Take a stroll over to digital Walt Disney World over on reddit. Normally a festive little consumerist corner of the internet, now a downtrodden affair melting in tragedy. The concrete house of mouse, notorious for a lack of shade and unhealthy relationship with asphalt, broke cast members, rides, and guests. In other words, the systems designed for a climate of the past did not heed the warning of the displaced Mr. Toad's finale. Hell is, indeed, terrifying. And hot. Very, very hot.

Let's take a step back from that for a minute though. For the uninitiated, what would become Walt Disney World was a detour into something comfortable for a grieving company. Walt's last brain child before he died of lung cancer was largely scrapped for a near carbon copy of the humble Anaheim location. But bigger and transplanted to a sparsely populated swamp. To keep the encrouching businesses far away from "the happiest place on earth" the Magic Kingdom sat a good 10-20 minute drive from every property line. Two hotels, a theme park, and a very forward looking transportation network greeted the first guests. Frankly, it was quite beautiful. And it just felt cool, in a temperature sense. Trees, undisturbed sub tropical forests, rivers and creeks twisting through otherwise multilayered canopies. Canopies thick in a way reminiscent of crunchy peanut butter. So much packed into such little space. It was also an urban planning and transportation triumph for decades.

I admit, I am always impressed when I open plans and cases to show students what is possible in urban design and enginereering. I always point to the trash chutes whisking away your half eaten burger to a compost pile that helps make biofuel for a bus fleet. I marvel with the students at the tens, no, hundreds of thousands of people moving by bus, boat, monorail, train, tram, ski lift gondola, and car. The movement and storage for food, water, and sewage makes even a grizzly general weep over the logistical glory. I never, however, looked at HVAC. I did today.

Today, Lake Buena Vista, the "city" the resort claims, hit nearly 94 F. That's 34C and a few digits for the rest of the world. A humidity above 50, nay above 70. A whopping 85%. A "feels like" temperature of 111 F or 43 C on the asphalt addicted, shadeless, reflective surface that is Main Street, USA. Hotter in the stifling queues of Thunder Mountain. Inescapable in the theaters, showrooms, restaurants, and hotels. The air conditioning, bled into the air in open storefronts and buildings all across the resort, could not keep up. People on reddit complained, expecting compensation for the sweltering temps and bad cooling systems left over from the Eisner years. I read too many comments. Many not capable of coming to grips with just how overwhelmed the climate control system was. Perhaps ignoring the reality of today, and blaming a nameless subsystem somewhere behind a "cast members only" sign was a trauma response to dropping $10,000 on a weeks vacation to a place you could neither go outside in nor sit in a room to escape. I no longer looked at whimsical trash slides under a Pecos Bills. I think of cooling failure and the redditors unable to see, or face, the bigger problem. You can't engineer or complain your way out of an active environmental systems collapse. You also should not rip out all that cooling and fill the landscape with generic skyscraper hotels. Boy does Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon just look like a tragic case of Sketchup Contemporary Style now adays.

You see, Walt Disney World was designed for a world in a climate past. When an event like this was not only rare, but a statistical improbability. You engineered systems around much understood norms. Humidity stays in this range. Temperature that. Metals react in such a way. You stamp the approval and make an air duct. You leave trees off a street because its tough to maintain the sidewalk. You keep the doors to the candy store open because the cool air and the smell invite you to come in and buy. Get out of the heat, a rice krispie treats begs, and indulge. That's all gone. If not gone altogether, today was an indicator that it will be quite soon. If the over engineered everything in Mickey Town couldn't hold up, how screwed are our other systems? Very if the hospitals I know of are any indicator. Where HVAC matters a lot, and where a ten year old system can't filter out fungus anymore because its too humid. But back to theme parks.

I focus on one comment. That the Wilderness Lodge lost all cooling. Angering, how dare they fail, and two free room nights. I want to scream at the absurdity. You could die in such an environment. You can not evaporate your sweat in wet bulb conditions very close to what we saw in WDW today. You can go for a walk from Space Mountain to Splash, and simply die. Even for the in shape, which are few and far between amongst folks debating between another Dole Whip and an abnormally large Turkey leg, the walk is dangerous. But such guests asking for a few nights or a coupon for a $16 jack and coke (yes, that is typed right) aren't entirely off their rocker. I come to empathize a bit. They want compensation for a climate disaster in a way. More people are going to, as well, for everything from light rails failing commuters in Portland, farmers finding their crops rotting quicker. It makes me glad I'm not in insurance. I'm also very glad I don't have to be the 20 something college program intern facing an angry mom of 4 demanding a less melty Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Sandwhich. Both professions have a rather dismal future.

Alas, poor (Disney) World. I knew it, Beehawian.