state received 2,105 bear-encounter reports, 591 from people reporting them in their garbage last year, while a record 139 bears were killed on Florida highways. Unlike alligators -- which killed three people in Florida in May, compared with only 17 people since 1948 -- Florida black bears have never harmed a Floridian, says Tom Shupe, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission who deals with bear-people conflicts in what he calls the central Florida "hot zone." But it's only a matter of time, and it will be a human's fault, he says.
It's usually young male bears, expelled from the nearby Ocala National Forest by older bruins, that make their way through swamps and turn up in the north suburbs of Orlando. They find food in Dumpsters, garbage cans, compost heaps, grills, pet dishes and bird feeders. Or worse, says Officer Shupe, the homeowner tosses the bear an Oreo (feeding bears is illegal in the state). Either way, the bear quickly learns to associate the smell of humans with food, and the people lose all sense that they are feeding a large, wild, potentially-dangerous creature. The bear gets bolder, and, perhaps, tries to get in the back door. At this point, says Mr. Shupe, people panic and dial 911. The police call him or other state agents.
"We interrogate these people later. They'll admit to illegal feeding. They'll eventually bring out three or four photo albums of their bear," Mr. Shupe says. "Before they get scared, [they say] it's our bear. When they call us, it's 'What are you going to do about your bear?' "
It's the bear that pays for human ignorance, Mr. Shupe says. If the animal is judged to be too aggressive, it's killed on the spot. Otherwise, it is tranquilized, tagged and moved, usually back to the Ocala National Forest. But since it has learned to associate the human scent with food, it usually turns up in some other back yard. If it happens a third time, state policy is to kill the bear.
Other wild critters fare little better. Because leg-hold traps are banned in Florida, Critter Control catches critters alive in cage traps. It relocates healthy raccoons, foxes, opossums, squirrels, otters and other native species, but euthanizes obviously sick animals. To comply with state law, it also euthanizes nonnatives including armadillos, pigeons, rats, mice, muscovy ducks and nonmigrating mallards.
Walt Disney World cage-traps and relocates all potentially troublesome wildlife in line with a company founded on "a concern for wild things and places," says Jacquee Polak, a spokesperson. After all, Disney has specialized in happy endings, and lots of people assume that relocated animals have a nice new life in the wild.
Wildlife relocations are controversial. Some animal-protection groups approve. Others don't.
"It's a popular myth," says the Florida wildlife commission Web site. "It's rare that relocated animals have a good chance of survival, and moving them may even effect the survival of animals in their new 'home.' " Relocated animals are already stressed from their ordeals, often can't find food and shelter in their new environments, fight with and can spread disease to local critters already there, it says.
Many states, including Massachusetts, Nebraska and California, and hundreds of counties outlaw relocation. Many state Audubon societies and other conservation groups also decry the practice.
"Most relocation just isn't humane," says Bob Noonan, editor of Wildlife Control Technology magazine. "It makes people feel good at the expense of the animal."
But Mr. Warneke argues that there is enough space on Disney World property -- at 47 square miles, it's twice the size of Manhattan -- to do that job well. That's because all around the property's four major theme parks, two water parks, 23 resort hotels, a camp ground, shopping malls, parking lots and golf courses is undeveloped scrub woods. About a third of its 30,000 acres has been permanently set aside for preservation. Besides, he says, most animals wandered out of the Disney woods, not the 'burbs, so re-adjustment might not be traumatic.
Mr. Warneke cites the Disney watchword, "environmentality," or managing pest problems in ways that do little or no harm to plants, animals and people. For example, his team practices "integrated pest management" (using "good" insects against "bad") as much as possible, but uses chemical foggers when mosquito populations flare up.
Trying to ensure that all wildlife experiences are happy ones, Mr. Warneke's team works behind the scenes to pre-empt guest encounters with unpredictable and potentially-injurious wild animals. Disney buildings were designed to minimize wildlife access, unlike many Orlando houses. Food isn't allowed to sit in garbage cans or Dumpsters. Signs urge customers not to feed critters -- advice routinely ignored inside and outside Disney.
Disney goes to some extraordinary lengths to avoid seeming to mistreat critters. It has special permits to relocate even invasive species such as armadillos. Florida requires that nonmigrating mallard ducks be killed so they don't breed with native spotted ducks. To get around killing mallards, Disney sterilizes them.
Orlando was a sleepy town before Walt Disney started buying up land in the early 1950s. But many of its swamps had already been drained to make way for cattle ranches and orange groves. By 1954, Disney had acquired some 43 miles of mostly swamp land for $200 an acre and dug 40 miles of canals to drain it. To build its first Florida theme park, Magic Kingdom, which opened in 1971, workers excavated dirt and piled it 12 feet above the surrounding swamp, according to "Married to the Mouse," a 2001 history of Disney's arrival and influence by Richard E. Fogleson, a professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. Disney engineers dug a mile-wide lake lined with new white sand, and created a jungle with 60,000 trees and shrubs imported from around the world.
While not a defender of Disney, Mr. Fogleson notes that much of Florida would be uninhabitable without such similar human "improvements on nature" as swamp drainage, mosquito control and air-conditioning. But the coming of Disney set off an explosion of development across central Florida that continues today. In a seven-county region that includes Orlando, bulldozers carve up undeveloped land at a rate of 62 acres per day, say regional planners. Wild nature is getting more distant.
But one place where people can see real nature is the Disney Wilderness Preserve, a 12,000-acre sanctuary for Florida wildlife, only 15 miles south of the theme parks. Its inhabitants include bald eagles, herons, bobcats, gopher tortoises, alligators, gray foxes, deer, coyotes, wild pigs and an assortment of snakes, turtles and other birds.
In a deal that allowed Disney to drain and build on 446 acres of wetlands adjacent to its theme parks, Disney paid $20 million for an 8,500-acre cattle ranch in 1993 and gave it to the nonprofit Nature Conservancy to manage and restore to wilderness. Another 3,500 acres were added later. In contrast to Disney World, the Nature Conservancy forbids wildlife relocations onto the preserve, says resident biologist Robert Mindick.
Admission to the preserve, which opened in 1995, is $3. It features four miles of trails and offers a swamp buggy tour on weekends. One visitor reported on his blog that the preserve "may not be for everyone" because it lacks "theme park thrills." But glimpsing a wild turkey was fun, he wrote.
The preserve doesn't advertise, but is listed in brochures and on Web sites of area attractions, including Disney Online's "environmentality" site. Still, the real nature of the preserve takes a back seat to the faux nature of the theme parks.
According to Amusement Business magazine, Disney's Orlando theme parks get, on average, 117,260 visitors per day. The Disney Wilderness Preserve, says Mr. Mindick, averages 15 visitors per day.
Write to James P. Sterba at jim.sterba@wsj.com
