Florida Governor Ron DeSantis steps up his battle with Disney and will direct legislators to discuss the termination of Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District

Apr 19, 2022 in "The Walt Disney Company"

Posted: Tuesday April 19, 2022 10:37am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

In a press conference today, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has escalated his offensive action toward Disney and has announced plans to terminate Walt Disney World's Reedy Creek Improvement District.

DeSantis said during the press conference that the Florida state legislator will discuss this week the termination of all special districts created prior to 1968. Disney's Reedy Creek District was created in 1967 ahead of the construction of Walt Disney World.

The creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District in 1967 allowed Disney the luxury of establishing its own independent government that handles many aspects of the Walt Disney World property, including emergency services, infrastructure, and construction permitting. It remains unclear how the elimination of Reedy Creek could actually be implemented and how Disney would respond.

Speaking in The Villages retirement community, DeSantis said, "I am announcing today that we are expanding the call of what they are going to be considering this week. And so yes, they will be considering their congressional map. But they also will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968. And that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District."

This latest move follows escalating tensions between DeSantis and Disney CEO Bob Chapek regarding Disney's opposition to Florida's "Don't Say Gay Bill."

Disney has suspended all political donations in the state of Florida in response to the bill.

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JoeCamel6 days ago

Welllllll....

JKick956 days ago

Do we have any updates on what this plan entails?

MR.Dis20 days ago

To give an example, I am retired from JP Morgan Chase, the provider of Disney Visa charge cards. I was eligible to purchase WDW and Disneyland tickets thru a portal for 20% off the rack rate. I do not know if that is still the case. While I was an annual pass holder purchasing thru DVC, I would purchase tickets for my kids when they visited WDW with their families. It was a significant savings.

flyakite20 days ago

Should anyone be interested and would like to attend:

michmousefanDec 29, 2024

cranbizDec 28, 2024

Not really a distortion of facts. Yes, RCID was a legally a separate entity from TWDC. In reality, it was controlled by WDW, which is why DeSantis had a hard on for getting revenge on TWDC for "don't say gay" and other woke policies by trying to revoke the district. He couldn't do that for many reasons so he got the law changed to appoint his own governing board. As we know, that really did fail miserably and there is now a board that is not antagonistic towards Disney. There is a charge for those benefits to the third party entities in some way, shape or form. WDW doesn't give anything away for free. RCID (and many third party operating participants) pay for those benefits (usually at a very reduced rate). So, in the case of RCID, Disney paid for those benefits through it's tax assessments because RCID has no income of it's own except for income received from it's taxpayers (of which TWDC is it's largest and majority taxpayer). So, what I said was true. WDW paid for the benefits granted by RCID to it's employees and RCID, by granting those benefits paid WDW back for them. This keeps everything legal. Yes, CFTOD wanted to stick it to Disney by refusing to pay WDW for those benefits, which in turn stuck it to the employees. RCID and CFTOD employees were never WDW Cast Members, they were employees of RCID or are/were employees of CFTOD.

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

It takes little time to release a completed report. Unless that report didn't say exactly what you wanted it to say....

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Governor's office receives a FOIA (govt in the Sunshine) request... "What's sunshine?" 🙄

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

🤫

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Florida statute says state records are open to the public. It doesn't say how quickly agencies have to provide the info. When I worked for various state agencies, we tried getting the requested info as quickly as possible. If it was a state legislator or governor's office, yesterday wasn't fast enough. 😉

LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

Bingo

Chi84Dec 28, 2024

So they had to ferret it out as opposed to the government releasing it to the news agencies. That’s understandable. Those requests can take a surprisingly long time to fulfill.

StripesDec 28, 2024

WKMG submitted a public records request. That request was just recently fulfilled and the document released. WKMG hasn’t said when they submitted the request.

UnbansheeDec 28, 2024

Lol, you must be new here. The state doesn't like to "live in the sunshine" when it comes to matters that the esteemed governor finds personally difficult