Ears of Steel by Bart Scott

Author:Bart Scott [Scott, Bart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937011345
Publisher: The Intrepid Traveler
Published: 2013-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Magic Kingdom

How Real Men Storm a Castle!

Regardless of where my publisher opts to stick this chapter in the book, I assure you it’s the last chapter I wrote. The reason being it’s the most daunting chapter for me as the writer. Magic Kingdom is the favorite of the four parks (at least as measured by the number of visitors) and the crown jewel of the WDW Resort. It is the very reason there is a Walt Disney World. That’s why so many people say “Walt Disney World” when they’re really referring to this one park. That’s how major Magic Kingdom is to the Disney parks legacy.

Walt didn’t survive to see it built, but he had tremendous input, directly and spiritually. It was to be his Disneyland of the East Coast, but also so much more. And it is! Prepare to be blown away! As legendary Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter famously said, “Disneyland is charming, and Walt Disney World is spectacular!”

The Magic Kingdom is probably the park you pictured the moment someone suggested a Disney vacation. You probably think it is all creepy singing dolls or fairies buzzing in your ears. Not a real man’s spinning cup of tea. That is exactly the myth I’m-writing this book to debunk—to show you that real grown men can and do-vacation at Walt Disney World and have a blast! Though on its face it seems the park most designed for little ones, Magic Kingdom is no exception. You may enter the Magic Kingdom thinking it’s just for kids but you’ll exit with a stupid smile plastered on your mug, having put the tough guy inside you back in touch with his inner child. And they’ll both be dying to go back!

The story of how Disney quietly snatched up acre after acre of Florida swampland for a song has been told many times. But I’ll condense it into a few brief lines. Like trying to condense a keg into a shot glass, but what the hell!

Walt’s biggest complaint about his beloved Disneyland was the lack of real estate. As soon as the park skyrocketed in popularity, opportunistic forces pounced. Seedy motels, ramshackle tourist traps, and curio shops popped up all over Harbor Boulevard, the main thoroughfare leading to Disneyland. Walt couldn’t stand these eyesores being associated with his park.

When planning the “Florida project,” a number of dummy companies were created to buy up cheap land, one small tract at a time. Like in a spy movie, Walt’s business representatives would make multiple layovers when travelling back and forth, just to maintain the secrecy of the operation. When the news broke that these mystery developers were actually Disney, land prices in central Florida shot up over a thousand bucks an acre, overnight! Suddenly mosquitoes and mangroves had a lot more value.

Yes, construction is a manly subject, and the story of how they built this engineering marvel on top of all that swampland would fill an entire book, if not a series of them. In fact, it already has.

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