This is supposedly the reason WDW was built. Walt, they say, once heard a report that people on a ride at DL saw I5 start to slow down so they decided to leave the park to avoid the crushing commute. Not exactly somewhere you get lost in the magic.

WDW (fascinating origin story, read it sometime) was built out in the middle of nowhere where people can't see what is going on in the real world. It's the only vacation our family has been on that starts and ends at the airport if you stay on property. In 2008 I think the Dow lost 6% the week we were there and we were gloriously unaware of the fire raging elsewhere. It's all Disney coaches, busses, monorails, and boats to get between your resort and the parks.

Several parks have a "berm": elevated land, tall trees or other obstacles around the park that block your view of the outside world.

Absolutely. Epcot's World Showcase is a great example that even includes an Eiffel Tower behind the wall that can be seen by visitors on the inside.

I thought about weather but there are places in Arizona and Colorado or even Texas that weather would not be a problem. It would almost definitely need to be in the southern half of the US, but I think it could still work.

Most of the US has a "continental climate", with no moderating effect from nearby oceans, so you end up with hot, humid summers, and overcast, biting winters.

So there's a zone of decent climate, where it is far enough north to have just enough freeze days in winter to kill off the worst insects, and far enough south to have a decent selection of perennial landscaping plants.

The northern contour of the zone approximates lines through these cities:

  Pueblo, Colorado
  Kansas City, Kansas/Missouri
  St. Louis, Missouri/Illinois
  Louisville, Kentucky/Indiana
  Cincinnati, Ohio/Kentucky
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The southern contour roughly follows:

  Santa Fe, New Mexico
  Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
  Memphis, Tennessee/Arkansas
  Chattanooga, Tennessee/Georgia

North of that zone, you can't really keep a park open year-round, through the winter, and south of it, the summer months get too brutal for tourist comfort, until you get close enough to the coasts to tame the local climate.

A park near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers would have its pick of 5 different jurisdictions, decent climate, and access to nigh-unlimited water and TVA hydro and nuclear power. And you could reasonably buy up a lot of land cheaply without the locals figuring out who is doing it or why, just as it was done in central Florida.

The flood risk anywhere near the Mississippi River would be unacceptable.

Disney World was built in a swamp. Money and time solve all engineering problems.

How foolish of me! For best results, they'll want to build the 90-foot levee to surround the local airport, power plant, hospital, and resort hotels, too.

http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/con...

I suppose the unacceptable flood risks are why the Mississippi is lined with cities, including Brainerd, St. Cloud, St. Paul/Minneapolis, La Crosse, Dubuque, Quad Cities, Burlington, Quincy, Hannibal, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Cairo, Memphis, Greenville, Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.

That list includes two state capitals.

Clearly, Disney was less worried about the average of 3 major tropical storms per year, or the cat3 or above hurricane every 4 years or so, than he was about the fact that prior to Disney World, only 2% of visitors to Disney Land came from east of the Mississippi River. He needed cheap land, interstate highways, and weather that was generally pleasant [whenever a disaster was not in progress].

If you want to see how much Disney cares about making water its bitch, punch in "28.396, -81.578" on a map. They'd build a 90-foot levee. They'd build a 200-foot levee, if they could put mouse ears on it and charge $150 per day for admission.

I don't know that I'd describe either of those places as "mild" so much as "hot."

The "mild" tag commonly refers to the winters, which is when parks in colder climates have to close.

I don't really feel that is right. A mild climate is one that is neither very hot nor very cold, like, say, that of San Francisco. Calling a subtropical or desert climate mild seems like a stretch.

I believe Temperate is the usual term. Appears to be synonymous person googling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_climate