Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World

by Carl Hiaasen

  The decision rankled lots of folks familiar with the Reedy Creek charade, especially those in Orange County. In 1990 they had competed with the district for $57.7 million in tax-free bonds. Orange officials needed to raise money for low-income housing. Reedy Creek wanted to expand the sewage-treatment capacity for Disney's fast-growing theme parks.

  The county's poor lost out. Mickey and Minnie won.

  So if Disney enjoys the powers of municipal government, including the right to sell tax-free bonds, shouldn't it be governed by the same laws of open disclosure? In 1997 an appeals court said no, upholding the ruling against Robb Sipkema's family, the state attorney general, and several newspapers that had joined the lawsuit. The panel of judges agreed with the trial court's puzzling position that Disney guards aren't like real police and perform only basic "night watchman" duties.

  Which apparently have been broadened to include high-speed car chases of suspected trespassers. "Outrageous," said John Hargrove, one of the lawyers who argued for the side of the Sipkemas. "Talk about a family getting screwed."

  Without access to Disney's files, the Sipkemas hit a wall. They have dropped the lawsuit over their son's death.

  Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the flashing lights on Disney's security vehicles have been changed from red to amber, so as not to be taken for those of real cop cars. In addition, Disney's uniformed guards—the "hosts" and "hostesses"—no longer use Dragnet-style police codes when talking over the radio.

  Goofy's gendarmes still do an impressive job of keeping order, though. Every now and then reality intrudes—a shoplifter, a flasher, a fistfight between tourists, an accidental fall, a fatal heart attack on the Space Mountain roller coaster. Such incidents are handled with astounding swiftness and discretion, the scene usually cleared and back to normal within minutes. Team Rodent's crisis squads appear ready for every imaginable emergency.

  Well, maybe not every emergency. As I write this, a potentially breathtaking drama is unfolding within stalking distance of Adventureland. A full-grown African lioness has escaped from a roadside zoo called JungleLand, on State Road 192. Also known as the Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, it's one of Florida's all-time unsightliest thoroughfares, crammed with T-shirt shops, fast-food joints, cut-rate car rental lots, bargain motels, and souvenir kiosks. The road looks like this for one reason: It's on the way to Disney World.

  The escaped cat is called Nala, named (predictably) after a lioness character in Disney's animated blockbuster The Lion King. The real-life Nala has vanished into a stretch of heavy woods off 192, not far from an International House of Pancakes. Teams of armed searchers and wildlife officers are trying to track the animal, while journalists from all over the world cluster in safety along the shoulder of the highway. Even the major TV networks are keeping tabs on the slapdash safari. Like other Florida newspapers, the Miami Herald has published a locator map showing the estimated proximity of the fugitive lioness to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and the Disney-MGM Studios. Presumably this information will help tourists weigh the risk of a visit and plan their routes accordingly. Indeed, much of the news coverage deals with speculation that the big cat is making her way toward Disney property.

  Sweet Jesus, just imagine: the hot-blooded 450-pound namesake of a Disney cartoon lion, bounding down Main Street U.S.A. (perhaps during the nightly SpectroMagic Parade!) and with one lightning swipe of a paw taking down Goofy or Pluto, or maybe one of those frigging chipmunks. A harrowing primal eruption—and Disney could blame no one but itself!

  Because Nala wouldn't be loose in Orlando if there was no JungleLand, and there would be no JungleLand if there was no Walt Disney World.

  So the escaped lioness has a secret fan club that believes a split second of raw predation might be good for Team Rodent's soul. And while it is being widely reported that the big cat is declawed, I choose not to believe it.

  Forgive us our fantasies.

  The Puppy King

  IN DECEMBER 1997 DISNEY chairman Michael D. Eisner exercised company stock options that brought him $565 million in a single swoop. The notion of attaching such a sum to one man's job is both obscene and hilarious on its face, yet it's pointless to debate whether or not Eisner deserves it. He got the dough.

  It happened in the same month that Business Week chose Disney's board of directors as the worst in America. The reason: Many seemed to have been handpicked not so much for their business expertise as for their loyalty to the autocratic Eisner. Among the company's directors are his personal architect, his personal attorney, the principal of his children's elementary school, and seven current and former Disney executives. "Fantastic" is how Eisner has described his choices for the board, but critics say it's a meek and malleable group. That's precisely what was needed to sit still for the ludicrous $75 million platinum parachute given to Michael Ovitz as compensation for fourteen whole months as president of the Walt Disney Company. Hiring the Hollywood super-agent had been Eisner's idea, but the decision to part was said to be mutual. Eisner is so hyper-actively involved with Team Rodent's many enterprises that Ovitz had been left with not enough to do.

  As exorbitant as the mistake turned out to be, Disney could easily afford it. The company has experienced astounding growth in the fourteen years since Insane Clown Michael's arrival, and he's not shy about rattling off all the new ventures: radio and TV stations, cable systems, newspapers, books, home video, theatrical productions, computer games and programs, professional sports teams, and of course Times Square. Of all the new endeavors, the most expensive and ambitious was the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC and its affiliated broadcast networks, which instantly gave Disney a huge self-marketing apparatus.

  Perhaps Eisner is a true genius—a visionary, a brilliant motivator, a magnetic communicator. If so, you wouldn't know it from the following communiqué, which Eisner sent to Disney shareholders and employees as part of the 1996 annual report:

  Last week I was trying to write this letter in the living room of my family's farmhouse in Saxtons River, Vermont, where I have been going for the Thanksgiving holidays for 35 years. At my side was the cover of the annual report with its hundred and one dalmatians staring at me, begging me to begin. But I was stuck. The Florida/Florida State football game, broadcast on ABC, was in the background and I found myself looking up every time I saw a McDonald's/dalmatian commercial. Cute dalmatians everywhere, each one saying, "Get to work." But then there was this overwhelmingly positive review from a Boston television station for our movie The English Patient that I had to listen to, and of course I had to take a call from Florida reporting excellent attendance at Walt Disney World. I then called our European headquarters to learn that The Hunchback of Notre Dame opened with extraordinary results in 12 territories, including France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland. This motivated me to make more calls: dialing, still not typing. I found out The Rock would likely become the biggest home video rental of all time and that Toy Story's video release was selling at superb rates. Finally I got the call that unlocked my procrastination. 101 Dalmatians was a smash. It would break every possible record at the box office for the Thanksgiving break. It was huge, massive! Now, as soon as the Mighty Ducks hockey game against the Chicago Black-hawks at the Pond in Anaheim on ESPN was over, I would finally begin to work. We wouldn't have to change the cover of our annual report! The Dalmatians had come through!

  Obviously, Eisner wrote the letter himself—no PR flack in his right mind would've sent out such hyperbolic twaddle. But as fulsome and windy as it is, the letter fairly depicts the company's fast-tightening grip on the global entertainment culture. One cannot overstate Disney's reach, and there's no better example than Eisner's superhyped 101 Dalmatians.

  As soon as word got out that Disney was producing a live-action remake of its popular 1961 feature-length cartoon, puppy mills across America began breeding dalmatians like rats. It was a sure bet. Once the movie opened, thousands upon thousands of parents went shopping for puppies to p
ut under the Christmas tree for their smitten children. Just as Eisner had bubbled: cute dalmatians everywhere!

  Unfortunately, dalmatians aren't the ideal breed for every family. They can be high-strung, snappish, and intolerant of youngsters. In other words: Not cute. Less than a year after the film's release, animal shelters and Humane Societies got swamped with young dogs that had failed to deliver the cuddliness promised by their lovable big-screen counterparts. South Florida shelters reported a 35 percent increase in the number of dalmatians, many of them facing a sad and predictable fate. The story was the same all across the country.

  Don't get me wrong. I'm not laying a single euthanized puppy at the feet of Michael Eisner. The parents who dashed out to buy those dogs should have known better; they should have steeled themselves against sentiment. They should have known that captivation is the mission of a Disney film, a Disney theme park, a Disney merchandise store, a Disney anything. Charm, captivate, and conquer—that's how the empire advances. In the case of 101 Dalmatians, Mom and Dad's imagination got as carried away as the kids'.

  It's easy to sympathize. When I was sixteen Disney released a movie called Rascal, the adventures of a mischievous yet adorable baby raccoon. My own parents sensibly forbade me from sneaking into the woods and capturing my own ring-tailed varmint, but shortly after college I acquired one. Picture the scene in a small two-bedroom apartment: father, mother, one three-year-old toddler, and one wild raccoon. An absolutely adorable critter, as advertised, until the day it rebelled against the mildest of discipline, climbed up on my portable Smith-Corona, and (in a gesture that transcended mischief) took a long hard piss.

  The pathetic truth is that, like millions of others, I'd succumbed to the spell of Disney make-believe. Real raccoons don't behave like movie raccoons, any more than real dogs behave like movie dogs.

  As cynically as one might appraise Eisner's cornball letter to Disney stockholders, no evidence suggests he was unmoved by later news reports about all the homeless and neglected puppies generated by 101 Dalmatians. Even before the film opened, the company publicly had tried to warn people against impulsively rushing out to a pet shop.

  It was money that would have been more wisely spent on a fluffy toy dalmatian at a Disney Store, not that Insane Clown Michael was thinking along such mercenary lines. In fairness, he didn't invent Disney's overpowering brand of make-believe. He simply took it worldwide.

  Fantasy Fantasy Island

  IN A FEW MONTHS, an eighty-five-thousand-ton ocean liner will be launched from a shipyard in Marghera, Italy. The ship is decorated like no other of its kind. Etched into the steep prow is a portrait of that renowned mariner, Mickey Mouse. At the other end: a fifteen-foot likeness of Goofy, swinging from a boatswain's chair while pretending to paint the stern. The ship's horn is specially tuned to play "When You Wish upon a Star."

  The name of this extraordinary vessel is Disney Magic, Team Rodent's maiden venture into the lucrative cruise-line trade. Carrying twenty-four hundred passengers (most of whom have spent the preceding days at Disney World), the ship will serve as both a floating extension of the Orlando theme park and a marketing barge. Nightclubs, theaters, swimming pools, and spas will offer no refuge from Magic Kingdom characters; in one restaurant, "live" walls will display Disney art evolving from sketch to full animation.

  Even the lifeboats will be tricked out—painted bright yellow and styled to match the old vessels depicted in Steamboat Willie. Undoubtedly the workmanship will be top-notch and authentic-looking, but imagine yourself far out at sea aboard a sinking ocean liner. Would your first choice of a rescue vessel be a lifeboat whose design was inspired by a 1928 cartoon?

  The Disney Magic will leave Port Canaveral for three- or four-day excursions to Nassau and Castaway Cay, billed as the company's "private Bahamian island." Here passengers will debark and frolic in a manicured tropical setting, with separate beaches provided for kids, families, and adults (Disney is hoping for a big newlywed trade).

  While other cruise lines have purchased small Bahamian islands as quickie stopovers, not many can boast the lively history of Disney's—a history the company is unlikely to share with its seagoing passengers. "Castaway Cay" is the newly Imagineered name for the island, but locals know it as Gorda Cay. It was a very busy place in the 1970s and 1980s, the main draw being a secluded and unpatrolled airfield, upon which many tons of marijuana, Quaaludes, and cocaine were landed en route to the U.S. mainland.

  During that era Gorda Cay fell under the control of an American smuggler named Frank Barber, who ferried the dope up from Colombia and used the island for storage and refueling. Later the stuff was flown to small landing strips in south Florida, a nocturnal enterprise that owed much of its success to Barber's recruitment and bribery of a U.S. drug enforcement agent named Jeffrey Scharlatt. Both men wound up in prison. Shortly after their operation was exposed, a Commission of Inquiry convened in Nassau to investigate drug smuggling and corruption throughout the commonwealth; Gorda Cay was listed as one of the favorite stopovers for international dope runners.

  The island's notoriety presented no serious public-relations hurdle for Disney, which merely changed the name after buying the place. It's a small illustration of how Team Rodent untarnishes reality, acquiring and recasting to its own designs. Be certain that the company's security forces scoured Gorda Cay and left no coconut unturned, in case Mr. Barber and his colleagues had stashed some goodies prior to their departure. Beachcombing tourists in Fort Lauderdale are excited to stumble across the occasional scuttled bale, but in a Disney biosphere there's no place for such surprises. I'll bet a new past is being ghostwritten for "Castaway Cay"—a past richly populated with conquistadors or perhaps shipwrecked pirates, whom Disney copywriters would regard as more colorful and less menacing than modern smugglers of cocaine and bootleg methaqualone.

  Escape is what most ordinary folks want and deserve—escape from the threat of dope, guns, crime, poverty, pollution, random violence, urban unrest. So why not a carefree Castaway Cay? What's the harm? Maybe none. Be assured that the flora and fauna of the former Gorda Cay never received such tender loving care as they do now under Disney.

  Still, there's something offensive to the spirit about taking a perfectly interesting little island and giving it a movie-style makeover to amuse the visiting sightseers. Trim the trees, groom the beaches, add a fleet of Jet Skis and a row of "massage cabanas"—hey, mon, you be jammin'! Commercializing paradise is a tradition nearly as old as the tropics, but Disney has pushed it into an insidious new realm. At least in Nassau or Kingston or even Key West you can poke around and find back streets and alleys that aren't on the tour, real neighborhoods with real people instead of "cast members." But on a Disney island you get only Disney adventure; everything you see and do is part of the show. So on Castaway Cay there's no chance of coming across a native fisherman mending his nets and cussing up a storm. On the other hand, there's also no chance of getting nicked by a pickpocket or groped by a hooker.

  That trade-off is acceptable to millions of vacationers who don't mind the fake, as long as it's fun and safe. And nobody provides a safer, more closely supervised brand of carefree than Team Rodent. Whether you're on a Disney ocean liner or a Disney log flume or the eighteenth fairway of a Disney golf course, you can be pretty sure nobody's going to sneak up and stick a real .45 in your back. That's not just a perception, it's a fact—and one reason that Disney's image as a benign enchanter-protector is now embedded in the collective parental psyche. It also helps explain why anyone would sign up for a lottery to purchase a house in a Disney-designed subdivision: They probably remember how happy and secure they feel inside the Magic Kingdom.

  Future World

  ONE OF WALT DISNEY'S unfulfilled dreams was a model city of the future, which he called Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow). It would be home to twenty thousand residents and offer never-before-seen technology for ultramodern family living. After Walt's death, the company scrapped th
e original idea for Epcot. Only the name was saved, given to a futuristic-looking wing of the Orlando theme park, where the attractions are sponsored by General Motors, AT&T, and other major U.S. corporations.

  A few years ago Disney dusted off the concept of a functioning tomorrowland and called it Celebration. (The name, it's not surprising to learn, was selected by Michael Eisner and his wife.) Walt might recognize the place, though not as his futuristic bubble of a community. With its neat, narrow streets and neotraditional architecture, Celebration invokes nothing so much as a small-town neighborhood of the 1950s, remembered overfondly. The houses, which feature wooden shutters and open porches, could have been lifted off the lot of TV's Leave It to Beaver. Celebration boasts a school, a town hall, a library, parks, even a "downtown" within walking distance of most of the homes. Yet by no means is it a self-contained cell. All serious shopping is done in distant malls, and most folks who live in Celebration make the grinding daily commute to jobs in Orlando. There are no monorails or bullet trains or electric cars—just ordinary gas-slurping sport-utility vehicles and sedans.

  The most ultramodern thing about Celebration is the price: from $200,000 to more than $1 million for a house, and as much as $80,000 for an undeveloped quarter-acre lot. That's a load of money for what is basically just another snugly platted wedge of suburbia—except it was designed, built, and marketed by Disney. Consequently, families who'd never otherwise dream of moving into a Florida subdivision are snapping up homes in Celebration, paying from 25 to 40 percent more than their neighbors in comparable projects along State Road 192.

  It's a striking testament to the allure of the Disney name, and also to the childlike trust it elicits in boomer-era consumers. About five thousand people competed in a lottery for the first 350 homes to be built at Celebration. The company is counting on such exuberant fealty to grow its microplanned development to a buildout population of twenty thousand. Located five miles from Disney World, the new housing subdivision has gotten such a buzz that it actually draws tourists, who may purchase a Celebration wristwatch for $63 or a keepsake pen for half as much. Amazingly, some do.