Michael Demers

Celebrating What? An Investigation into the Heart of Disney’s Darkness
Michael Demers

Introduction: The Magic of a Magic Kingdom

“Celebration, the Walt Disney Co.’s residential town is so pastel perfect it’s almost surreal…It’s as though it were run by the Wizard of Oz or something.”
Felicia Levine, Absolutely Florida Magazine (1)

What is the allure of the Disney theme park? What is the strange enchantment which draws nearly 60 million people annually to the former orange groves of California and Florida, the earlier beet fields of the Paris outskirts, and the bustle of an already bustling Tokyo? (2)

More intriguing, what is the fascination with the Disney town named Celebration? Why are people willing to pay 20 to 30 percent more than the area norm (3) to live in a community with the Disney tag sewed to its backside? Why are people living in Celebration so willing to sign away their basic rights as homeowners (4), so enthusiastic to, in the words of one Celebration hopeful, “live in an area that looks like it does around EPCOT”? (5)

In the following pages, I will attempt to answer these questions pertinent to Celebration while providing an historical account of just how such a town came to be. It is all, in my view, connected – and therefore an understanding of the Disney lineage and Celebration details is vital in comprehending how Disney has worked this most morbid bit of “Imagineering”.

Part One: The Big Set-Up

“Don’t forget this – it’s the law of the universe that the strong shall survive and the weak must fall by the way, and I don’t give a damn what idealistic plan is cooked up, nothing can change that.”
Walt Disney, to a group of employees during the height of 1940s labor tension (6)

The following list illustrates what I am terming the seven events on the path to Celebration. The events are listed chronologically, though not every event begets the next. I would argue that each event is equally necessary and that while there are likely others, these are the most vital. Removing one of these events from the list would give us a result, or an end-product, very different from the Celebration which exists now.

The first event, or the creation and subsequent success of Disneyland, finds its origins in a California orange grove, specifically Anaheim during the 1950s. On 160 acres, Walt Disney built his Disneyland and soon found himself surrounded by “cheap motels, traffic jams on the Santa Ana freeway, fast food joints and industrial parks”. (7) This being hemmed in and relatively unable to expand would have a direct expression in how much land the Disney company would purchase upon its move to Florida in the 1960s.

The second event on this path is the formation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special piece of legislation enacted between the Disney company and the Florida Legislature in 1965.

After being landlocked by only purchasing 160 acres in California, Walt realized he needed to keep a safe distance from any potential neighbors in the future. To this end, the Disney company purchased 30,000 acres of orange grove and swamp in central Florida. So much land, in fact, that the property fell between two counties: Orange and Osceola. (8)

Wanting to keep Disney not only happy, but growing in central Florida, the state granted Disney complete control over the land which was purchased. This move gave the company power over the roads, building codes, land-use planning, water and power delivery, drainage, waste removal, fire protection and land safety issues. (9)

Having not only this much land, but total control over it, will come to be incredibly attractive to Wall Street corporate raiders in the 1980s, and this fact will have an undeniable impact upon how the Disney company chooses to use 10,000 acres of that space.

The third event, happening at roughly the same time as the formation of Reedy Creek, is the plan Walt Disney created for an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or EPCOT. In a 1965 press conference, Walt reveals his thoughts regarding this futuristic community space:

“The city of tomorrow ought to be a city that caters to the people as a service function…It will be a planned, controlled community; a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In EPCOT there will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees, because everyone will be employed according to their ability. One of our requirements is that the people who live in EPCOT must help keep it alive.” (10)

Walt plans for this community to lie within the land his Reedy Creek Improvement District controls, thus being all the more manageable. However, Walt dies in 1966, and his plans for EPCOT fade into the background. In 1982 a hybrid-EPCOT opens, but this one is a theme park – not at all the Community of Tomorrow Walt envisioned. It would be another 10 years before Walt’s original plans for EPCOT resurface – almost in totality – but this time under the name Celebration.

The fourth event is the creation of Disney World. In 1971 the Magic Kingdom, in many respects the twin to the Disneyland park in Anaheim, opened on a mere 100 of the 30,000 available acres. (11) Here, the fast food chains and hotels were kept at a reasonable distance, and the ability for other Disney theme park spin-offs to populate the area was realized. And realized they were: in time Walt Disney world would incorporate not only the Magic Kingdom, but EPCOT (the theme park, not Walt’s planned community), MGM Studios, Typhoon Lagoon Water Park, Animal Kingdom Theme Park, countless Disney hotels and resorts, a Disney Institute, numerous golf courses, a camp ground, and even a Downtown Disney Marketplace. (12) And all of this with land to spare…

The fifth event, and one which continues to grow, is the introduction of New Urbanism (also called Neotraditionalism) into town planning. Initiated by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk in the town of Seaside, Florida, (13) New Urbanism seeks to “[reengineer] traditional ways of life through pre-selected design and environmental codes” (14) and attempts to “save a sense of community that manifests itself in lots that aren’t so big you don’t see your neighbor, turn-of-the-century houses, front porches, [and] sidewalks on both sides of the street”. (15) The movement is a “new trend in urban design modeled on the close-knit communities that thrived earlier this century, before the car and postwar housing boom carved suburbs into isolated subdivisions”, (16) and is characterized by narrow streets, a walk-able town center, (17) mixed-land use, compact residential and commercial density, pedestrian orientation and Greenfield preservation. (18)

This is, more or less, the form of organization Disney will utilize in Celebration, with some exceptions – minor changing of characteristics, made to increase profitability while at the same time remaining on the cusp of Disneyfied-innovation, better known as “Imagineering”…

Occurring simultaneously with the emergence of New Urbanism was the Wall Street oriented hostile takeover of the Disney group, driven by the company’s financial successes (here designated as event six).

Disneyland attracts 12 million visitors per year, Disneyworld 30 million. Tokyo Disneyland draws 11 million visitors per year, and though Disneyland Paris pales next to these giants, there have still been 60 new Disney theme parks proposed around the globe since 1990. (19) From a real estate profitability standpoint, the Disney company is a global success.

Yet during the 1980s, the most valuable Disney real estate remained in the company’s unused holdings in central Florida. Much of the 30,000 acres in Orlando remained available for use, and as Michael Pollen states, “Part of what made the [Disney] corporation such an attractive takeover target was the vast acreage of undeveloped real estate in Orlando…Developing that land in some way would render Disney that much less attractive to a raider.” (20)

With this strategy in mind, Michael Eisner (in 1984, the newly appointed CEO of Disney) ordered a study of the land holdings in Orlando and deemed that 10,000 acres of it would never be needed by the Disney World Resort. (21) The only question remaining is what to build on that land. The answer did not take long to come to.

The last event on this path, and perhaps the most crucial in Disney’s decision regarding what to build on those 10,000 central Florida acres, concerns increasing Florida growth rates. It has been estimated that 6 million new residents per year will flock to Florida, requiring 120,000 new dwelling units annually. (22) Realizing supply and demand necessitates housing over another theme park, Michael Eisner and the Disney company acted decisively – they would build a residential community inspired by the ideals of Walt’s EPCOT and the New Urbanist movement. They quickly de-annexed the necessary 10,000 acres from the Reedy Creek Improvement district – a move which would send future tax revenue to Osceola County, (23) a decision which not only pleases the county commissioners (prior to this move, the little tax revenue which was generated by the land was first siphoned through Reedy Creek) but also accomplishes something more practical for Disney – complete freedom from the 20,000 potential voters which would come to populate the land. (24)

And Celebration was born.

Part Two: The Town as Enigma

“It represents the next generation of gated communities. Residents will be able to live, work, play and retire without ever having to leave. Just like in the gates of Disney World, you’re in a different sort of reality…where you can blind yourself to some of the real social problems and conflicts that exist.”
Kevin Archer, Professor of Geography, University of South Florida (25)

Understanding the physical characteristics of the town of Celebration, as well as its rules, regulations, organizational structure, etc., is vital toward a comprehension of how Disney has created not only a community, but an allure. The manipulations and movements which characterized the events leading to the birth of Celebration are also found in the creation and maintenance of the town, and will perhaps shed some light on the answers to our original questions.

Celebration officially opened in 1996, (26) and in that time has grown to 2000 residents with a projected population of 20,000 within 15 years. (27) Residences range in price from $575 per month for apartments, to $130,000 for a town house (28) and more than $1 million for an estate home. (29) As mentioned earlier in this text, those amounts are “20 to 30 percent higher than comparably sized properties in other Orlando subdivisions”. (30)

The homes of Celebration are designed in six architectural styles: Victorian, Classical, Colonial Revival, Coastal, Mediterranean and French (31) – all detailed in the Celebration Pattern Book, similar to pattern books common in the early twentieth century (with the exception that the Celebration Pattern Book “mandates everything from tree placement to window size and curtain color”). (32) And in keeping with New Urbanism methodology, the “houses…are set close together along the street to encourage neighbor interaction. Alleys behind houses lead to garages that are out of sight from the street. Sidewalks and bike trails promote a pedestrian-friendly environment.” (33)

Perhaps as homage to the hyper-reality of Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, the interiors of the homes in Celebration more resemble standard suburb dwelling arrangements, which do not merge or relate at all with the architectural styles (or their histories) found on the outside. This idea of false-front architecture, as most prominently displayed inside Disney’s theme parks, is just one example of Disney’s fantasy-as-reality ideology carried over into the town.

At the same time, the apartments in Celebration are located above the shops along the town’s downtown area, Market Street, melded and artificially formed “because the town is supposed to have grown up organically over time… [The planners of Celebration] wanted some [buildings] to look as if they were apartment buildings all along, and others to look like grand houses that were later converted to use as apartments.” (34)

Speaking of that downtown area, or the heart of the New Urbanism community, one can find nearly every convenience and necessity: restaurants, cafés, a bookstore, grocery store, a town hall, library, deli, a two-screen movie theater, a post office, and a dry cleaner – some buildings even designed by renowned architects such as Cesar Pelli, Michael Graves, and Charles Moore.
And once again, some of the downtown attractions prove to be as much fantasy as Cinderella’s castle: the Celebration water tower is a non-functional structure, and the visitor’s center tower (meant to be reminiscent of early survey towers) has no access above the second story.
The town also sports more reality-based amenities, such as a K-12 school, an 18-hole golf course, numerous nature trails, a village park, recreation areas, and a downtown lake. Celebration Place is a 109-acre office park on the outskirts of the community, and the Celebration Health Campus is a comprehensive healthcare, advanced diagnostics and fitness/wellness center.
The school is “state of the art”, in that it incorporates a Disney-sponsored curriculum developed by nationally prominent educators specifically for Celebration. “Among other things, the curriculum clusters children by age group rather than by grade, recasts the role of teachers from sage to group facilitator, and emphasizes self-paced learning.” (35) Disney donated the school’s site (although Osceola County built the facility and pays the staff), but also donated $5 million for program enhancements, such as expanded assessment programs, computer technology, and additional teacher training. And in the event that one were to forget that this is a Disney school, the mascot is a Lion King Simba-esque lion with wings…

If all of this didn’t sound enough like Walt’s hopes for his future city, the town also incorporates an integrated fiber-optic network which links all of the town buildings, houses, offices, hospital and school. Long term goals of the fiber-optic connection include: Doctors at the Celebration Health Campus tracking patients pulse rate or blood pressure via devices connected to the network and the Celebration School connecting students at home to services such as the online school library.

The fiber-optic system not only links the town to itself – it links Celebration to Walt’s ideals of merging technology with the small town characteristics found in his EPCOT fantasy and the country’s interest in a Neotraditionalist town arrangement.

But all of this is not without a price – and not just the monetary price already spoken of. Celebration master planner, Robert Stern, puts it best:

“In a freewheeling capitalist society, you need controls – you can’t have community without them. In the absence of an aristocratic hierarchy, you need firm rules to maintain decorum. I’m convinced these controls are actually liberating to people. It makes them feel their investment is safe. Regimentation can release you.” (36)

In fact, the town’s rulebook, Covenants, Codes and Restrictions (which each homeowner must sign as part of their contract), includes the kind of control one normally equates with that imposed upon Disney theme park employees (or “actors”, as the company refers to them): No one can make the slightest change to their house exterior without first obtaining prior written permission from the company; choice of trees and shrubs is also subject to approval; all visible wall-coverings must be either white or off-white; a resident may hold only one garage sale in any 12-month period; a single political sign, maximum 18x24” in size, may be posted no earlier than 45-days prior to an election. (37)

But the Disney grip does not stop there. The Covenants also guarantee that the town will remain an entity under Disney control for as long as Disney owns a single acre of land within or adjacent to Celebration. (38)

Of course, all this creates a unique situation in that the town of Celebration is, to a very large degree, controlled by Disney – yet the homeowners, whose property was de-annexed by Disney at the outset (as mentioned earlier), have no real control, voting or otherwise, over Disney’s autonomous hold.

And perhaps this was exactly what Walt meant when he spoke of his Community of Tomorrow exhibiting “no voting control”.

Part Three: Selling the Fantasy

“It’s community for sale, a carefully marketed, private version of the small-town values the Republicans claim to represent.”
Tom Vanderbilt, The Nation (39)

All of this brings us back to our original questions. What is the strange allure of this town? Why are people willing to pay more and at the same time have such a degree of freedom taken away to live here? Certainly the Disney name has much to do with the answer. “The fact that you can pay your mortgage every month to the Disney bank will be the height of it, the ultimate experience. And to have your baby born in a Disney maternity ward? Wow!” (40) Admittedly, Craig Wilson states this with a high degree of sarcasm. But this idea is voiced by others, and done so sincerely: “We came here because of the Disney name. With Disney, I have total confidence. If more companies had their approach to customer service, the world would be a better place.” (41) Or, “In other cities, there are just too many things to change in order to make life good. Here everyone has the same opportunity to build a life for their family, and Disney allows this to happen. They try to get rid of all the negatives. If I can’t have a mayor, I’m happy with Disney. I don’t think they will misuse their authority.” (42)

There is something more than a lust for small town America being exhibited here. New Urbanism can explain some things; it can explain the draw and success of other Neotraditionalist communities like Seaside, Florida or Southern Village, North Carolina. But the people who come to Celebration come because of what Disney has created – or because of what Disney leads them to believe they have created.

Part of this exists because of the Disney reputation: impeccably clean theme parks, rigid control of not only employees but even of nature (as evidenced, for example, in the parks horticultural precision), and perhaps most importantly, stability. Disney is a name that’s been around, and doesn’t seem to be fading anytime soon.

So naturally, with this kind of corporate image comes a transferal of these beliefs into the company’s own town. Hence the, “If I could live in an area that looks like it does around EPCOT…” mentality.

Evan McKenzie of the University of Illinois at Chicago states the inherent danger in this kind of mindset, the kind that comes from living in a theme park: “The notion that you can get away from social conflict and crime, that’s an overvalued idea. It’s not possible. It’s escapist and secessionist. It says, ‘I’m going to be leaving America and going into this fantasy kingdom where there is no crime, with only people like me.’ Celebration’s premise is that residents will stroll tree-lined streets to afternoon matinees, waving to their neighbors on front porches along the way.” (43)

Andrew Wood makes a similar statement when he says: “Nostalgia for small-town America [or here, Celebration] rests upon a careful balance of insight and ignorance. Its use in the critique of the modern, antiseptic social structure depends on the willful suspension of memory and perspective. The goal is not to change one’s contemporary situation, so much as to transcend it – to escape it.” (44)

Thus, considering Disney’s corporate reputation is only part of the analysis. After all, as Celebration planner Don Killoren puts it, “It’s not a theme park, it’s a real town.” (45) And so it is here that we can ask, where do the potential residents of Celebration get these ideas from? The easiest place to find this is in the marketing material which Celebration promotes, material which creates the promise of a place, building desire for it. Just as Disney seeks to turn fantasy into reality within its theme parks (large rodents in clothes signing autographs), or aims to create a falsified history within Celebration (supposedly converted apartment buildings, false-front architecture), Disney also endeavors to create the perfect, ideal community – and it does this most readily through its marketing materials.

Take for example the following passages, taken directly from Celebration advertising brochures:

There once was a place where neighbors greeted neighbors in the quiet of summer twilight. Where children chased fireflies. And porch swings provided easy refuge from the care of the day. The movie house showed cartoons on Saturday. The grocery store delivered. And there was one teacher who always knew you who had that “special something.” Remember that place? Perhaps from your childhood. Or maybe just from stories. It held a magic all its own. The special magic of an American home town. Now, the people at Disney – itself an American family tradition – are creating a place that celebrates this legacy. A place that recalls the timeless traditions and boundless spirit that are the best parts of who we are.

And

There is a place that takes you back to that time of innocence. A place where the biggest decision is whether to play Kick the Can or King of the Hill. A place of caramel apples and cotton candy, secret forts, and hopscotch on the streets. That place is here again, in a new town called Celebration…A new American town of block parties and Fourth of July parades. Of spaghetti dinners and school bake sales, lollipops, and fireflies in a jar. And while we can’t return to these times we can arrive at a place that embraces all of these things. Someday, 20,000 people will live in Celebration, and for each and every one of them, it will be home.

Disney, the company that taught pirates from the Caribbean to sing songs and behave themselves... Disney, the company which brought long-dead presidents back to life and gave them a home in a theme park... Disney, the company which gave human voice and biped form to mice and ducks... Disney, the company which now offers you not only a time and place from the unreachable past – but also a time and place which never really existed (…Or maybe just from stories).

Disney sells Celebration not only as a New Urbanist community, but as a Disney New Urbanist community. “Now, the people at Disney – itself an American family tradition – are creating a place...” This is also exemplified in other aspects of Celebration marketing. The latest brochure lists not only Neotraditionalist planning values, but also hypes the community’s more “progressive” achievements (such as the school, health center, and fiber-optic network).

Billboards positioned along the roads surrounding Celebration use the same information as the brochures, perpetuating the fantasy while increasing desire for the lifestyle found within.

Perhaps none of this is really out of the ordinary. Perhaps our commodified ways of arranging habitation, from early neighborhoods and corner stores to suburbs and shopping malls and back to gentrified Main Streets, have led Disney to promote a town just as any good developer would. But Celebration is no ordinary town, and by its own admission. And while it seeks to capture the allure of a New Urbanist community, it supplants core Neotraditionalist ideas for those that will increase profit – the town center, the “heart of the Neotraditionalist community” which needs be “walk-able”, is anything but for Celebration residents living on the furthest outskirts of even Phase One. In this example, one of the most important New Urbanism tenants has been sacrificed in order to fit more $500,000 homes into the 10,000 available acres.

And it is in this manner that a Disneyfied New Urbanism translates into a commodification of community. Thus, it is in this way that the marketing material, billboards, magazine ads and public relations releases, in promoting this Disney utopia, commodifies the very nature of the community it seeks to create – not surprisingly, a commodification which certainly could not have existed in the fictional all-American small towns of yesterday (at a time when commerce was meant more for livelihood than luxury, how would such a place be idyllic for all?).

In the end, how much of this is really surprising? We all know Disney is a global financial success. If Disney is not buying Parisian beet fields, it is buying television companies. With theme parks so capable of suspending the disbelief of its visitors, is it at all shocking to think of the same ideas being used in a community? As John Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute has said, “Disney has its finger on the pulse of the American public.” (46)

If a person can buy into a fictionally superlative gated country club, how different is buying into a Disney small-town-America-with-a-touch-of-technological-convenience community?

Maybe in the end the small things add up just enough to make the entire situation uncomfortable. Employees, like mindless worker ants, power-spraying the dirt from the sidewalks. Scuff marks on walls, repainted daily. Religious trimming of vegetation, rigorous monitoring of appearance, all of this not only at Disney World, but at Celebration as well, much of it occurring at exactly the same time in each place each day.

Information presented to society, offering goods and services from an unknowable past at tomorrow’s inflated prices. Maybe Disney has found the ingredients of community for sale. Maybe it’s just the cult and magic of the Mouse.

1 Levine, Celebration! A Super-Modern Disney Town with an Old-Time Feel, Absolutely Florida Magazine, 37, Summer 2000.
2 Chung, Project on the City, 289, 292.
3 Kroloff, Disney Builds a Town, Architecture Magazine, 56, August 1997.
4 Pollen, Town Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation, 80-81, New York Times Magazine, December 14 1997.
5 Wilson, Celebration Puts Disney in Reality’s Realm, A1, USA Today, October 18 1995.
6 Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, 37.
7 Ibid, 40.
8 Chung, Project on the City, 282.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid, 284-288.
11 Vanderbilt, Mickey Goes to Town(s), The Nation, 102, August 28 1995.
12 from the Walt Disney World Resort map.
13 Adler, Paved Paradise, Newsweek Magazine, 29, May 15 1995.
14 Chung, Project on the City, 296.
15 Spaid, Disney Turns Its Dream Machine to Building Real-Life Community, Christian Science Monitor, 14, March 11 1996.
16 Ibid, 15.
17 Knack, Once Upon a Town, Planning Magazine, 11, March 1996.
18 Ross, The Celebration Chronicles, 8.
19 Chung, Project on the City, 289, 292.
20 Pollen, Town Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation, 59, New York Times Magazine, December 14 1997.
21 Ibid.
22 Ross, The Celebration Chronicles, 7.
23 Pollen, Town Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation, 59, New York Times Magazine, December 14 1997.
24 Knack, Once Upon a Town, Planning Magazine, 11, March 1996.
25 Spaid, Disney Turns Its Dream Machine to Building Real-Life Community, Christian Science Monitor, 14, March 11 1996.
26 Chung, Project on the City, 289, 293.
27 Spaid, Disney Turns Its Dream Machine to Building Real-Life Community, Christian Science Monitor, 16, March 11 1996.
28 Ibid.
29 Shearmur, Living with a Marsupial Mouse, Policy Magazine, 20, Winter 2002.
30 Kroloff, Disney Builds a Town, Architecture Magazine, 57, August 1997.
31 Levine, Celebration! A Super-Modern Disney Town with an Old-Time Feel, 37, Absolutely Florida Magazine, Summer 2000.
32 Chung, Project on the City, 293.
33 Spaid, Disney Turns Its Dream Machine to Building Real-Life Community, Christian Science Monitor, 14, March 11 1996.
34 Ross, The Celebration Chronicles, 10.
35 Kroloff, Disney Builds a Town, Architecture Magazine, 57, August 1997.
36 Pollen, Town Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation, 81, New York Times Magazine, December 14 1997.
37 Ibid, 80.
38 Ibid, 81.
39 Vanderbilt, Mickey Goes to Town(s), The Nation, 102, August 28 1995.
40 Wilson, Celebration Puts Disney in Reality’s Realm, A1, USA Today, October 18 1995.
41 Kroloff, Disney Builds a Town, Architecture Magazine, 56, August 1997.
42 Ibid.
43 Wilson, Celebration Puts Disney in Reality’s Realm, A1, USA Today, October 18 1995.
44 Wood, Nostalgic Time, Space, and Community, Institute for Disney Studies Newsletter, 3, June 1998.
45 Wilson, Celebration Puts Disney in Reality’s Realm, A1, USA Today, October 18 1995.
46 Ibid.