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