It's no secret--unless you've been bottled up like Aladdin's Genie.

The 25th anniversary of Walt Disney World is in full swing.

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The world's largest birthday cake, the 189-foot-tall Cinderella Castle Cake, glistens in the Florida sun bedecked in candy, frosting and candles. Anniversary-themed parades, musicals and fireworks remind visitors of the magic Walt Disney World has provided visitors during the last quarter century.

It's also no secret that throughout the anniversary celebration, special honors are being bestowed upon return guests, those who have visited the Vacation Kingdom before and have gone back to 'Remember the Magic.'

Yet many of those repeat guests, even diehard WDW fans, might be astounded to learn that secrets abound at Walt Disney World. Secrets above you, below you, literally all around you.

You'd be surprised at how much Disney has hidden from you--just beneath the surface--in order to preserve show elements, maintain operating efficiency and ensure safety, all the while boggling your mind with innovation, imagination and ambience.

Here's another secret. Walt Disney World isn't really 25 years old. On Oct. 1, it turned 26. But like the Castle Cake itself, the scope of the silver anniversary proved to be larger than life so the 25th anniversary celebration was extended until Jan. 31--four months into the 26th anniversary.

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As the silver celebration continues, we now present, in honor of Walt Disney World's 25th anniversary, 25 magical secrets of the Magic Kingdom plus a surprise quiz question. May the magic continue.

1. Strolling down Main Street, you might never guess there's a whole secret world beneath you. That's right, a system of 15-foot-high tunnels called utilidors (for utility corridors) extends beneath the park, connecting most of its seven themed lands and providing access to cast members, delivery people and maintenance crews. The utilidor system forms a ring linking Main Street U.S.A., Adventureland, Liberty Square, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland which connects back to Main Street. An offshoot corridor hooks up to Frontierland, and another straight tunnel makes a clear shot from Main Street straight back to Fantasyland.

2. Actually, the utilidors under the park aren't really tunnels. The nine-acre network of utilidors is built on ground level. Tunnels couldn't be dug in the Lake Buena Vista area--the water table in Florida is so high that any hole dug automatically fills up with water. Thus, the utilidors were erected on the ground and the Magic Kingdom was built on top of them. So when you're traversing the streets of the park, you're actually walking on the second floor.

3. If everything is on the second floor, where did all the ground come from that all the attractions are built on? The Magic Kingdom and the Contemporary, Polynesian and Grand Floridian Beach resorts are located on the shores of the Seven Seas Lagoon. The 172-acre lagoon is a man-made body of water built by Disney to connect to the natural Bay Lake. More than 7 million cubic yards of soil were excavated from the lagoon site when it was dug and used to cover the utilidor system, along with dredgings from the bottom of Bay Lake. The Magic Kingdom was then built onto the newly laid groundwork.

4. Ever wonder why you never see a Tomorrowland astronaut ambling along in Liberty Square or a Frontierland cowboy in Adventureland? Walt Disney was a stickler for preserving show elements and the ambience of each themed land. All Magic Kingdom cast members must use the utilidor system to move around the park instead of walking from land-to-land above ground where guests would see them, destroying the illusion of the themed areas.

5. Ever wonder why you never see a garbage truck near the Magic Kingdom? Built into the ceiling of the utilidors is the Swedish-made AVAC (Automated Vacuum-Assisted Collection) garbage disposal system, huge pneumatic tubes that connect most areas of the park. Garbage from the areas above ground is dropped down these chutes where compressed air whisks it at speeds of up to 60 m.p.h. to a central processing station behind Splash Mountain. If the system gets plugged up, cast members simply drop a rock down the chute and, at 60 m.p.h., it clears the clog right out. But walkways and garbage tubes aren't the only thing in the utilidors. Also down there is the Magic Kingdom's operations headquarters, including costume shop, makeup area, lockers, offices, cafeteria, maintenance systems and computer central, which runs all of the attractions in the park.

6. When the Magic Kingdom opened its doors in 1971, so did its two themed hotels--the Polynesian Village and the Contemporary Resort. At that time, three other themed resorts--Asian, Venetian and Persian--were planned along the monorail ring circling Seven Seas Lagoon. But they were never built. Instead, the Grand Floridian stands on the site where the Asian hotel was to be located. (Talk is that a Mediterranean resort may one day be built where the Venetian hotel was planned--between the Contemporary Resort and the Ticket and Transportation Center.)

7. How did they get Cinderella Castle to look like a huge cake? With 430 gallons of pink paint garnished with foam candies and 1,110 feet of inflatable icing. Inflatable? Yes, as are the candles, gum balls, candy stacks and two LifeSavers turrets. They're all actually heavy-duty balloons. Metal skeletons were slipped over the turrets of the castle, the balloons were attached to these skeletons and then inflated. Foam castle candy was then sprinkled across the surface, including 16 candy stars, 10 candy hearts, 30 lollipops and 50 wall-mounted gumdrops, among others.

8. When it comes to the castle, how tall is tall? Disney uses an architectural device called forced perspective all over the park whereby the scaling of buildings gets smaller the higher up you go. That creates the illusion that a building is taller than it actually is. Although Cinderella Castle may look gigantic, the higher up you go on the castle, the smaller its proportions get, with scaling near the top being almost half lifesize. Take a good close look at the castle, and you'll see the bricks getting smaller and smaller the higher up you go.

9. On the subject of bricks, how many do you think it took to build the castle? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? One hundred thousand? Actually, there are no real bricks in the castle. Six hundred tons of steel form its skeleton, which was then covered with tons of concrete and then layered with fiberglass, which was sculpted to look like bricks.

10. Walk down Main Street to the Liberty Square bridge and on through Frontierland and you'll sporadically see what look like wads of gum flattened on the street. Considering Disney's legendary attention to cleanliness, you know it's not gum. They're actually sensors built into the roadway. All of the parade floats sport antennas that are tracked by these street sensors. This helps people monitoring the parade from computer central under the Magic Kingdom to coordinate the position and spacing of the floats in each parade.

11. During Spectromagic, lighting is severely reduced along the parade route. So just before and after each parade, spotlights that are recessed behind the rooftops of the buildings on Main Street are raised to increase light levels there. These lights are then retracted behind the eaves of the buildings to preserve the flavor of the Main Street U.S.A. architecture. During the day, you'd never know they are there.

12. Speaking of Spectromagic, next time you're on Main Street waiting for the nighttime spectacular, check out the windows of the second-floor apartments and offices lining the street. Some of the windows open and close sporadically as though people inside are trying to hear the parade music. Lights in these rooms occasionally switch on and off to create the illusion that people are living up there. Of course, the only thing alive up there is a Disney 'show element.'

13. By the way, those apartments and offices aren't even real rooms. They're only two to four feet deep. The spaces were created only to provide the illusion of real rooms. Pieces of furniture, lamps and curtains were installed directly behind the windows to make each room look fully furnished. Not!

14. Ever notice the colored concrete Disney uses extensively in the pavement of each themed land? There's blue in Tomorrowland, violet in Fantasyland, red in Frontierland. It's just there to complement the color scheme of each land, right? Gotcha! Kodak and Walt Disney World completed a study and found that light reflecting off colored concrete creates more vivid colors on photographic film. Thus, subjects photographed on the colored concrete will look more vibrant in photos than those posing on natural concrete.

15. While we're talking color--the Disney crew mixes its own paint shades for all of the buildings and attractions in the Magic Kingdom. In order to keep each themed area unique, the specially mixed hues are given names such as 'Fantasyland Red 3' or 'Main Street Blue 2.' The custom-made colors are assigned to those lands and are not used in any other land in the park.

16. What is that abandoned, covered platform located on the moat around Cinderella Castle near the Tomorrowland bridge that just sits empty all the time? It used to be the home of an attraction called the Plaza Swan Boats. Guests could actually board individual, oversize swan boats and ride the moat around Cinderella Castle. The attraction opened in May 1973 and closed in August 1983.

17. While Disney is renowned for keeping its theme parks immaculate, one place in the Magic Kingdom that shouldn't be is the interior of the Haunted Mansion. Again, show element. Special theatrical dust and cobwebs are purposely spread to help create the appropriate setting. But the efficient-as-ever ventilation system in the mansion keeps sucking up all the dust. So Disney trucks it in by the 5-pound bag to keep the mansion appropriately dirty. Legend has it that since the Magic Kingdom opened, enough dust has been hauled in to completely bury the mansion.

18. Keep your eyes on the concrete walkway just before you exit the first iron gate of the Haunted Mansion. You'll spot a diamond engagement ring embedded in the walk. According to legend, that's the ring left behind by Master Gracey's fiance, who committed suicide on the eve of their wedding by hanging herself in the mansion's stretching portrait chamber. That's her in the attic dressed in her bridal gown, her heart pumping brightly. (By the way, Disney recently installed a new, updated bride in the mansion who floats in the air. Check it out--it's cool.)

19. The names you see engraved on the comical gravestones in the cemetery at the entrance of the Haunted Mansion are not imaginary monikers. They belong to actual Disney 'imagineers,' art directors and illusionists who contributed to the design and construction of the original mansion and are now eternally enshrined in the cemetery.

20. The voice of the President Clinton Audio-Animatronics figure in the finale of the Hall of Presidents was actually recorded by President Clinton. He is the only president depicted in the presentation to ever record his voice for use in the attraction.

21. The Presidential Seal etched into the carpeting inside the rotunda of the Hall of Presidents is one of only three such seals that exist in the United States, and it took an act of Congress for Walt Disney World to receive permission to install it. (The other two seals are located in the Oval Office of the White House and at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.)

22. Spend a day walking around the park and at times you'll detect the distinct scent of vanilla. No, it's not coming from some nearby bakery. The scent is manufactured by Disney chemists and pumped into the park at several locations. Seems a study showed the scent of vanilla is particularly pleasing to human olfactory glands.

23. The next time you detect that delicious Toll House chocolate chip cookie smell wafting from the Main Street Bakery, stop inside and see if they're actually baking the cookies. Chances are, they're not. The smell is artificial and, like the vanilla scent, is manufactured by Disney and pumped through a vent on the bakery's eaves.

24. The Magic Kingdom may be 25-plus years old, but the oldest attraction in the park doesn't date back to 1971. In fact, it dates back more than 80 years. No, it's not Cinderella's Golden Carousel, whose horses were carved in 1917. The oldest attraction is the Liberty Belle locomotive on the Walt Disney World Railroad, built in 1915.

25. Ever hear the legend that Cinderella Castle can be dismantled in the event of an approaching hurricane? That's not only a tale, it's a fairy tale. According to imagineers involved in its construction, Cinderella Castle was built to code to withstand hurricane-force winds and can in no way be disassembled.

? Okay, this one's not just a secret--it's a pop quiz question. When the 26th anniversary was reached on Oct. 1, which candle was added to the Castle Cake?

Give up?

None. There have been 26 candles on the Castle Cake ever since it was first decorated, 18 surrounding the castle and eight on the cake. Any sharp-eyed tourist who actually took the time to count could have discovered this all along. Designers of the Castle Cake knew it would be standing well into the 26th anniversary and included that candle in its original design.

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• Released

• Casual

• Single-player

• MINIMUM:
  • OS: 7/8/10
  • Processor: 2 GHz
  • Memory: 2 GB RAM
  • Graphics: 256 MB
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 170 MB available space

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