So how did it happen? Why did Walt pin his hopes on forlorn Florida ranchlands 3,000 miles from Disneyland and the Disney Studios? In the 1950s, Walt Disney barely had enough money to open his theme park in California, and lacking the funds to buy a buffer zone, he couldn't prevent cheap hotels and tourist traps from setting up shop next door. This time he wanted land. And lots of it.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Walt and his lieutenants embarked on a super secret four year project: they traveled the nation in search of a location that gave them access to a major population center, good highways, a steady climate, and, most importantly, cheap and abundant land. Locations were narrowed down, and in the end Orlando, at the crossroads of Florida, was it.Not Such a Small World
In May 1965, major land transactions were being recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in Osceola County. Two large tracts totalling $1.5 million were sold, and smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotic-sounding companies such as the Latin-American Development and Managers Corporation and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation. Although the sales reports were open to the public, the identity of the buyers were not.
Months passed and more land changed hands. By late June, the Orlando Sentinel reported that more than 27,000 acres had been sold so far. It wasn't until October when Sentinel reporter Emily Bavar broke the story, was it revealed that Walt Disney was the mastermind behind the purchases.
Forcing his hand, Walt and his brother Roy hastily arranged a press conference and, with the governor by their side, admitted the land was theirs and could only hint at what Disney World would do for Florida. But once Walt described the $400 million project and mentioned the few thousand jobs it would create, Florida's government quickly gave Walt permission to establish the autonomous Reedy Creek Improvement District. With this, he could write his own zoning restrictions and building codes and plan his own roads, bridges, hotels, lakes, horse trails, airport, golf courses, night clubs, theaters, and a residential community for his employees.
Walt played a hands-on role in the planning of Disney World, but just over a year a later, in December 1966, he died. As expected, his faithful brother Roy took control and spent the following five years acting as his brother's executor, supervising the construction of the Magic Kingdom, two resort hotels, and a campground. Fittingly, before the park opened on October 1, 1971, Roy changed the name of his brother's park to "Walt" Disney World so the public would forever recognize who was responsible for bringing it to life.
Sadly, Roy passed away three months after the park's opening, but by then Walt Disney World was hitting its stride. For the next decade, it became part of Florida's landscape. Families that once saw Orlando merely as a whistlestop on the way to Miami now made their vacation base at Walt Disney World.
Growing Pains, and a Rebirth
Behind the scenes, however, a few cracks began to appear in the facade. In its first decade, growth was stagnant. There were no new hotels and the Magic Kingdom remained the flagship of the resort. Epcot, Walt's dream for a utopian city, was being built, however, it was no longer Walt's vision but an international conglomeration of gift shops, Circlevision films, and quasi-futuristic displays.
By the time Epcot opened in 1982, construction cost overruns and low attendance created a 19 percent drop in profits. Meanwhile, the Disney Channel and Disney's film division were also plodding along sluggishly. Eventually, in 1984, Michael Eisner came aboard as CEO and company chairman, along with Frank Wells as president and chief financial officer. Their arrival got Disney out of the doldrums.
Disney's unparalleled film catalog was brought out of storage with re-releases in theaters and on video. Jeffrey Katzenberg was put in charge of the Disney Studios, and suddenly the moribund movies the studio had been releasing were replaced by "new classics" such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and the legendary The Lion King. At the theme parks, the release of the new films were supported by movie-themed parades and movie merchandise sold in the gift shops.
The Eisner Era accelerated Disney's -- and Orlando's -- growth. Even after Wells died in a helicopter accident in 1994 and Katzenburg left to form a company with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg, Walt Disney World expanded at a rate unheard of in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1988 Walt Disney World premiered two new resorts: the Grand Floridian and Caribbean Beach. The following year the Disney-MGM Studios theme park opened along with Typhoon Lagoon and Pleasure Island.
Additional resort hotels opened in the early 1990s -- the Yacht and Beach Club, Swan and Dolphin, Port Orleans, Disney's Old Key West and Dixie Landings resorts. By 1995 Walt Disney World had a new wedding pavilion; by 1997 Disney's Wide World of Sports, Downtown Disney West Side, and the Coronado Springs resort opened; and by 1998 the fourth theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom, came to life.
Also arriving in this decade of growth were new rides, parades, golf courses, stage shows, the planned community of Celebration, the Disney cruise lines, the book publishing arm of Hyperion, and Disney's purchase of Miramax Films and ABC television.
And it all started with a man who didn't have the cash to buy a little more land in Anaheim.
Florida Native Gary McKechnie has worked at Walt Disney World as a ferryboat pilot, Jungle Cruise skipper, steam train conductor, doubledecker bus driver, and improv comedian at Epcot.
The preceding was excerpted from Fodor's Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Escape and Orlando and Central Florida 2001
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