Disney’s Magnolia Golf Course

Disney’s Magnolia Golf Course is the longest of the championship courses run by Walt Disney World Golf, the golf operation of the Walt Disney World Resort in central Florida. It shares a clubhouse with Disney’s Palm Golf Course and the nine-hole Oak Trail, on the grounds of the Shades of Green resort a short distance from the Magic Kingdom. The course gives its address as 1950 West Magnolia Palm Drive, Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830, and OpenStreetMap records the same address; a reverse geocoding of the course’s coordinates places the land in Bay Lake, Orange County. The courses are operated by Arnold Palmer Golf Management under a 20-year agreement signed with Disney in 2011, according to the golf operation.

The Magnolia is a par 72, 36 out and 36 in. The course’s current scorecard lists six sets of tees: Classic at 7,505 yards (rating 76.6, slope 142), Green at 6,965 yards (74.1 and 137), White at 6,574 yards (72.3 and 133), Yellow at 6,146 yards (70.2 and 129 for men, 76.1 and 140 for women), a combined Yellow/Red set at 5,678 yards (67.7 and 124 for men, 73.5 and 134 for women) and Red at 5,200 yards (65.6 and 115 for men, 70.8 and 129 for women). The course says water comes into play on 11 of its 18 holes and describes elevated tees, spacious greens and dozens of sand bunkers. A March 2025 Disney release adds that the course is lined with more than 1,500 magnolia trees.

The card credits the design to Joe Lee, the Florida architect who also laid out the Palm and Disney’s Lake Buena Vista course, and dates it to 1971. A 2025 post on the golf operation’s blog says the Magnolia and the Palm opened on October 1, 1971, the same day as the Magic Kingdom. The same card states that the course was re-imagined by Ken Baker in 2022. Baker is the head golf course designer of One Club Limited, the firm the resort hired for the most extensive redesign in the course’s history.

Fifty years as the Disney tournament’s main stage

From 1971 to 2012 the resort hosted a PGA Tour event every fall, under names that changed with its sponsors, from the Walt Disney World Open Invitational to the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic. A 2017 history post on the golf operation’s blog explains the Magnolia’s place in it. When the three original Joe Lee courses were all in use, players rotated among them for the first three rounds and the final Sunday was always played on the Magnolia. In later years the field rotated between the Magnolia and the Palm for two rounds, and both weekend rounds were played on the Magnolia. From 1974 to 1981 the event was a two-man team competition; otherwise it was individual stroke play.

The roll of winners includes Jack Nicklaus, who won the first three editions from 1971 to 1973, and Tiger Woods, who won in 1996 and 1999. A 2021 PGA Tour article recalls that Nicklaus played the Palm and the Magnolia during those three wins, and that in 1993, after a rain delay, officials set up artificial lighting on the Magnolia’s 18th hole so that Jeff Maggert could finish his final round; he won by three strokes. Wikipedia’s article on the tournament reports that the Magnolia had been lengthened to 7,516 yards to counter the low scores the event had long produced, and that when the tournament moved to the PGA Tour’s Fall Series in 2007, the Golf Channel broadcast only from the Magnolia, with highlights sent in from the Palm. For its last six years the event closed the PGA Tour season, the last chance for players to earn or keep their card. It ended after 2012, when the title sponsor did not renew and no replacement was found.

The PGA Tour article adds a less familiar chapter: in 1975, Charlie Sifford won a playoff on the Magnolia to take the first of five Senior PGA Championships held at the resort. Wikipedia’s list of Senior PGA Championship winners confirms five editions at Walt Disney World, from 1975 to February 1979, won by Sifford, Pete Cooper, Julius Boros, Joe Jimenez and Jack Fleck, without naming the course for each of them. The clubhouse’s Champions Room still honors the winners of the PGA Tour event.

From new bunkers to Grumpy’s Gauntlet

The Magnolia has been reworked twice in the past decade. The first project, which a Disney release dates to 2015, reshaped the bunkers. An undated post on the golf operation’s blog describes a closure of several weeks during which bunker faces were re-sodded, new underground drainage pipes were laid, the old grey sand was replaced with white sand, about 80 trees were removed and some cart paths were repaved. In 2017, according to the PGA Tour article, the course’s best-known feature, the Mickey Mouse-shaped bunker on the par-3 6th, was relined with a concrete system meant to improve drainage and keep the sand in shape.

The second project went much further. In June 2022 the resort and Arnold Palmer Golf Management announced a redesign by Ken Baker of One Club Limited, built by the contractor Heritage Links, with all 18 greens renovated, new bunkers and new tees. Four holes were reconfigured entirely. According to Golf Course Architecture magazine and the resort’s announcement, the 14th went from a par 5 to a par 4 with a new green; the 15th, previously a par 3, was moved and became a long par 5 with a dogleg right; the 16th, still a par 4, was shifted to a new location with a dogleg left; and the 17th went from a par 4 to a par 3 with new tees. A new cart bridge through the woods links the 16th and the 17th. Two PGA Tour players, Gary Woodland and Sergio Garcia, were brought in to try the changes and spoke well of them in the announcement.

The work took longer than first planned. The course reopened on December 12, 2022, with 14 holes, according to reports at the time, and returned as a full 18-hole course in mid-November 2023, according to a Disney news site. Another fan news site reports that work continued through 2024. In March 2025 the resort declared the redesign complete and gave the four rebuilt holes a name, Grumpy’s Gauntlet, after the dwarf from Snow White. The golf operation calls them a test placed near the end of the round and expects them to rank among the most challenging finishing holes in central Florida. Every hole now carries a Disney-themed name on new tee signs, paired with a quote from Walt Disney or Arnold Palmer, and many off-fairway areas were turned into sandy waste areas planted with native grasses and wildflowers, which the course says cuts irrigation and fertilizer use. The course is certified by Audubon International as a Cooperative Wildlife Sanctuary. In May 2026 a statue of Grumpy, about six feet tall and carved in Carrara marble by Walt Disney Imagineering, was installed beside the 14th tee, according to a Disney fan news site.

What the course asks of you

The Magnolia is built for length. At 7,505 yards from the Classic tees it plays more than 650 yards longer than the Palm next door, and its slope of 142 from those tees puts it among the stiffer tests a visitor can book in the Orlando area. Most visitors will play shorter tees: from the White tees, at 6,574 yards, the slope falls to 133, and from the Yellow tees, at 6,146 yards, to 129 for men. Water on 11 holes, large bunkers and the magnolias themselves, which can block recovery shots, make up the rest of the defense.

Here is the card from the course’s own scorecard, with the hole names, the Classic yardage first, the Green, White and Red yardages in brackets, and the men’s stroke index:

• 1st, Seize Your Moment: par 4, 425 yards (411, 397, 289), index 3.
• 2nd, Giving Up is for Rookies: par 4, 420 yards (354, 332, 223), index 13.
• 3rd, Diamond in the Rough: par 3, 163 yards (153, 138, 106), index 15.
• 4th, At World’s End: par 5, 538 yards (509, 483, 365), index 17.
• 5th, The Nice Peaceful Spot: par 4, 495 yards (452, 430, 349), index 1.
• 6th, The Mouse Trap: par 3, 232 yards (206, 171, 109), index 11.
• 7th, Everything the Light Touches: par 4, 420 yards (399, 383, 312), index 7.
• 8th, Adventure is Out There: par 5, 602 yards (567, 532, 465), index 9.
• 9th, The Robber Kitten: par 4, 495 yards (432, 409, 324), index 5.
• 10th, Reach for the Sky: par 5, 526 yards (514, 502, 430), index 6.
• 11th, The Rabbit Hole: par 4, 388 yards (368, 348, 301), index 14.
• 12th, Horizons: par 3, 165 yards (152, 141, 86), index 18.
• 13th, Devil’s Eye: par 4, 387 yards (328, 317, 294), index 16.
• 14th, The Backside of Water: par 4, 514 yards (475, 446, 333), index 2.
• 15th, The Dinglehopper: par 5, 560 yards (534, 510, 406), index 12.
• 16th, An Element of Fun: par 4, 454 yards (437, 419, 321), index 4.
• 17th, The Big Green: par 3, 235 yards (213, 182, 132), index 10.
• 18th, Westview: par 4, 486 yards (461, 434, 355), index 8.

The front nine measures 3,790 yards from the Classic tees and the back nine 3,715. The opening hole sets the tone: a par 4 of 425 yards that the golf operation describes with trees on the left, water on the right and a green that slopes from left to right. The hardest hole on the card comes early, the 5th, a par 4 of 495 yards. The 8th, at 602 yards, is the longest hole on the course, and the 9th, another par 4 of 495 yards, closes a front nine that carries three of the five hardest holes.

The 6th, The Mouse Trap, is the hole every guide singles out. The course describes a slightly elevated green with the Mickey-shaped bunker in front of it, and the tee sign carries Walt Disney’s line about everything having been started by a mouse. The hole runs from 109 yards on the Red tees to 232 on the Classic tees, so the same bunker can mean a short pitch or a long iron.

The back nine opens with a par 5, the 10th, which the course describes as having a wide fairway and an elevated green sloping from back to front. Then comes Grumpy’s Gauntlet. The 14th is the second-hardest hole on the card, a long par 4 that doglegs right past a small pot bunker and a pond beside the green; the course says the elevated green falls away on all four sides, which makes approach shots hard to stop near the flag. The 15th, a par 5 with a dogleg right, has a large waste bunker on the right, bunkers on the left and what the course calls a vastly undulating green. The 16th, a par 4 doglegging left, has two bodies of water on the left and three fairway bunkers on the right, with a multi-tiered green. The 17th, a par 3 of up to 235 yards, has water on both sides, and the course says its green has more severe undulations than any other on the Magnolia. The round ends on the 18th, Westview, a par 4 of 486 yards whose green, according to the course, slopes toward the water on the right and faces the setting sun.

What golfers say

The Magnolia has been open to the public for more than five decades, and it has a large body of online reviews on golf review platforms, travel review sites, booking sites, golf apps and personal golf blogs. The points below summarize what recurs in that material, read in October 2026. They are other people’s opinions, not ours, and we name and quote no one. Much of the older material predates the 2022 to 2025 redesign, and we flag where that matters.

What comes up in its favor

• Condition is the most frequent compliment. Reviewers on golf review platforms and travel review sites often describe the course as well kept, and in a golf app with more than 700 ratings, course condition scores higher than value.
• The challenge is part of the appeal. Some reviewers call the Magnolia the toughest course on Disney property, and app users rate it hard, with fast greens.
• The tournament history is a draw. A 2018 golf travel blog liked the historical signs recalling PGA Tour moments, and reviewers often mention the course’s past as the stage of the Disney event’s final rounds.
• The setting, with magnolias, water and woodland, and the Disney touches, from the Mickey bunker to the themed carts, are often mentioned as part of the experience.
• Staff friendliness earns high marks in the category scores of the main golf review platform.

What comes up against

• Pace of play is the most common complaint. Reviews from 2025 and 2026 on travel review and booking sites describe rounds of more than five hours, and one mentions about five and a half.
• Value is the weakest category in both the golf review platform and the golf app, and many visitors find the greens fee high.
• Experiences with staff are mixed: alongside the praise, some reviewers found the starter or pro shop staff unhelpful or not very friendly.
• Details on the course can disappoint. A July 2026 booking-site review reports ice machines at the comfort stations out of order on a hot day, and the 2018 blog found the driving range limited to mats and the topdressed greens hard to read.
• Walking is not possible: carts are mandatory on the championship courses.

Getting there and playing

The Magnolia is open to the public, not only to guests of Disney hotels. From Interstate 4 or Route 192, follow the signs toward the Magic Kingdom, keep to the far left lane at the Magic Kingdom toll plaza and follow the signs to the Palm, Magnolia and Oak Trail courses at the Shades of Green resort. Every golfer needs photo identification to enter the Shades of Green grounds. Parking is free, and so is passage through the toll plaza on the way. Guests of select Disney resort hotels can ask for a complimentary taxi at the valet or bell desk, and the pro shop can call one for the return; the walkway from Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort has been closed since May 1, 2023, so its guests are directed to the taxi. The course warns that alligators, snakes and other wildlife live around its waterways, and that feeding them is unsafe and illegal.

Tee times can be booked online through the golf operation’s site or by phone with the Golf Master Starter at (407) WDW-GOLF, that is (407) 939-4653. The rates page says day visitors and resort guests can book up to 90 days ahead. Reservations are highly recommended but not required; walk-ups are accommodated when possible, and singles and twosomes have the best chance. No tee time takes more than four players, and larger groups are split. Golfers should arrive at least 30 minutes early, and cancel or reduce their party at least 24 hours ahead to avoid a possible charge.

A GPS cart is included in the greens fee and is required on the Magnolia, two players per cart, and drivers must be at least 16 with a valid license. Disney character-themed four-seat carts let a family stay together, and SoloRider single-rider carts can be arranged for golfers with limited mobility. Golfers who want to walk are pointed to Oak Trail. Babies, toddlers and children who need supervision are not allowed on the course, nor are strollers, wagons or personal carts. Personal coolers are not permitted; each cart has its own cooler, refreshment carts roam the course and Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Deli sits beside the putting green. The Magnolia is a non-metal-spike facility, collared shirts with slacks, shorts or skirts are required, and denim is not allowed.

The clubhouse has locker rooms with showers at no charge, a pro shop that rents TaylorMade clubs and Adidas shoes, a driving range and a practice putting green, and PGA instructors give private lessons for juniors and adults. Next to the clubhouse, The Greatest Green Ever Played is an 18-hole putting course whose hole locations change almost daily. Greens fees vary by season, day and time: the golf operation lists winter, from January 8 to March 21, 2027, as peak season, with reduced rates in fall, spring and summer, and discounts for juniors, Florida residents and some other groups. The actual price for a given day appears only when you search for a tee time on the course’s own rates page. Note that Disney’s Lake Buena Vista course, the third of the original Joe Lee layouts, has been closed for renovation since May 4, 2026.

How we built this page

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location and address, and a reverse geocoding of its coordinates for the municipality; the Walt Disney World Golf page for the Magnolia for the description, tees, ratings, slopes, water hazards, facilities, booking, cart and dress rules and directions; the course’s scorecard for the hole names, yardages, pars, stroke indexes, the design credit and the 2022 date of the redesign; the golf operation’s blog posts of 2017, March 2025 and November 2025 for the tournament format, the opening date, Grumpy’s Gauntlet and the hole descriptions, and an undated post for the 2015 bunker work; Disney’s March 2025 release; Golf Course Architecture magazine and a Disney fan blog, both June 2022, for the redesign plans; a 2021 PGA Tour article for the 1993 lighting, the 1975 Senior PGA Championship and the 2017 bunker work; Wikipedia’s article on the Walt Disney World Golf Classic and its list of Senior PGA Championship winners; Disney fan news sites for the reopening dates and the 2026 statue; Wikidata (Q137382149) for the identifiers; booking sites and a golf app for comparison cards.

Where sources disagree, we say so. The back-tee length is 7,505 yards on the current card and the course page, 7,516 yards in Wikipedia and many older guides, 7,560 yards in Disney’s March 2025 release and a booking site, and one booking site’s quick facts still give 7,190 yards (rating 74.9, slope 136), apparently an old card. The date of the redesign varies with the source: 2022 on the scorecard, 2023 on the course page, 2025 in the golf operation’s own blog, which reflects a project announced in 2022, partly reopened in December 2022, fully reopened in November 2023 and declared complete in March 2025. Hole lengths on the new holes also differ: the golf operation’s blog and Disney’s release give the 15th as 597 yards from the back tees, where the card says 560, and the 14th as 506 where the card says 514; smaller gaps appear on the 1st, 6th, 16th, 17th and 18th. We follow the card, whose totals add up. The course says 11 holes have water, a booking site says 9; booking sites and a 2018 blog count 97 bunkers, the course only says dozens. Every source but two credits Joe Lee alone: one golf review platform also lists Rocky Roquemore, and one booking site credits Arnold Palmer, which nothing else supports.

Some details will age: the ratings, which are revised periodically, the hole yardages on a course that has just been rebuilt, the rate seasons, the Polynesian walkway closure, the Lake Buena Vista renovation and the reviews, read in October 2026. Several review sites refused our requests, so the opinion section relies on what was publicly accessible. Nobody from Panxis has played or visited this course, and this page is no substitute for a round.

The course has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. This page contains no commercial link and earns us no commission. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it. The golf operation’s page on Grumpy’s Gauntlet describes the four rebuilt holes in more detail.

Other courses nearby

Closest to this one in our United States directory:

• Disney’s Palm Golf Course — 1 mi
• Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course — 5 mi
• LPGA International — 62 mi
• Daytona Beach Golf Club — 64 mi