Disney History: Your thoughts?

[Tink]

1993: At a dedication service, Walker Ranch officially becomes Disney Wilderness Preserve. Disney and the South Florida Water Management District had come to an agreement in 1992, allowing Disney to develop on an area in Central Florida if Disney would purchase and preserve Walker Ranch, 8,500 acres of wetlands located twelve miles south of Disney World. (The ranch is home to two endangered species, the bald eagle and the wood stork, as well as several other threatened species.) Disney will use the remaining area to build Celebration, a new city themed after a typical small American town of the 1940s and '50s.

Like all of us, I completely enjoy Isafari's daily posting of Disney History. Often there are topics there that I would like to discuss a bit with you, but haven't ever taken the time to do so.

So! Reading this today, made me ponder a bit (a very dangerous thing).

What are your thoughts on having a town built that was deliberately themed on the 1940s and 1950s?

I have to say, my first response wasn't very positive. Those two decades contained much that I do not revere, or even respect. The Disney version, is of course much more positive and upbeat then the reality of those decades. I just seem to be having a bit of a hard time with it.

Just wondering how everyone else felt?

[Mari]

Ive never been to Celebration....

However, having said that I would really like to VISIT.... but would NEVER think about living there.... do people REALLY live there????

[Tink]

Yes, and for the most part it comes off as a throwback to a time when segregation was the norm, and the "right" people lived "over there" and the rest of us didn't.

That's a blanket statement and should be viewed for what it is, but I'm just saying that's the way it seems to me (for the most part).

[Dawn]

But how much is it a city in the post-war era?

Segregation, racism, rise in suburbia, cold war paranoia, McCarthyism?

Or are they simply baseing it on town planning of the era?

I've never been there so I don't know.

[Tink]

It's the atmosphere of a predominately Anglo-Saxon white community with unlimited disposable income. The HOA is restrictive in the extreme.

I don't live there so can't speak to specifics, but I can tell you what I see.

I think the basic philosophy of the past decades has been incorporated quite well.

[Mari]

I thought the idea behind the town was just to make it "look" 40's in the architecture and colors used and signs and stuff....

but the atmosphere sounds down right racist!

whats HOA??

[Tink]

Home Owners Association.

There has been talk (local) of the atmosphere of insularity for the people who can afford to live there. It's one of those situations where the economics of the situation has taken precedence and that has translated into worth. Not a good segue, eh?

The architecture is not necessarily representative of those decades (authentically anyway) but it pretends.

Stiff. Stepford Wives is the term most often used to describe the atmosphere there.

We took a walk along their pathway that winds in and out of the housing areas and it was a real eye opener. There is very little evidence of people actually being allowed to 'live' there. No toys are allowed in the yards, no bicycles on the drives, no pickup trucks, no boats, other water craft, no clotheslines... all that sort of stuff. Instead of looking clean and tidy it looks stiff and fake.

[Mari]

whoa!!!

That gave me chills....

Horror Movie material.....

I agree with there being some control, but thats just absurd!

[Tink]

So anyway, all of that to say... that building a town that harkens back to those decades in and of itself is problematic to me.

Yes, I could see a good slasher movie set in Celebration!