Discovery Island
by Sam Terito 10.28.21 As anybody in the Disney blogosphere knows, you can't have a Disney blog without a post on Discovery Island. Many a visitor to WDW in the 70's and 80's has a fleeting childhood memory of getting on a boat and going to some island somewhere they saw parrots and other random tropical animals. The place they're likely thinking of was a rather popular attraction for a good while, open from 1974 all the way until a burgeoning new park called Disney's Animal Kingdom quietly took it's place in 1998; closing for good a year later on April 8, 1999. Interestingly enough, the island is one of the few islands on property that isn't man made. From 1900 to 1937, the island was known as Raz Island, named after the family that lived there. In the late 1930s, it was purchased for $800 by a man named Delmar "Radio Nick" Nicholson, who renamed it "Idle Bay Isle" and lived there for 20 years with his wife and pet crane. It was late