Disney hates poor people

[NickO'Time]

What about the possibility of low income housing bringing more crime to the area, costing Disney to hire more security? I'm sure some of you have thought of this already.
This might be the veiled truth about this whole sorta of thing.

[Jazzman]

I think the whole situation stinks all around. Disney isn't exactly behaving like the family oriented fairy tale company is still proclaims to be (which, of course, all of us Disney aficionados know but is still news to a large part of the general public) and the city of Anaheim isn't exactly showing a proper amount of respect to the company that put it on the map. Let's face it, if Walt had built his park somewhere else Anaheim wouldn't be more than a bunch of sleepy neighborhoods, perhaps even still orchards. Whatever revenue and wealth the city has is all because of the park, and as much as I dislike large corporations having any grip on public affairs, this is one instance where I think a big company deserves some deference. However, that being said, the company could be a little more conscious of how they're going about this as it does make them look like a collective bunch of douchebags to the regular, non-Disney-fan person on the street. That old saying, "Don't $%!@ where you eat," comes to mind.

[Alex]

If I were in charge, I'd give serious consideration to laying aside the emotional attachment and saying "**** it" and closing it down. Try to get some other community on the West coast to give me a Reedy Creek-esque deal and build a new park.

It'll never happen and I don't know that I'd pull the trigger but there'd be strong temptation. What Disney parks are supposed to be is not particularly compatible with a fully enclosed 150-acre plot of land.

[innerSpaceman]

I beg your pardon? What Disney parks are supposed to be?


According to whom?



Pardon me if I leave the expertise in that area to Walt Disney. And the only functioning theme park he ever built was on a tiny plot of land in booming Southern California. Since it also happens to have remained the best of the so-called Disney parks despite ten later theme parks under that brand, I'm going to credit Walt Disney with knowing what he was bloody hell doing.

[wendybeth]

I'm a little curious as to what Alex's statement is supposed to mean- I wasn't aware that DL was anything but a dynamic idea that took off and just is what it is, surroundings and all. Change anything and you just might mess up what makes it Disneyland. It's a wonderful quilt of different time periods, cultures and influences and I love it for precisely that reason.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Can we burn him for a witch?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

According to whom?

How about according to Walt Disney? As soon as he was given a chance to do it again with plenty of funding he did it completely different to avoid the problems he saw with the area surrounding Disneyland.

It is simply a fact that what Disneyland tries to be is not compatible with residential living and that is only going to become an ever increasing problem for the park.

[innerSpaceman]

Nope, that one's not gonna fly, Alex. Walt Disney never opened a theme park in Florida ... and that was NOT his goal there. His goal in Florida was a futuristic city, and he didn't give a fig about the theme park that was to pay the bills.



Unfortunately, the man died ... and we have only results to go by. Disneyland, built in the midst of a teeming metropolis ... with a customer mix tilted heavily toward regular, repeat customers from a saavy, urban market ... grows and thrives and changes and succeeds as an art form and beloved icon as no other Disney park ever will. DisneyWorld becomes a financial juggernaut, but suffers from a heavy tourist mix by too often throughout its history becoming stagnant and ill-maintained and is, more often than not, substandard artistically.

The only part of that vast complex to even remotely come from Walt Disney's intention was Epcot Center ... DisneyWorld's biggest artistic success.


But intentions tell nothing ... and we can glean nothing from Walt Disney's intention to build far away from the teeming metropolis except that he died, and he never did so.

[Alex]

Oh pucky. He's quite vociferously on record as hating what happened in Anaheim in the area around his park.

Plus, the ideas of city management have changed in 50 years in ways that Disney wouldn't have imagined or been able to plan for and the tax base for Anaheim has tilted dramatically away from Disneyland.

As for stagnancy, Disneyland has had several periods of such itself so I don't see anything unique there that would have developed from Florida's geographic isolation. And, from an irregular visitor's perspective, Magic Kingdom is better than Disneyland, in my not particularly humble opinion. And a large part of that is because Disney can do exactly what they want when they want and you don't have to deal with the LA urban/suburban experience to get in. For people used to it there is nothing particularly wrong with Anaheim and surrounding areas but for people from outside the region it is an amazingly ugly region.

The design ideals behind Disneyland (particularly immersion and exuberance) simply aren't compatible with having tens of thousands of people living residentially within a couple of miles.

I'm not saying that Disneyland has to end up completely isolated, dozens of miles from the nearest neighbor but a bigger buffer zone than Harbor and Katella would probably be better for everybody involved. Like it or not, most people who live near Disneyland do not directly (or even secondarily) derive their living from Disneyland. And those people want what everybody wants in their neighborhood: peace and quiet, light traffic, and minimum hassles.

I have no doubt that if Disney could have afforded to buy 5,000 acres in 1955 and built the park in the middle of it, he would have done so. He certainly didn't say "you know what will make the place great? A Denny's across the street, neighbors bitching about smoke from fireworks, and fighting development proposals that would have sightlines visible inside the park."

But really it isn't poor people Disney needs to fear (the poor can always be steamrolled eventually), it is gentrification and upper class housing. The kind of people that move into a high rise condo South of Market and then bitch that the landmark Coke sign is too bright or that the autobody shops are a blight on the neighborhood. When those people move within a mile and then decide that any exposure to fireworks smoke is harmful to their children (or their even more loved designer dogs) then Disney will really have something to fear from community activism.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I think I'll hold onto my dream that if we wait long enough, Disney will have somehow purchased all the surrounding area and created their perfect cushion for Disneyland. Perhaps not in our lifetimes...