Disney Fort Wilderness vacation Discount

All true. Disney Corp pursued this tactic because of the lessons learned from Disneyland and California politicians. Private interests quickly bought up land immediately adjacent to DL and hoped to resell it to Disney Corp at massively inflated prices. The CA political machine sought to exact huge revenues on DL seeing it as a source of unlimited $ for personal pork barrel projects and so when DW was in planning, Reedy Creek was the solution.

Now it's 40+ years later and those who govern Disney Corp have changed the ethos of Disney in certain aspects and are using similar political tactics. Such is the stuff of history lessons.

joe b. wrote:


Disney has no land restrictions in Florida. When WDW bought the land, they had the state legislature set up a special district for them. They have all the same rights as a town or county. They can operate their own school system, police department, waste disposal, water treatment plants, fire departments, EMS ambulances and electrical power stations. Their Improvement District also allows them to operate a nuclear power plant which they have never shown any interest in applying to build.
However they contract with the near by sheriff's department for police services, even though they have a security force of over 3,000 personnel that work for WDW.

There is a saying in Florida, that what the Mouse wants, the mouse gets. With a daily payroll of over 70,000 employees at WDW, they are the largest single site employer in the state.

All the land, etc, is owned in the name of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The land was originally purchased under the name of the Reedy Creek Ranch, to keep prices under control. It was only later the land sellers found out they had sold to Disney.
You may have seen their trucks running around the Fort campground, if you have been there.

The Improvement Dist. has a board of directors that hold monthly meetings open to the public, just like county commishners would do. To be on the board, you have to own land within the Improvement District. There are only 5 parcels of land available and all are owned by the operating officers of WDW, so they are the Board of Directors.
WDW's Improvement Board has also chosen to let the two Florida counties where the are located to assess and collect property taxes. Last year, the two counties received approx $125,000,000 from WDW in property taxes. Both counties fall all over themselves to do what the Mouse wants, like the state does.

If WDW decides to increase the size of Fort Wilderness campground, no one is going to say no to them, not the state, not the two counties and certainly not the Improvement District, which probably has the legal authority to approve it. Zoning and building codes also come under the Improvement Districts areas of control

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reedy_Creek_Improvement_District

This is from the Reedy Creek web site
http://rcid.org/About.aspx