{"id":145998,"date":"2020-07-10T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=145998"},"modified":"2020-07-10T11:40:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T15:40:13","slug":"walt-disneys-empty-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/07\/10\/walt-disneys-empty-promise\/","title":{"rendered":"Walt Disney\u2019s Empty Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 VIAVAL \/ Adobe Stock.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019ve ever been to Orlando, friend, you\u2019ve been to International Drive. It is the 14.5-mile strip of hotels, restaurants, hotels, time-shares, souvenir shops, lesser theme parks, laser tag emporiums, curio museums, outlet stores, and hotels that\u2019s \u201cas well-known in Boston, England, as it is in Boston, Mass.,\u201d as the line goes. And this is an important point to make. For so very many of the millions of tourists who come to Orlando, this\u2014<\/em>Disney, Universal Studios, I-Drive, all of it\u2014stands in for America itself. \u201cNo matter where you travel in the world, you run into a startling number of people for whom Orlando is America,\u201d John Jeremiah Sullivan has written. \u201cIf you could draw one of those New Yorker <\/em>cartoon maps in your head, of the way the world sees North America, the turrets of the Magic Kingdom would be a full order of scale bigger than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

International Drive is not Orlando\u2019s main thoroughfare\u2014that\u2019d be Interstate 4, which runs parallel to I-Drive\u2014but as International Drive comprises five hundred plus businesses selling everything from digital cameras to golf clubs, weeklong stays to Argentinian steaks, it is far and away the most vital artery when it comes to Orlando\u2019s economic health. This despite the fact that until very recently, I-Drive was nothing but sand, pines, and palmettos. What happened was an attorney turned developer named Finley Hamilton, who went looking for ways to profit from Walt Disney\u2019s 1965 announcement that he would build a huge new theme park southwest of downtown. On April Fools\u2019 Day 1968, Hamilton paid $90,000 for ten acres of scrubland. This patch of nothing was accessible only by dirt road\u2014but Hamilton figured that Disney-bound tourists would spot his new Hilton Inn from the interstate, take the nearest exit, and drive north on the paved road he would build.<\/p>\n

He bought and flipped more acreage along his road in the months preceding Disney World\u2019s opening. \u201cI came up with International Drive,\u201d he later recalled, \u201cbecause it sounded big and important.\u201d Within a few years, I-Drive included a dozen hotels, two dozen restaurants, and four gas stations, most of which were clustered at the road\u2019s two major intersections. Then the nation\u2019s first water park, Wet \u2019n Wild, opened in 1977. Just like that, I-Drive went from a place to sleep and eat to a destination in its own right. Arriving not long after were your Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not!s, your Skull Kingdoms, and the like.<\/p>\n

In short, International Drive has developed into a tacky gauntlet whereby families are stripped of armloads of cash on their way to and from Disney parks. It, like Greater Orlando, is premised upon one thing: Uncle Walt\u2019s sloppy seconds. <\/p>\n

I hopped on the International Drive Trolley at its southern terminus, so very excited to be aboard a motor vehicle. This being Florida, where fixed meanings are prohibited by the spirit if not the letter of the law\u2014the Trolley I boarded was not a trolley <\/em>trolley. It was a bus. A bus done up fancy-like in trolley drag, but a bus nonetheless, with slatted wood benches, interior lights sculpted to resemble gas lamps, and a whole honking gaggle of Europeans. Europeans slung with water-bladder-esque purses on the thinnest of straps; Europeans smoking unfiltered cigarettes; Europeans wearing capris hemmed at inspired lengths. Together we rode from South I-Drive to SeaWorld, where the Continental children oooo<\/em>ed at the expanse of parked cars glinting in the sun. We passed an empty municipal bus, which led me to speculate: I bet this is the most used public transit route in the state<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We gathered more passengers outside an outlet mall. Their wrists were braceleted with the woven cardboard handles of upscale shopping bags; their smiles communicated the bliss of completion. We accelerated past the noodly, Lovecraftian slidescape of Wet \u2019n Wild. Someone dinged the ding for WonderWorks.<\/p>\n

In terms of gross economic power, the tourism industry is in the uppermost tier along with energy, finance, and agriculture. Worldwide, it generates $3 billion in business every single day<\/em>. If frequent flyer miles were a currency, it\u2019d be one of the most valuable on the planet. Why shouldn\u2019t <\/em>tourism have its own city the way oil has Abu Dhabi and film has Los Angeles?<\/p>\n

Orlando is tourism\u2019s pantomime capital. But that\u2019s not all due to Disney. Contrary to Uncle Walt\u2019s founding myth, roadside attractions and theme parks had been dotting city and state long before his arrival. It\u2019s just that their theme was, well, \u201cFlorida.\u201d Sunken Gardens and Jungle Gardens dazzled Depression-weary Americans with imported grugru palms, Madagascar screw pines, and the greatest concentration of orchids in North America. Silver Springs, Cypress Gardens, and Weeki Wachee Springs took a similar tack\u2014\u201cCome marvel at Florida\u2019s splendor!\u201d\u2014while adding canny advertising and gimmicks like alligator wrestling to the mix. These \u201cnatural\u201d attractions were equal parts organic phenomena and human cultivation. Their grounds had been processed and \u201cimproved,\u201d just like the canned and sprayable foodstuffs then appearing on supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n

This was midcentury, when a Florida vacation was seen as a marker of middle-class status. What\u2019s more, a Florida vacation underscored one\u2019s support of and participation in the American way of life. You drove your new car to new national wonders like Marineland, where intrepid scientists had trained bottlenose dolphins to perform tricks, and in exchange for your hard-earned money you got the sense that you were combating global communism.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, the superhighways were snaking their way into the peninsula. The interstate program\u2014the most expensive and elaborate public works program of all time, mind\u2014was at once a Keynesian economic driver and a geographic equalizer. The impeccable government roads stretched down the Gulf Coast, along the Atlantic coast, and across the gaps in between, buttressing Florida\u2019s sky-high growth like a trellis around a sprout. Tourists no longer had to rely on railroads, bus schedules, or dicey Southern byways while traveling to the Sunshine State. Now, millions of them could pick up and go whenever the mood struck. They could chauffeur their families to difference <\/em>within a matter of hours, riding the interstates the way aristocrats had ridden Henry Flagler\u2019s trains a generation prior.<\/p>\n

This democratization of travel was precisely what Walt Disney observed on November 22, 1963, when he flew over Orlando in a private plane, assessing the area\u2019s potential for his Disney World project. He looked down and saw Interstate 4 intersecting with Florida\u2019s Turnpike, both roads teeming with fast-moving traffic. Not far away from this hub, he eyed a vast stretch of virgin swamp. \u201cThis is it!\u201d Disney exclaimed over the roar of engines.<\/p>\n

With such a combination of highways and undeveloped land, Disney could build his dreamed-of tourist mecca\u2014America\u2019s \u201ctotal destination resort,\u201d as his planners referred to it. He bought up 27,000 acres, anonymously and piecemeal, from Central Florida farmers, ranchers, and rural landholders. For $200 per acre, owners were more than happy to sell to one of the five dummy corporations orchestrating Disney\u2019s clandestine \u201cProject X.\u201d In time, the locals noticed that the ground was shifting beneath their feet. Rumors ran rampant as to who or what was purchasing southwest Orlando. In October 1965, one headline in the Sentinel <\/em>read: \u201cWe Say \u2018Mystery\u2019 Industry Is Disney.\u201d A year later, Uncle Walt officially announced his plans for a \u201cbigger and better\u201d version of Disneyland in Florida. The Associated Press crowned him \u201cthe most celebrated visitor since Ponce de Leon.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Disney saga unfolded, many of Florida\u2019s established attractions were being bled dry by the new interstates, which bypassed their locations along the old roads. Rainbow Springs, Sanlando Springs, Dog Land, Everglades Tropical Gardens, Florida Reptile Land, the Waite\u2019s Bird Farm\u2014they died off. Frog City, Sunshine Springs and Gardens, Atomic Tunnel, Shark World, Bongoland, and\u2014alas\u2014Midget City, too, went under. Times were tough in the early sixties. Perhaps this explains why Disney\u2019s announcement sounded like a godsend to these beleaguered mom-and-pop enterprises. \u201cAnyone who is going to spend $100 million nearby is good, and a good thing,\u201d the owner of Cypress Gardens was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n

And he was terrifically wrong. About his own prospects, but also about the size of the investment. Disney promised more than $600 million. He was going to build a Magic Kingdom five times larger than the one he\u2019d created in California. He also vowed to construct a rapid transit system as well as a thousand-acre industrial park and a jetport. \u201cBut the most exciting and by far the most important part of our Florida project\u2014in fact, the heart of everything we\u2019ll be doing in Disney World,\u201d Disney said in a promotional film, \u201cwill be our Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We\u2019ll call it Epcot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disney claimed that this model city would \u201ctake its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And Epcot will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? Like the Spaniards and Flagler before him, Disney was taking his second chance in Florida. His <\/em>grand design\u2014the reason why he <\/em>was clearing forests, draining wetlands, remaking the place in his image\u2014was to fashion his <\/em>idea of utopia. \u201cI don\u2019t believe there\u2019s a challenge anywhere in the world that\u2019s more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities,\u201d he said. \u201cBut where do we begin\u2014how do we start answering this great challenge? Well, we\u2019re convinced we must start with the public need. And the need is not just for curing the old ills of old cities. We think the need is for starting from scratch on virgin land and building a special kind of new community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way Disney sold it, Epcot would be a working community of twenty thousand. \u201cIt will never cease to be a living blueprint of the future, where people actually live a life they can\u2019t find anywhere else in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything in Epcot will be dedicated to the happiness of the people who will live, work, and play here.\u201d The idea was to build high-density apartments surrounding a business center; beyond that would be a greenbelt and recreation area; the outermost rings would be low-density residential streets. There\u2019d be \u201cplaygrounds, churches and schools \u2026 distinctive neighborhoods \u2026 and footpaths for children going to school\u201d in Disney\u2019s proposed utopia. A multimodal transportation system incorporating surface trains, a monorail, and a \u201cwebway people mover\u201d would render automobiles unnecessary, \u00e0 la Seaside.<\/p>\n

Then came the rub: \u201cTo accomplish our goals for Disney World, we must retain control and develop all the land ourselves.\u201d Disney demanded municipal bonding authority, three highway interchanges, and the creation of two municipalities together with an autonomous political district controlled by the company. In effect, Disney wanted his own corporate-controlled state within the state. \u201cA sort of Vatican with mouse ears,\u201d the historian Richard Foglesong termed it. In return, Florida would receive a perpetual stream of visitors, more sales- and gasoline-tax revenue, a long boom in construction and service jobs. \u201cYou people here in Florida have one of the key roles to play in making Epcot come to life,\u201d Disney inveigled, like a true confidence artist. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s really up to you whether this project gets off the ground at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the people of Florida bit.<\/p>\n

Though Disney wouldn\u2019t live to see it, he was granted his Reedy Creek Improvement District, which is still \u201cgoverned\u201d by a supervisory board \u201celected\u201d by the landowners\u2014i.e., the Walt Disney Company. As described by a former head executive, Reedy Creek \u201cgave us all the powers of the two counties in which we sit to the exclusion of their exercising any powers, and of course it let us issue bonds. We could do anything the city or county could do. The only powers that still reside on us from outside are the taxing power of Orange County, the sales tax of the state, and the inspection of elevators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reedy Creek handles its own planning and zoning. It lays out roads and sewer lines, licenses the sale of alcoholic beverages. Building codes? Psh, Reedy Creek employs the building inspectors<\/em>. It employs its own fire department. Contracts its own eight-hundred-member security force. Technically, it is within Disney\u2019s rights to build an airport and a nuclear power plant within the Improvement District, if Disney so desires.<\/p>\n

But that whole utopian city thing? The enticement that ultimately sealed the deal for the people of Florida? It was all a ruse. The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was just another theme park. And though more than fifty-five thousand people work in the Reedy Creek Improvement District by day; and though more than a hundred thousand patronize its stand-alone restaurants, clubs, and theaters every night\u2014Reedy Creek retains a permanent population of about fifty. Most of whom are company executives or their family members.<\/p>\n

Walt Disney demanded and received the powers of a democratically elected government, and his corporation ducked the botheration of, you know, constituents. Constituents who might challenge Disney\u2019s top-down plans or even vote them out of power. The constitutionality of this arrangement has never been challenged. I suppose this proves no one minds the arrangement all that much. But I tend to think otherwise. I think it proves that the people of Florida are no different from patsies across time and space: too ashamed to admit when we\u2019ve been had.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy turning the state of Florida and its statutes into their enablers,\u201d T.\u2009D. Allman writes, \u201cDisney and his successors pioneered a business model based on public subsidy of private profit coupled with corporate immunity from the laws, regulations, and taxes imposed on people that now increasingly characterizes the economy of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, huh. I guess Disney did <\/em>get his \u201cshowcase for free enterprise\u201d and his utopia both, in the end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kent Russell\u2019s essays have appeared in <\/em>The New Republic, <\/em>Harper\u2019s Magazine, <\/em>GQ, <\/em>n+1, <\/em>The Believer, and <\/em>Grantland. He is the author of <\/em>I Am Sorry to Have Raised a Timid Son. He lives in Brooklyn.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>In the Land of Good Living: A Journey to the Heart of Florida<\/a>,<\/em> by Kent Russell. Copyright \u00a9 2020 by Kent Russell. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For so many of the millions of tourists who come to Orlando, this\u2014Disney, Universal Studios, I-Drive, all of it\u2014stands in for America itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1027,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWalt Disney\u2019s Empty Promise by Kent Russell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For so many of the millions of tourists who come to Orlando, this\u2014Disney, Universal Studios, I-Drive, all of it\u2014stands in for America itself.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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