What DeSantis Did to Disney’s Dream City

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to end a wildly successful half-century experiment in municipal governance.

https://reason.com/video/2022/06/01/the-death-of-walt-disneys-private-dream-city/
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Once upon a time, a man named Walt wanted to build a city—nay, a kingdom—in Florida swampland.

In 1964, the Disney company began secretly purchasing 27,400 acres in small parcels and stitching them together to form a landmass roughly the size of Manhattan. Walt Disney wanted plenty of space to keep the type of tacky tourist shops that encircled Disneyland—plopped in the middle of Anaheim, California—from encroaching on his new kingdom.

"There's enough land here in Central Florida to hold all the ideas and plans we could possibly imagine," Disney said in a filmed presentation that was aired for local lawmakers as part of a bid to convince them that his extraordinary dream required extraordinary powers: Total control over the land so that politics couldn't interfere with Disney World's development.

The centerpiece of Disney's pitch was EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, which a narrator in the presentation describes as a "dynamic, urban center" featuring a "variety of activities found only in metropolitan cities," which would eventually be home to 20,000 residents.

Though he passed away in 1966 before the plan came to fruition, Walt Disney got his wish. The year following his death, local lawmakers approved the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a remarkable experiment in private governance that has thrived for the past 55 years.

Enter Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

"Disney should not run its own government," Florida's governor said at an April 25 press conference. 

In March, Disney CEO Bob Chapek issued an internal memo stating that the company opposed a law that was recently passed in Florida banning public school classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3.

DeSantis, whose office didn't respond to our interview request, reacted by dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District as of June 1, 2023, which would bring this half-century experiment in semi-privatized governance to an end.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller; edited by Danielle Thompson and Weissmueller. 

Photo credits: Paul Hennessy/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Douglas R. Clifford/ZUMA Press/Newscom; https://www.flickr.com/photos/8363028@N08/; Paul Hennessy/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Oliver Tsang/SCMP/Newscom;  Inti Oncon/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Pietro Recchia/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Douglas R. Clifford/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Splash News / Duke Energy/Newscom; Orlando Sentinel File/TNS/Newscom; Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images/Sipa/Newscom; Douglas R. Clifford/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

Music: "Aquarium" by Wolf Samuels via Artlist; "Ganymede" by Yehezkel Raz via Artlist; "Morning Sunbeams" by Yehezkel Raz via Artlist; "Lost on Earth" by Marek Jakubowicz via Artlist; "Ripples" by Tamuz Dekel via Artlist; "Machina" by Jameson Nathan Jones via Artlist; "Signals" by Jameson Nathan Jones via Artlist; "High" by Audiopanther via Artlist; "Distant Worlds" by Theatre of Delays via Artlist; "Leopard's Stalk" by Hans Johnson via Artlist