Are there alligators at Disney World? How many are removed, and how to stay safe

Are there really alligators at Disney World?

Yes, because there are alligators everywhere in Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) estimates about 1.3 million, of every size, living in all 67 of the state's counties. Disney World sits on lakes, canals and wetland, which is exactly where they live.

The question "why will you never see alligators at Disney World" has the answer backwards. You might, and some guests do: in July 2025 a large alligator was caught at Disney's Wilderness Lodge during the Magic Kingdom fireworks.⁵ What keeps sightings rare is that the ones judged a danger are trapped and removed.

How many alligators are removed from Disney property?

WKMG News 6 in Orlando counted them in June 2026, from FWC's Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program records:

• The eight years before 2016 — 23 a year on average
• 2016 — 83
• 2017 — 57
• 2018 to 2025 — 36 a year on average
• January to April 2026 — at least 12

That is at least 414 in the ten years since June 2016, the month a two-year-old was killed by an alligator at the edge of the Seven Seas Lagoon, beside the Grand Floridian. Removals have settled at about half as many again as before 2016.

What did Disney change after 2016?

The shoreline, the signs and the training. WKMG News 6 lists fences and large rock piles along the lake shores, new warning signs about alligators and snakes, and more staff training in reporting wildlife. In 2017 Disney added a lighthouse sculpture at the Grand Floridian for the Lane Thomas Foundation, set up in the child's name.

Wikipedia's account of the lagoon adds gates on the shoreline.

Disney told WKMG it keeps reinforcing how sightings are reported and works closely with FWC to remove or relocate certain wildlife.

What happens to an alligator that is removed?

Under FWC's program it does not go back into the wild. FWC counts an alligator as a nuisance if it is at least 4 feet long and believed to threaten people, pets or property. A contracted trapper removes it, and FWC says nuisance alligators are not relocated.

Its reasons: Florida is already full of alligators, moved ones try to come back, and adding one to another lake causes fights with those already there.

That is where the sources part. The Wilderness Lodge alligator of July 2025 was relocated, and Disney's own statement mentions relocating some wildlife.⁵ FWC's published policy for nuisance alligators is removal.

How do you stay safe from alligators at Disney World?

FWC's advice for anyone near Florida fresh water is short:

• Never feed an alligator, or any wildlife. Feeding teaches them to lose their fear of people.
• Keep your distance from any alligator you see, whatever its size.
• Swim only in designated areas, in daylight. Alligators are most active from dusk to dawn.
• Keep pets on a leash and away from the water's edge.

At Disney that means the pools. Swimming in the Seven Seas Lagoon is not allowed, and Wikipedia gives two reasons: the rental boats, and a water-borne amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, blamed for illness and at least one death. The resort beaches are for sitting on, not wading from.

Keep small children back from the edge of any lake, canal or pond, above all after dark, when FWC says alligators are most active.

To report an alligator that worries you, tell any cast member, or call FWC's Nuisance Alligator Hotline on 866-392-4286.