Why doesn't Disney World have mosquitoes? It does. Here is how Disney keeps them down

Does Disney World really have no mosquitoes?

No. Disney World has mosquitoes, like everywhere else in central Florida. The University of Florida's medical entomology lab counts about 90 mosquito species living in the state, and the list keeps growing as new ones arrive. The resort sits on lakes, canals and wetland, which is where they breed.

The idea that it has none went viral in June 2021, when a TikTok claiming "there are no mosquitoes at Disney World" passed 1.5 million views, according to Business Insider. Newsweek reported that the same video said Disney sprays 86 miles with insecticide twice a day.

Disney has never claimed either. Its own page says only that "Walt Disney World Resort has an extensive mosquito prevention and monitoring program", and Newsweek noted it was unclear whether Disney had ever announced the details. What makes them rare is that program, and the numbers behind it are in public records.

What does Disney actually do about mosquitoes?

Disney's program watches first and sprays second. In the most recent public record we found, the watching was done by the resort's own local government: the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which Florida renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in February 2023.

Its approved minutes for the annual landowners meeting of 22 May 2019 give the one full year of figures we could find:

• Mosquito traps set — 2,045
• Mosquitoes fully identified — 300,000
• Blood samples taken from sentinel chickens — 2,304
• Linear miles of spray routes across the resort — 120

The minutes say the trap and chicken data "was used to direct the application of chemicals" across those routes. That is targeted spraying where the data shows a problem. It is not the blanket twice-a-day spraying the TikTok described.

We found no newer figures, in the district's 2026 budget or in its 2045 plan.

Why does Disney keep chickens for mosquitoes?

The chickens are there to get bitten, not to eat mosquitoes. Business Insider's 2021 article described Disney's flocks as chickens that eat mosquitoes, and that gets it backwards.

Penn State Extension explains how the system works. Chickens bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus do not get ill. Their immune systems make antibodies and clear the virus.

So a blood test on a caged chicken shows whether infected mosquitoes are biting in that spot, without anyone having to catch one.

Sentinel flocks are standard public-health practice, not a Disney invention: Orange County, next door, found West Nile virus through its own flock in 2024. Disney's version drew 2,304 blood samples in the year to May 2019. When a flock tests positive, the spraying goes there.

Did Disney drain the swamp to get rid of mosquitoes?

Not exactly. Disney built a system to control the water, not to drain it away. The man behind it was William "Joe" Potter, a retired Army major general who had governed the Panama Canal Zone.

D23, Disney's official fan club, says Walt Disney hired him in 1965 and credits him with the drainage canals nicknamed "Joe's ditches". Business Insider gives the year as 1964.

Disney historian Christopher Lucas told the Orlando Sentinel in 2021 that Potter had learned in Panama, where people died of malaria, that standing water breeds mosquitoes. Potter insisted that wherever there was water, it had to be "running off, moving or it's just not sitting there", Lucas said.

The district's own 2045 plan gives the scale today: 56 linear miles of man-made canals and 25 water control structures. Many of the gates open by themselves when the water rises past a set level and close again when it falls. The plan of reclamation was approved in 1966, and most of it was built and working by 1971.

The same plan says the system was designed to keep groundwater at about its natural level while carrying off floodwater. About 42% of the district still lies in the 100-year flood plain, and 6,450 acres of the Reedy Creek flood plain are set aside as conservation land. The swamp is still there.

Disney kept its water moving.

Is it true Disney uses garlic spray, fish and curved roofs?

The garlic, fish and roof claims come from one historian, and Disney has not confirmed any of them. Christopher Lucas told the Orlando Sentinel that Potter shaped the Magic Kingdom's roofs so water never pooled, chose plants that don't hold water, and used a garlic spray too faint for people to smell.

Business Insider, citing Lucas's 2019 interview with Reader's Digest, adds curved buildings and ponds stocked with mosquito-eating fish.

They are plausible, since all of them come back to not letting water sit. But they rest on his word, not on a district record.

One claim you will see repeated is mixed up. Several round-ups say Disney releases parasitic wasps to eat the insects. Disney does raise parasitic wasps, but in the Living with the Land greenhouses at EPCOT.

Disney's own education site says they lay eggs in leafminer larvae to protect the crops. We found no source tying them to mosquitoes.

Will you get bitten by mosquitoes at Disney World?

Probably not often, but it happens. On a WDWMagic forum thread, many regulars said they had rarely or never been bitten across dozens of trips. The ones who had been bitten named Animal Kingdom Lodge after dark, the path from Wilderness Lodge to Fort Wilderness, Port Orleans, Pop Century and Coronado Springs.

One Animal Kingdom Lodge guest said staff told them the area is not sprayed because of the animals. We could not confirm that.

Timing matters more than place. The University of Florida says mosquitoes take about two weeks from egg to adult, so numbers climb about two weeks after heavy rain. Our own 12-year weather record for the resort shows rain on 87% of June days, 94% in July and August, and 84% in September.

That is the stretch to pack repellent for.

What bug spray should you bring to Disney World?

Bring your own EPA-registered repellent. The CDC recommends products with one of these active ingredients: DEET, picaridin, IR3535, oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE), para-menthane-diol (PMD) or 2-undecanone. Two cautions from the CDC:

• Do not use OLE or PMD on children under 3.
• Put sunscreen on first, then repellent.

Disney handed out free repellent at every park and resort from August 2016, during the Zika outbreak, WKMG News 6 reported. Its guest page is still titled "Complimentary Insect Repellent", but the page itself no longer offers any. It only points to the CDC's advice.

Don't count on finding free spray there. Pack your own.