Disney's Land Purchases in Central Florida

It’s pretty impressive that Disney owns 27,000 acres of land in Central Florida and it’s even more impressive that Disney bought all of this land before anyone knew what was happening. When Disneyland opened in California, the surrounding area quickly became encircled by tacky gift shops and other businesses that attracted tourists. Walt did not like this development and vowed to have more control over his next park.  Walt had seen what happened to other amusement parks like Coney Island that were transformed into gross and sleazy areas not suitable for family entertainment. He wanted to avoid this at all costs and instead build “themed parks” that could instead cater to the audience that he wanted to attract.

So as early as 1960 the Disney team started “Project X” to secretly buy thousands of acres in Central Florida. They set up dozens of shell corporations that would offer to buy land without the owners figuring out who was buying the land. If residents knew what was going on, they would hold out for a higher price and Disney would be forced to pay it. After the Orlando Sentinel broke the story, land prices shot up 1000% and Disney was hit hard by the increase in prices. However, it was too late to stop the purchases and Disney owned a parcel of land twice the size of Manhattan.

Disney wanted the autonomy to make their own building codes and other land-use powers to avoid the conundrum in Disneyland, so they pressed the Florida Legislature to form the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Originally, Disney had proposed that they needed the RCID because they were going to create a centrally-planned city called the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. However, after Walt’s death there was no push to complete this city so the Florida Legislature had been duped into granting Disney this special status. Now Disney has unprecedented authority to offer services like nuclear power that should not be granted to private corporations.

With all this land and the authority to control it, Disney was able to create Walt Disney World just as they wanted to, sans any outside interference. These developments allowed Disney to create a magical land in Florida that is now recognized as one of the greatest attractions in the world.

Sources:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474976719796

http://www.mouseplanet.com/dtp/archive/other/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District

E.P.C.O.T.

Just a quick blog post on this, because if I'm asked to talk about it during class I'll be able to go on for a long time. So as you may have noticed, the title is in all capitals with periods next to each letter, signifying an acronym! That's right, EPCOT isn't some made up word that Imagineers thought sounded cool (although Epcot is). EPCOT stands for Experimental Prototype Community (City) of Tomorrow. Walt's original plan for the Florida Project was to make not only a vacation destination, but a thriving metropolis that would be shown off to the world as they came to see the Magic Kingdom. I'll leave out details of the position of EPCOT and the actual layout of the city until we're in class, but Walt had the ideas and the resources to create his own utopia, and due to his untimely death, that vision was never realized.

Disney Park(ing)

                Well during our last class segment it was decided that I would do some research on the past mottos/themes that the Disney Parks have had over the years. Unfortunately even after scouring the internet for over an hour my results were limited. There does not seem to be a consolidated list almost anywhere but I did manage to find a forum thread which had sentiments similar to Collin’s in that it held a position arguing that in recent years the Disney Corporation has fallen short in this area. While the motto’s or annual themes used to be a huge deal they have become more or less just a marketing ploy that holds very little meaning. To continue my theme from last week I will continue to discuss the runDisney races that are offered including full and half marathons for the serious and amateur runner alike. A special race for girls, the Princess Half-Marathon is only for them and has a more “girly” feel to it while the Expedition Everest Challenge is available to the adventurous type.

                As for the Disney mottos that I have found, the “Give a Day, Get a Day” promotion encourage volunteering by offering a free Disney day to any person who volunteered for a day. This year’s promotion was “One More Day of Magic” in a reference to the extra day we gained for the Leap Year. “What Will You Celebrate?” and “Year of a Million Dreams” are two other themes that we can discuss in class but are essentially explained in themselves. An interesting tidbit I learned was that you can fit the entirety of Disneyland inside of the Magic Kingdom parking lot and still have enough room for 500 cars. Lastly, there are lots named after each of the seven dwarfs except for Doc. The reason being that they wanted to avoid confusion between "Doc" and "Loading Dock".