A Wild Ride at Disney

A buggy tour on a former ranch reveals central Florida's true nature.

There's something great about traveling to a natural area for the first time and being instantly rewarded for your visit. You might get a rush from the beautiful view, or you might easily find the trail you went for. Instant gratification.

For my first visit to Disney Wilderness Preserve, it was like that for me: I saw a sandhill crane sitting on a nest beside the road on the drive in. What a way to begin my visit!

More recently, I went back for a swamp buggy tour of the preserve. Just south of Orlando's tourist buzz, the quiet Disney Wilderness Preserve may bear the Disney name, but it's far from the culture of Mickey Mouse. Visitors usually arrive to hike the 3 trails that lead into scrub and cypress habitats, and to a view of Lake Russell via the Reedy Creek Swamp. But the preserve's buggy tours are another way to explore this land that embodies what central Florida originally looked like.

The tour starts with a 20-minute video in the 4-year-old visitor center classroom that explains how the Disney Wilderness Preserve came to be. Basically, Walt Disney Company used this former ranch as a mitigation area to "make up" for another wetland it destroyed, spending $40 million. The land got preserved, Disney got its mitigation requirement and The Nature Conservancy gets to run the place. The preserve has protected 29,000 acres for the past 10 years.

The tour group was made up of a variety of people, mostly from out of state. We waited for everyone to assemble while sitting in the rocking chairs on the “back porch” of the visitor center. The butterfly garden nearby looked dry and empty of its winged customers, but it still drew our attention. A Canadian woman on the tour with her family wondered aloud if one of the plants was in the same family as another in her yard. Meanwhile, her son and daughter looked around the restroom area for a snake they'd seen go in that direction.

The large, covered buggy was full as we gently bounced off the road past some new grass that volunteer David Siegel pointed out while Sharon Overton, another volunteer, drove. Standing at the front of the buggy, David mentioned that the roadside area had been burned 2 weeks before. Part of the Conservancy's management of the preserve involves restoring the former ranchland to prairie, which David said would then become pine forest, pointing to the line on the horizon where pines met prairie. David said some of those pines had been cleared for Florida scrub jay habitat. The farther down the dirt road we went, the more easily we could see where the old pastureland still was and where the newer native vegetation was taking root.

The dirt road came to an end near a row of houses just outside the preserve property line. David discussed the area's rapid development and the importance of being good neighbors with the community. It turns out, not surprisingly, that most of the preserve's volunteers live close by. (Some of them are also Disney employees.) Although the preserve would like to get rid of all the previous rancher's ditches that unnaturally drain the land and reduce flooding, David pointed out that the proximity of the neighborhood will keep the Conservancy from removing all of the ditches and culverts, especially those near houses.

The land here is naturally wet. Lake Russell is fed by Reedy Creek -- yes, the same Reedy Creek in the Walt Disney World environs. Rain falling on Disney World eventually ends up in Florida Bay via Reedy Creek, then Lake Russell, Lake Kissimmee, Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades.

We followed the dirt road south, paralleling the property line past the houses as David introduced his backpack full of goodies: pine cones, a cow vertebra, laminated before-and-after maps of the preserve and other interesting handouts that we buggy trippers passed around.

Suddenly, someone saw a snake near the road. Going over to the left side of the buggy to look, we saw the snake -- possibly a diamond-back rattlesnake, someone said -- which hid in the tall grass, imperceptible even though only a couple feet away.

Jostling farther down the road, the houses disappeared, and the buggy engine sound startled a great egret. What appeared to be a family of snakes gliding through water on the side of the road caught everyone's attention once again. Snakes must love the preserve!

The buggy turned east down a grassy pathway, where scorched pine tree stumps and logs were proof of the prescribed burning David had mentioned. He pointed out the new growth on the pine trees. It can take 6 to 10 years for a pine tree to reach 6 feet, but then, its growth really spurts quickly, he told us.

While talking about pine trees, David and Sharon missed a turn-off to another part of the preserve. Sharon labored over the wheel, inching the buggy back and forth on the narrow road, driving the left wheels into the oozy mud. Our rigid ride sank off the road and tipped to the left. We all gasped. I thought for sure we'd be on our sides in an instant, covered in mud, and I sat literally on the right edge of my seat as if the buggy were a sailboat I could tack. Although Sharon was a new volunteer and had never driven the buggy before, she managed to get us out of the muck and rolling upright again. Everyone cheered.

By this time, David's microphone battery was dying, and the buggy was on the way back to the visitor center. So we riders just studied the pine- and prairie-filled landscape as we passed it. We came back to the visitor center with a bumpy buggy finish.

As I left the preserve, I saw 3 or 4 brilliantly colored wild turkeys along the road. Instant gratification is a good way to end a visit as well as begin it.

Try It!

The preserve is open daily from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. October through June, and Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 from July through September. Admission is $2 for adults, and $1 for kids 6 to 17 and for Conservancy members.

Two-hour buggy tours run on Sundays at 1:30 p.m. October through June and cost $10 for adults, $5 for kids 6 to 17 and $8 for members.

The preserve is on Scrub Jay Trail in Kissimmee. Take I-4 to County Road 535 and go south. At Poinciana Blvd., turn right and go south for 12 miles. Turn right at Pleasant Hill Road, then almost immediately left on Old Pleasant Hill Road. Pass through a residential area until you see the preserve on the left. For a map, visit The Nature Conservancy Web site. For more information, please call 407-935-0002.