Walt Disney World: Shell Companies, Reedy Creek and a Royal Lives Clause

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Walt Disney World began as a fix for Disneyland's limits. Seventy-five percent of Americans lived east of the Mississippi, yet only 5 percent of Disneyland's guests came from there, and cheap motels and neon signs crowded the Anaheim park's edges. In 1963 the company chose Orlando, near the planned Interstate 4, and from 1964 bought land through shell companies such as the M.T. Lot Company and the I-4 Corporation, paying as little as $100 an acre and even buying out mineral rights held by Tufts University for $15,000. Orlando reporter Emily Bavar asked the founder directly at Disneyland's 10th anniversary, her paper named him as the buyer, and the company announced the project in November 1965. The founder died in December 1966 before construction began; his older brother Roy postponed retirement, put the experimental city on hold, built a theme park first and named the resort after his brother. The Magic Kingdom opened in October 1971 with crowds capped near 10,000.

In 1967 Florida created the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which exempted the property from county land use laws and let it issue tax-free bonds and run its own fire, building and water services. Engineers built the utility corridors at ground level and covered them with earth dredged from the new Seven Seas Lagoon. The second park opened in 1982 as a permanent world's fair, the movie studio park opened in 1989 after MCA alleged its studio tour plans had been lifted, and the 580-acre animal park in 1998 was offset by restoring 8,500 acres handed to The Nature Conservancy. During the 2020 shutdown the resort hosted a professional basketball season in isolation. After the state dissolved the special district and installed a state-appointed board, the outgoing board signed a development agreement using a Royal Lives Clause tied to the descendants of King Charles III.

• Walt Disney World covers roughly 27,000 acres, an area the episode compares to San Francisco.
• Rumors in 1965 guessed the secret buyer was NASA, Ford or Howard Hughes.
• The resort uses about 1 billion kilowatt hours a year and runs a 22-acre solar farm shaped like a famous cartoon mouse.
• The company spent an estimated $1 billion on RFID wristbands that work as tickets, payment and room keys.
• Greater Orlando grew from about half a million people in 1970 to over two million, and the resort employs over 80,000 people.