Walt Disney World as the Lake Buena Vista STOLport. During the early 1970s, scheduled passenger service was operated by Shawnee Airlines with small de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter commuter turboprops which had STOL (short take off and landing) capabilities on flights to Tampa and Orlando. The airport is no longer in operation. When the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, the site employed about 5,500 "cast members". Today, Walt Disney World employs more than 74,000 cast members, spending more than $1.2 billion on payroll and $474 million on benefits each year. The largest single-site employer in the United States, Walt Disney World has
Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom) the ride from 1975 to 1993; FedEx sponsored Space Mountain from 1994 to 2004. Walt Disney originally conceived the idea of a space-themed roller coaster for Disneyland following the success of the Matterhorn Bobsleds, which opened in 1959. However, a number of technological limitations and the Disney company's focus on building what would become Walt Disney World led to the project's postponement in the late 1960s. After the early success of the Magic Kingdom park in the early 1970s, the Disney company started looking to build its first thrill ride at the Magic Kingdom. Disney decided that a duplicate of