History of Castaway Cay

Feature Image photo credit: Hazel Kenady https://flic.kr/p/2bqCr2s

Castaway Cay is Disney Cruise Line’s private island. Today, it’s a beach paradise that can only be accessed by Disney cruisers and Disney Cruise Line staff. But what was there before Mickey took over and cleaned things up? Here’s a brief history of Castaway Cay before it was a cruising destination.

A Bahamian island originally called Gorda Cay, Castaway Cay was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 1997 as a 99-year lease from the Bahamian government. Called Gorda (fat) because of its unusually round shape, this 1000-acre island has surprisingly fertile land because it sits behind a reef instead of (more commonly) on top of one.

A satellite map of Castaway Cay, image credit: Google

Pirates on Castaway Cay

Prior to Disney’s purchase, Gorda Cay had a checkered past. First settled in 1783 by loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, it’s rumored to have been a hiding place and rest stop for pirates long before that. This rumor gained credibility when treasure hunters in the 1950s found three gold coins and a 72-pound silver ingot that belonged to the San Pedro. The San Pedro was a ship that belonged to King Philip IV of Spain and sunk (or, seemingly attacked) in 1733.

However, there is plenty of information about the San Pedro. It was part of a flotilla of 21 ships sailing from Cuba to Spain. A hurricane (not Edward Teach) crippled 20 of the ships. The remaining ship salvaged as much of the cargo as possible, refloated the salvageable ships, and burned the destroyed ships. The San Pedro was one of the total loss ships, so no pirate attacks. Today, you can visit and snorkel the San Pedro near the Florida Keys.

But here’s where things get interesting. It took years for the Spanish to clean up the treasure out of the shipwrecks, and they found much more than was on the manifest (evidence of smuggling, if not pirates), and then, how did some of that treasure end up on Gorda Cay? It may not have been a pirate attack, but it could have been pirate scavenging!!!

Drug Smugglers on Castaway Cay

Over the next two hundred years, it was leased as farmland by farmers on neighboring islands and sustained a small village on the southern part of the island. In the 1960s, a Trinidadian businessman named Alvin Tucker purchased 150 acres and began renovating it for tourist purposes. He built the airstrip in the middle of the island in order to allow potential tourists (and building supplies) to have another way of arriving besides boat.

Unfortunately for Tucker, rather than becoming a tourist destination, smugglers and drug runners began using the airstrip frequently and terrorizing the residents. Tucker, fed up with the crime, sold his share of the island to a private firm called Leisure Club. It turns out that Leisure Club was owned by none other than an American drug kingpin named Frank Barber. It’s the source of online gossip as to whether Tucker was aware of the buyer. Did he accidentally sell it to drug smugglers, or did he want his cut of what they already used it for? Either way, Barber began running his entire empire from the island. In 1983, authorities seized $100 million of cocaine from the island and arrested Barber, thus ending the drug trade on the island. Gorda Cay became the property of the Bahamian government.

Disney’s Backstory for Castaway Cay

Given the seedy past of the island, Disney, in true Adventurers fashion, created a separate, fictional backstory for the island. The Disney version is that several adventurers over the last 100 years had shipwrecked (or crash landed) on the island, thus becoming Castaways. However, instead of peril, they found various treasures and artifacts and turned the island into a tourist destination, Castaway Cay. Many of the names of restaurants, bars, play areas, beaches, and other areas of Castaway Cay tie into this lore. If you want to read their version of things, head here. http://www.disneycruiser.info/stateroom/legend_of_castaway_cay.pdf 

But I’ll do my best to explain the lore, especially as it relates to the names of things on the island. I’ll bullet-point them for clarity because it’s a little bit confusing.

Three American explorers and their families set sail in the 1920s to look for fortune in the Bahamas. They ended up shipwrecked on Castaway Cay but were able to thrive.

-the leader, Cecil Chamberlain (or Wormy, for some reason), was looking for the bones of a sperm whale. Hence the Dig Site.

-the Captain, Sandy Morton, and his wife. They apparently built the directional signs on the island.

-Chamberlain’s protégé, Max Profitt, who, as the name suggests, was looking for treasure. He found a sunken 300-year-old Spanish galleon full of treasure (an apparent tie-in to the San Pedro). But, in a change of heart, he decided to stay on the island and share his finds with others. His son, Gil opened the watersports rental place found on the island.

-A Dr. E’lan Vital, MD opened a clinic. His wife Mere opened a shop called She Sells Seashells, but Chamberlain convinced her that moving seashells was harmful to the ecosystem. That’s why the souvenir shop is now called She Sells Seashells Everything Else.

-Grinz Alott was a native on the island that taught Mere about Bahamian culture and helped create a shop dedicated to that along with her everything-but-seashell shop.

-Meanwhile, Max Profitt’s wife was busy educating the children on the island about conservation. Two of her best students were her daughter, Molly, and her friend, Seth. Seth’s dad was the chef on the ship, named Cookie. Thus, Cookie opened Cookies BBQ.

-Cam O’Flage, an Australian island-hopping pilot, crash-landed on the island. Cookie fed him, so in gratitude, he opened the Air Bar that you can find at Serenity Bay. The locals also built the airstrip for him (instead of Alvin Tucker), but then, they shut it down for some reason, probably to explain why you can't get to Castaway Cay by plane. You can still see his plane on the island.

Possibly Cam’s airplane, crash-landed on Castaway. With a painting of a particularly surly duck (Photo cred: 35mmMan https://flic.kr/p/ecC3hB)

-May B. Tamara opened the Post Office. Then she got married to one of Captain Morton’s sons. Then, everyone got involved in preparing the festivities.

So, that’s the shortened version of the Disney backstory for Castaway Cay. It is unnecessarily convoluted but certainly less tawdry and more interesting than the real story. To be cohesive, Disney should explain how Scuttle and Olaf get involved, but I digress.

Here’s Disney’s paper map of Castaway Cay so you can see all the landmarks based on the lore.

Now back to the true history.

Movies Filmed on Castaway Cay

Disney’s first experience with the island was filming the 1984 movie Splash. It was on Castaway Cay (or Gorda Cay at the time) that Tom Hanks first met Daryl Hannah before she traded her voice to a sea witch for legs. I might be getting my mermaid movies mixed up. Castaway Cay was also the filming location for parts of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Perhaps it was during the filming of Splash that Disney first recognized the potential of Gorda Cay.

The Flying Dutchman ghost ship from Pirates of the Caribbean used to sit in the water at Castaway Cay (phot cred: Mike Burton https://flic.kr/p/38Dr9Y)

Disney Purchases Castaway Cay

With the island empty of tourists and drug traffickers, it paved the way for Disney to purchase the island in 1997. Technically, Disney did not pay the Bahamian government for the 99-year lease. Rather, Disney will pay a percentage of earnings over the course of the lease, estimated to eventually total around $100 million (seems like a pretty good deal). Over the next 18 months after the purchase, Disney invested $25 million in the island, building facilities, bringing in 50,000 truckloads of sand and blasting 35-foot-deep channel for ships to use for docking purposes. It opened for business on July 30, 1998, which was also the inaugural sailing of the Disney Magic and the beginning of Disney Cruise Lines.

Does anyone live on Castaway Cay?

The island’s only inhabitants are the 90 or so cast members that manage the facilities. When ships are in dock, the cast members that crew the ship join the team on the island. A few Bahamian natives come by boat to run Bahamian souvenir shops.

Disney has only developed about 55 acres of the 1000-acre island. The extra land might be opportunity to create more experiences in the future, or it may be undeveloped to conserve as much of the wildlife as possible, a priority of the company. Additionally, 70% of Castaway Cay’s power comes from solar energy.

Now, Disney Cruise Line guests can visit Castaway Cay as part of their cruise.

Ready to Cruise?

If you want to visit Castaway Cay, and haven’t booked a cruise yet, consider booking through the Cruise Direct link below. As an affiliate, I’ll earn a commission, and it won’t cost you anything extra.