December 22, 2017 • 49 mins
Disney World is one of the planet’s most well-known travel destinations, and over the decades it’s been the subject of bizarre rumors -- some more plausible than others. But how did this gigantic park get started? Join the guys as they delve into the murky history of Disney World’s foundations, the story of how Walt Disney himself raised the Magic Kingdom above the law.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My
name isn't they call me Ben? You are you? And
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today,
of course, when we joined as always with our super
producer Alex Williams, and for this episode, let's take an
imaginary road trip. Okay, well we going dad, Well let's
(00:48):
uh what about Disney World. Have you guys ever been
to Disney World? I went once when I was very
I guess I went several times I was very young, right, Uh,
Disney World is like this global legend. People around the
world are aware of Disney World. Right. It's a magical
place every day and estimated two d and fifty thousand
(01:09):
guests visit and in a lot of ways, it's a
city of its own, more ways than we knew prior
to researching this episode. And getting into the history of
Disney as a company is huge proposition, dude. And the
twists and turns you take and some of the legal
stuff we're gonna get into in this episode. UM very
(01:32):
surprising to me considering the way I view the company
and like the the image the word Disney. So we yeah,
so we have to be we have to pick our
battles and be pretty specific. So today we're going to
look at the story of Walt Disney World, located in
Bay Lake and Lake Buena, Viz, Stuff, Florida. This wasn't
the first part Disney built. There was another part called
(01:54):
Disneyland in Anaheim, California, that opened in nineteen and uh Nolan.
I actually stayed across the street from there recently, and
now I really kind of wanted to go, but I
just I couldn't justify spending more than a hundred dollars
to like wait in a series of lines all day,
which is kind of what it seems like a trip
to Disneyland involves. Yeah, and they have fireworks every night.
(02:17):
We saw those for free though from the street from
just like driving around. That was pretty cool. We went,
Tyler and Holly and I went when we went to
Star Wars celebration. Specifically, we I paid money to get
in there to be with Holly to watch the fireworks
because it was like a Star Wars themed thing. And
that's a Holly Fry friend of the shows and one
(02:37):
of the co host of stuff you missed in history class.
So was it was it worth it? Did you have
a good time? I mean for my money? No, But
the look on Holly's face, like with the tears coming
down after the Star Wars presentation, I mean it was
worth it. Oh that's beautiful man. Yeah. I I didn't
(02:58):
make it into Disneyland that time around, but who knows.
Life is life is long, right. Uh. The most well
known park the Disney owns is probably still the one
in Florida. It's Disney World. Uh, it was built in
one Currently it's over twenty seven thousand acres or forty
three square miles in size. And it's got a bunch
(03:21):
of stuff on there too. Oh yeah, You've got four
theme parks that are massive on their own right to
water parks which are also hefty. Twenty seven themed resort
hotels that blew my mind. I knew of maybe eight.
I did not know there were twenty seven. I wonder
if they start reaching after like number twenty, they've got
to know. Those last eight, I think is one of them,
(03:43):
just the themed on the Parrot and a lack. Well,
you see, that's the thing with every new property they
produce in their other ventures in their media companies. You
can just pop a resort up and now you've got
money just coming in. There's an Avatar one now, right,
And then there's also the Star Wars. There is one
where it like lets you like almost like be a
character in your own Star Wars adventure. And I think
(04:06):
it's kind of creepy to me a little bit, where
like you don't really leave at the park or the hotel.
It's all this like unified experience where everything follows you
from your hotel to like your time at the park
and a lot of stuff, and you like maintain this
reputation I guess based on choices you make. It's all encompassing,
(04:27):
self sustaining. It's a theme we're gonna continue to cover
in this episode. It's a bubble. It's almost alt reality.
I was talking to Holly from history class about it,
and she's kind of a disney a ficionano, shall all
we say? And I was sort of saying, like, man,
I don't know, it's a little ways just like what
about that sounds weird? That sounds like the most amazing
thing ever in the history of anything. I'm like, cool,
well you can you can have that. People. Yeah, people
(04:49):
who are fans of Disney are often you know, die hard,
lifelong loyalist, you know, like traveling every year, have a
reserve place, maybe have a a home that they spend
part of the time, part of the year in near
the parks. They're also nine non Disney hotels if you
need a Disney break, Uh, they've got Call of course
(05:11):
is of course as a camping resort. Here's the craziest
thing we found. There's still more room for growth. Less
than thirty four per cent of this land has been developed.
A quarter of it is a wilderness preserve, which I
think is reflects nicely on them, doesn't it. And you know,
it's not exactly easy to develop land in that part
of Florida, just you gotta do a lot of work
(05:34):
to even prep it to put buildings on there. Oh,
just because it's swampy. Stay Walt. Disney World is the
most popular vacation resort on the planet. According to them,
I feel like I have to add that part. And
every year they have an estimated attendance of over fifty
two million people. That's not at Disneyland and Disney World combined.
(05:55):
That's a Disney World. So we mentioned the total square
mileage by way of comparison. This area, this complex, this bubble,
it's community of its own, is about the size of
San Francisco. Oh, it's actually going to Orlando for a
non Disney work related thing next week. And when I
(06:15):
went to rent a car, the stat popped up on
the car rental site that Orlando is like the car
rental capital of the world. You're going to be a
part of history. When you land on the plane or
when you sit next to someone on the plane, you
should just tell them that you're going because it's the
car rental capital. I've always dreamed of visiting the car
(06:38):
rental capital of the world. No, but seeing all these stats,
it makes sense. I guess I didn't realize how massive
this whole complex is with all this different stuff. Makes
sense if you're if you're not familiar with San Francisco,
imagine the entire island of Manhattan, New York, where New
York City is, and now double it and then put
it in Florida. And that's how large places. I get
(07:01):
some a cartoon mouse too, and just a kick ass castle.
Can I say that? Like, I know it's not a
real castle, but that thing looks cool. It really does.
Magic Kingdom opened up in nine one, right, and when
it did, it had about five thousand, five dred employees.
The term for park employees, by the way, is cast members.
(07:24):
And this is interesting because there's a there's a whole
terminology or language used by the company to describe guests,
to describe experiences or attractions. And it reminds me of
when we all learned through just weird conversations here at work.
We all learned about how the w w E and
the world of wrestling has its own weird language. Superstars
(07:48):
right right, Uh makes me want to put my hands
under my armpits and smell them. Wow. I wonder how
many people in our audience get that right, and they
all just they come up a freak that is an
Saturday night or anyone. I did not make that up.
That's a good one. No, no, please, I think we
should keep it. Somebody will write in with an email. No,
(08:10):
they'll get it, you know. So it's like a whole
branded like like like Disney speak. Yeah yeah yeah, so uh, No,
employees everybody's a cast member. They're always performing, and they're
always guest. Uh. And the secret stuff that happens, which
is fascinating Underworld of its Own, is just all referred
to as backstage. Yeah, and then anytime you're around a guest,
(08:34):
you're on stage. That is so cool. I kind of
like that. I mean, you know, I guess they have
to have pretty easily understood and clearly defined rules because
today Walt Disney World employs more than seventy four thousand
cast members, and that means it's payroll is like one
point two billion dollars annually a year. Yeah, not not
(08:57):
every day, but that's really exciting. That means this company
must bring in just butt loads of cash, right, because
payroll is just going to be a percentage of profit. Right. Uh.
And before it gets too weird, right, we've got to
admit it's easy to fall into a Disney rabbit hole.
Over the years, the Magic Kingdom has been the subject
(09:17):
of all kinds of conspiracy theories and unfounded rumors, and
you've probably if you're listening to this show, you've probably
heard at least a few of these before. Oh yeah, dudes,
there's the idea that secret events. They're they're secret places
in the Disney theme parks, and there are these like
secret parties that occur at these things, and there's there
(09:39):
have been crazy accusations online about what goes on at
some of these. But we do know there's a grain
of truth here because there are a lot of exclusive
clubs that exist in the different resorts, in the different
parks that you have to be a specific type of
member to get in and you know, have a drink
there or whatever. Yeah. One the one that I think
(09:59):
started this sort of conspiracy or this rumor is a
place called Club thirty three, private exclusive five star restaurant
in and it's actually in Disneyland in California, so not
in Florida. But the idea, you know, like to prove
an existence of Club thirty three will make people some
people say, like, you know, there's a secret spot in Florida. Two. Yeah,
(10:23):
there's a you have to know the right you have
to shake the right mouse's hand. Plus let's talk about
the number thirty three. Oh, I feel like I'm good
on the number thirty three. Oh, that's right. This is
our first time recording since the world didn't end, right,
We're Okay, I wasn't even aware that that was a
potential thing that was gonna happen. You guys, you did
(10:44):
include me in and didn't send mimmo. We were banking
on it not happening. But if it did, that would
have been pretty terrible on our part. Then I'm sorry.
I would have felt I would have felt really bad.
If the world ends, I wanna, you know, I want
this show to go out. Uh, guns lazy. We should
get some guns in the studio and it wants to
be like the whole crew. Yes, you know, but for now,
(11:08):
of course, the world hasn't ended, and I'm very glad
it hasn't. That's right. Uh. And you can still get
into an exclusive club at Disneyland. And the question is
are there other secret places at Disney World. But that's
just one of the us. There's other stuff too. Speaking
of people dying, apparently that's not a thing at Disney.
(11:30):
In Disney, no one dies. Only that's not true. But
the theory is that no one dies at Disney is
the idea that both cast and guest deaths are covered
up to keep the park's image squeaky clean. Um. Part
of that focuses on the whole underground backstage system where
if anything kind of starts to go down, things get
(11:51):
swept away and down into the catacombs. Uh. You know,
it's an interesting idea for when I first read that
this one, I thought it was like some sort of
weird legal distinction that only Disney have, like the zone
of death. So we did where it's like, you know,
you it's not possible for you to die. Yes, you're Dad,
but you're not when you're at Disney. You just I
(12:13):
don't know what happens. So they just used a different word.
They're like, uh, you get promoted. They probably turn you
into like a costume and prop you up like a
puppet's school. See, I think you become a cast member
permanently at the Haunted Mansion. See it's got his Hotel
California vibe. So su you know, they know Disney listens
(12:36):
to this stuff. They have may monitor all frequencies for
any mention of the mouse. Well, you know it might
not be Disney monitoring. There might be somebody else just
given it to Disney. And again we're going to get
into it, man. Yeah, We're going to focus on a
single aspect of Walt Disney World just just one facet
of this gem, and that is the construction of the
(13:01):
of this ideal world. Because of course, buying over forty
square miles of land in Florida, even swamp land, it's
not something you just go out and do on a
lunch break, and it can also be quite expensive. If
that is you do it legally, you can do that illegally.
So in the fifties, when Disney began searching for property
(13:24):
in Florida, the company realized they were kind of at
this collective crossroads. Uh there were two ways to look
at their situation. So I'll present their perspective and then
the other way to look at it from the company's perspective.
How the land was purchased was crucial. If multiple private
landowners realized a single company was purchasing land in the area,
(13:46):
the owners would almost certainly jack up their prices, and
if they knew it was Disney, this would be compounded right. Uh,
So they would start speculating, maybe even becoming just holdouts,
just saying like I have my you know, level ranch
home in the middle of what of all the land
you want? So now it's going to be a million
dollars pay me or eminent domain. Son. There wasn't a
(14:09):
way to claim imminent domain or anything, because that's a
power technically restricted to the government. And imminent domain is
the thing in action when you see roads in your
neighborhood get widened. We have a lot of that in Atlanta,
and that that happens because the city says, well, for
the good, the public good, we are taking possession of
(14:30):
you know, like this front four feet of someone's yard,
and generally will pay you right, you know what we
determined to be a fair market rate. There's another way
to look at this, and that is Disney realized that
by obscuring, obstucating the company's identity, by making certain that
landowners did not really know who was buying what, the
company could conspire to get land at a price significantly
(14:54):
below market rate. And when we say below market rate,
we're talking around two hundred US do dollars for an acre,
an entire acre of land for two that's crazy, that's
a good deal. Yeah, that's clearly I'm not a land baron.
So there was a conspiracy going on. Is that conspires
(15:14):
like the Yeah, that this is a textbook group of
people conspiring to buy land at a much lower price.
But the mouse would never do that. That that he's
he's in looking at him. He's got those big white
gloves and smiling, was facing that pie pitched voice. It
wasn't the mouse though, it was the mouse's boys. Yeah,
the mouse is. The mouse is like an idea guy.
(15:35):
He doesn't get those gloves dirty, but he does have friends.
And they posed another question to Walt Disney, and let's
just refer to Disney as the mouse. I like that
a little bit of autonomy, right, So they posed the question,
They said, well, once you own the land, how do
you control it? He who controls the spice controls the world.
(16:03):
Here's where it gets crazy. So Disney, as Matt has
as mad is sort of foreshadowed the mouse. The mouse, Yes,
the mouse. How soon I forgot the mouse had friends
and the mouse did not do all of its own
work and acquiring this land. Believe it or not, the
(16:24):
mouse worked with the CIA, using the same tactics that
CIA agents had previously used to destabilize foreign regimes. The mouse,
in a small circle of close contact from the intelligence community,
created this enduring fiction. It involves puppet governments, shell companies,
(16:44):
all all the hits all the goods, and you may
be thinking to yourself, what again, You're gonna say that
a lot this episode. The truth is stranger than fiction
often so Disney the mouse had a contact with the
CIA there probably what's called their initial contact, and it
was a person you may have heard of previously, Good
(17:04):
Old William Donovan a k A. Wild Bill, a k
A Father of the CIA, a k A Hurdy Gurdy Man,
Sunshine Superman. That's not true, that's a different Donovan. I
like the A K A game. Remember we we played
that back in the day. That you know, I think
you should keep it quiet, but I think you should
market that. That could be a boxed up game that
(17:27):
you can see, you think to the nerds, yes, we'd
see some like you know, clandestine, hard to follow rules.
Yeah yeah, we uh un a tangible. We're off air.
We we have all sorts of schemes, plans and shenanigans.
And one time we made up a game called a
k and it was great. Our version of it, though,
(17:49):
is just like a K A A thing is it
was there? Like, but what if you have to do
it in alphabetical order, like you know, like like like
going to a add a couple of things. You have
to be some some rules. We'll get back to you
guys on that will work on that. Don't steal our ideas,
but you know, you can send us suggestions. If there's
nothing to steal yet, be on the lookout for it
on our on our new merch shop that we're working on. Yeah,
(18:11):
all right, So who is this wild Bill? Well, they
call him the father of the CIA because he was
the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the s
the OSS. You may have heard us speak of that before.
It was the agency that came before the CIA, what
the CIA would become. And he also co founded, interestingly enough,
(18:32):
a New York law firm called Donovan Leisure, Newton and Irvine.
It sounds really nice. They did lots of good work
and according to author T. D. Allman, he uh he
wrote a book called Finding Florida, The True History of
the Sunshine State. He says that attorneys from this firm
they provided very specific services for Disney and he calls
(18:56):
them agents who were attempting to acquire land in Florida.
What we were talking about, Well, they did things like
provide fake identification for agents working on behalf of Disney
set up a secret communications center so that they could
talk to each other clandestine lee. They also orchestrated disinformation
(19:16):
campaigns wherein they spread false rumors about the Ford Motor
Company being the behemoth that was coming through and buying
up all the land, so that Ford ended up getting
some flak in the press and they were kind of shielded.
Kind of crazy stuff, right, Yeah, I mean that's how
the that's how the apples get squished. It with Uber
(19:37):
ordered all those uh, fraudulent pizzas from lift drivers. No way,
that's not true. It's the other way around. It's the
other around. Uber does like apparently like ordered a bunch
of lifts that weren't going to any actual people just
to like get them off the off the grid. Whoa
and completely legal. Yeah, but yeah, this guy wild Bill
(19:57):
was not the only CIA contact. There was another fellow
named Paul Hello. Well. He was hired as the Mouse's
chief legal strategist. This was an extremely extremely shady character
he was. He was what I would call part of
the deep sketch and uh he had helped launch the
(20:18):
secret CIA wars or conflicts in Indo, China, and he
had returned to Florida, Miami specifically to help orchestrate various
agency attempts at overthrowing Castro. And yes we're talking about
the bizarre assassination attempts as well, really cartoonish stuff from
a different cartoon dynasty. Dynasty. Uh, they tried to give
(20:43):
Fidel Castro exploding cigars his beard fall off. It made
me think a wildly coyote. The level of scams. And
you know the various different acme products in the big
box that the word on it, and acmee was such
a successful company, but there's never seemed to work, you
know anyway this Uh, he was part of this fighting Castro,
(21:09):
making c I a wars and said I'll help you
out Walter. And his first big task with the mouse
was to buy up land for Disney without letting any
of the property owners know that Disney was the one
buying them out. And so that works in concert with
the stuff that wild Bill is doing where he's spreading
rumors and somebody says, you know, are you from the
(21:32):
Ford Motor Company? No, no, no, but we hear they're around,
you know exactly. He started out buying land as low
as eighty bucks an acre, which again not being land barrens.
Still that sounds pretty good, right, eighty bucks an acre,
I'll take it. I will build so many houses. That's
like what three acres for a video game system? Yeah.
(21:52):
Uh So he started buying this stuff like eighty bucks
an acre through various Shell companies while Donovan Bill Donovan's
firm ran that disinformation campaign. And today A neat note
about the palampsest of history is that today you can
walk down Main Street, USA at Walt Disney World and
(22:15):
you can find the names of those Shell companies because
they are listed on the upper story windows of the buildings. Yeah,
that's where they run. Man, that's where those Shell companies operate.
Is that true? I mean why not? Why not? I
would hope. So that would be kind of cool if
like you had a you had a Shell company job
that was not amusement park related, but your office was
(22:38):
in Disney World. It's just a single desk in a
room and it looks out over Main Street. Parking is
probably really tough, though, so this doesn't work forever. Eventually,
you know, word gets around as it as it is
want to do, and people finally find out that the
there's only one big buyer in the area. And it's
all Disney. And then the price shoots up to eight
(23:01):
dollars an acre, at about what it probably should be
for a massive corporation buying a plant. But here's the deal. Yeah,
at that point, they bought so much land for such
a cheaper price that the average overall is what we
stated before, two hundred dollars an acre. Wow. They got
away with it so hard, and it seems like kind
(23:23):
of an exciting project to be involved in. I don't
want to sound to a moral or something, but it's
not like they were buying it to build a nuclear
waste site. Then that sounds just a moral enough to
be true. I feel like I would be okay at it.
You know, I've seen you wringing your hands in private.
(23:46):
Oh the thing is you just do one hand when
you're talking to the people. Yeah, it looks like you're
always about to do something. Yeah. But but here's the deal. Guys.
So they've acquired all this land, right, you've off the land.
But what are your next steps? Because you're you just
own the land. What can I now do with this
(24:06):
land legally? Right? Right? So he also started pitching the
mouse on this other idea. He said Okay, we've we've
bought the land. How can we ensure the highest level
of sustained control over it? In very real sense? Hello
(24:27):
Well becomes the conceptual architect of this domain and gives
instructions on how to get close to something like severenity,
uh self governance for the mouse's layer. Yeah, they're at
a secretive. Walt Disney sets up a secretive meeting in
May of nineteen and he calls it a seminar, and
(24:50):
at the seminar, Hello Well pitches this approach that would
allow Disney to avoid a lot of taxation and environmental
regulation and main haying immunity from the U. S. Constitution. Wow,
that does not sound sinister at all. That really escalates, right,
It's like the first one, the second one of the
third one is yeah, the taxation things, you know, every
(25:13):
church that's ever existed. The problem here is the guy's
name is Hello l. So I can't like fault him
because every time I hear his name, I just think,
Hello Well, He's just a good guy, or is it? Hell?
It depends on, you know, if you're a friend or
a foe. But I could definitely see it being the
name of like a character in a children's book. Definitely
(25:35):
like an animal that talks. No, he's a he's like
an emoji. He's a Hello hel hellol never mind it. No, No,
I see where you're going. I think this has legs.
I'm going nowhere fast, but this story is going somewhere fast. So,
just like in the earlier operations, Hello Well advised Disney
(25:56):
to set up a puppet government that doesn't sounds sketchy
at all. He's part of the deep sketch and have
the entity dude Disney's bidding basic um. And then Hello
l told Disney to establish at least two phantom cities.
So you've got puppet governments and phantom cities. It's just
(26:18):
to keep keeping stuff straight here. Then he said that
they should use these fake governments to control land use
and make sure the public money the theme park generated,
like taxes, for example, stayed in Disney's uh private you know,
white glove clad hands. Yeah, so you're paying yourself taxes.
(26:39):
M m m yeah, totally legit, totally legit. It's it's
what they call soup's legit, right yep. So on pay
for Disney World cities would be just these you know,
regular role American hometowns. Just you you want to go
and visit the Disney hometown, you can. It's great, the
great values. Here. Here's the deal. First, you have to
(27:00):
bend the knee and swear field seeds of the mouth. Yes,
well sure, because oh God, at the start of a
combination of goofy and and and make you yeah, I
feel like I would do a better movie character. So
here's the deal. Like we're saying, the ben the knee
(27:20):
thing kind of was there because the only official residents
who lived in these two cities would be hand picked.
They would be um, I guess, loyalists if you want
to call them that, people who just get tears if
you will. They worked for Disney, and they are the
ones who would periodically elect officials for these two cities,
(27:43):
who in turn would seed complete control over to Disney executives.
So ultimately, it's just we're gonna put you in here,
you're gonna vote for us, We're gonna make the decisions,
and we're the guy's way up there are going to
be the ones who tell you what to do. It's weird, right.
In early nightteen sixty seven, Florida's legislature got into action
(28:04):
with this, they signed over municipal jurisdiction for the land
owned by the mouse. Uh and Walt himself named named
this jurisdiction entity the Ready Creek Improvement District, and it
was named after a waterway that went through the land called,
in a burst of creativity, Ready Creek. So Disney officially
(28:29):
isn't really doing stuff. The Ready Creek Improvement District is.
And this means that Disney the Mouse can do whatever
it wants on that land without government interference, including if
they wanted building a nuclear waste site. And you know,
there there were rumors online that Disney had or was
(28:50):
about to build a nuclear power plant. As recently as
we have not been able to confirm any of those stories.
It's called Space Mountain. Yeah man, they woke. Okay, why
do you think so much as Space Mountain is dark
and so that you don't see the huge concrete shell
over the core. I never thought about that. It's cool.
You only get mildly irradiated by going on that ride,
(29:12):
which I'm into. I'm into like a good mild dose
of radiation. It's like going to the SPA. Yeah, So
I love how we co sign that. Please don't poison
yourself with the radiation chasing a mild spa high. This
essentially means, you know, now that they can have this
agency to build build structures that a government went usually build.
(29:37):
It means that they're in charge of things like fire
departments now right, waste disposal. They can build airports and
industrial parks, all that stuff, and they can this gets
a little dry, but they can issue tax free bonds
that are for internal improvements, right. And then they are
also exempt from laws regarding zoning or land use. So
(30:01):
the floor the Florida legislature creates these two phantom cities,
and they're both named for artificial reservoirs that Disney engineers made.
Since nobody actually lives in these phantom cities, Disney just needs,
Asthmat said a couple of hand picked employees to to
tow the line. On a side note, I am starting
to think the phrase handpicked is really weird. You don't
(30:23):
ever hear like footed hand hand pick anyway? Uh? Elbow robed,
elbow right? Yes, nipple pinched. Sorry, I had to keep it.
I had to. I had to have the last pinch.
Yeah yeah, so many possibilities. Okay, okay, I will I'll
(30:46):
stay on the rails here. So we've got these handpicked employees. Yes,
and this whole Shenanigan is definitely sketchy, probably illegal, arguably unconstitutional,
but with the aid of the compliance state legislature, the
cities were incorporated. These would be Bay Lake and Lake
(31:07):
Buena Vista. They sound like beautiful places and they still
exist today with a combined population of around fifty seven people.
Most people have living in Bay Lake. All of them
are Disney employees or retired employees, or the children of employees.
And when you visit Disney's Magic Kingdom, you are visiting
the city of Bay Lake, Florida. As we record this,
(31:27):
Bay Lake has a population of forty seven yep. And
then there are ten people hanging out in Lake Buena Vista,
although they might not be hanging out there because they
probably have houses other places to All they have to
do is own the land. Yeah. In both cities. The
Disney engineered legislation established a qualification for holding executive office,
(31:47):
requiring that each candidate for office must be the owner
either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated
in the city. In order to be able to hold
the office of a council person. And that's important because
with like five exceptions, Disney owns all the land, all
(32:10):
of them with these five exceptions. And we'll explore this because,
as we said, through this r c I D. Red
Creek Improvement District, Disney is able to supply municipal services
like fire department, street cleaning, all that stuff. But despite
the pretty cozy arrangement, Disney and the State of Florida
still butt heads on different issues. Obviously, there's a lot
(32:33):
of money in play, and one of the big ones
would be property assessments. As you can imagine, the Magic
Kingdom is not it's not cheap. And Uncle Samson I
the that's the state Uncle Sam of Florida, the state
Uncle I like Uncle Sampson, and I needs that cash,
you know, to put in his Sampsonnite cash briefcases. Yeah,
(32:53):
it's a lot of probably a lot of cases for that.
Those Disney Bucks puts bend Bucks to shame. Know what.
It's one step at a time. I'd I'd rather be
fighting for something I believe in than joining big Disney dollars,
you know. So where does that leave us today? We'll
examine the contents of that mouse trap when we return
from a quick break. Currently, Disney remains in control of
(33:21):
the area. The phantom cities we mentioned earlier are still around,
as is the town of Celebration, Florida, a Disney Plans
community where Disney remains the largest land owner. Yeah it was.
This thing was built, and it was built as an
homage to the Walt Disney EPCOT plan. This this real
utopian future of what a city could look like. Yeah.
(33:45):
EPCOT is an acronym. It stands for Experimental Prototype Community
of Tomorrow, and it could be the subject of its
own episode. It was one of Walt Disney's long running
dreams to build this perfect town or that obeyed his
ideals of a perfect town. And the plans are pretty interesting.
Oh yeah, and if you are interested in moving to Celebration,
(34:06):
you can get a one bed, one bath for I
think it's a condo for a hundred and thirty five
thousand dollars right now, that seems reasonable. Yeah, No, for
a condo nuts a little high right again, not clearly,
not in anything, baron or property or otherwise. I just
don't know how much anything costs. I'm like a child.
(34:27):
If you did just win the lottery, though, if you're
listening to this, you can move there and be as
close as you want to the mouse for four million
dollars three million dollars. There are some mansions in celebration
for your mouse proximity, your mouse maximity. One of the
unexpectedly fascinating things we found we were looking at the
weird beginning of Disney was that all is not well
(34:52):
in celebration. It is a deceptively normal town, but it's
been it's been home to some murders. People say that
they've gotten a Stepford vibe if they're not fans of
the town it has. When you move in there, you
get a handbook with pretty exacting rules over what you
(35:15):
can and can't do. You know, I'm assuming what is
it the what are the homeowners? Yeah, I'm assuming those
are pretty intense there. And uh, speaking of lotteries, more
than four thousand people entered a lottery to pay over
the market price for the first homes. People were all
about it. There have been murders and there was a
(35:36):
guy bludged to death by traveling homeless man who said
that he bludged the guy for trying to sleep with him.
Less than a week later, an armed man barricaded himself
in his home. Yeah, burying the lead a little bit,
and it gets weirder. There's there's a group of British
(35:58):
expatriots who moved there when like retire and stuff, and
there's a phenomenon that they refer to a celebration separation.
This describes the tendency only some members of the community
see it for living and celebration, for people to move
to celebration being happily married and then to pretty much
get divorced because of the living in that town. So
(36:22):
it's there's something sinister when you hear people talk about
it that way. Um. One guy also said, you know,
they're out here just swapping wives out of boredom. It's
like I've never met so many swingers, which was not
what I was expecting. Not to like profile anybody, but
that's not what I was expecting when I was reading
about celebration the disneytown. You know, yeah, but somebody, You know,
(36:45):
there are a group of people, larger of people that
are loving it. And also if it bleeds, it leads.
So I'm conveying information about like the bad things I've heard,
but I'm sure that there are people who have been
to celebration listening in the audience. Who can tell us
a little more about it? Right, and that's probably exaggerated.
(37:05):
God help you. If Holly's listening to this episode, God
help you. She is. She is a celebration fan. No,
she's just you know, I think us she's a she's
a she's a Disney uh life firm. It's true, it's true,
and stuff you missed in the history class has some
excellent episodes on Disney. Don't just say God help me.
Remember you're in this. I'm trying to I'm doing my
(37:26):
best to keep my mouse gloved hands clean. Here. You
came up with the mouse, dude, I didn't come up
with the mouse. People call it the mouse. People were
fer to Disney as the mouse. It's the thing. I
wish I could claim credit for that, but at last
I cannot. The overall area is still controlled by the
Reedy Creek Improvement District. It's governed by a five person
(37:47):
board of supervisors, all of whom are senior Disney employees.
Remember when I mentioned those five exemptions or five exceptions,
So each of these five senior employees on the board
own a five acre undeveloped a lot of land within
the district. It is the only land not technically controlled
by the mouse or used for public slash road purposes.
(38:11):
And this means that they can vote. The residents of
the so called phantom cities can elect city officials, but
because they are not landowners, because of that qualification, they
have no power to elect the board of supervisors. In
many ways, this remains an autonomous area with relatively little
government influence. It's a world in many ways all of
(38:35):
its own. Disney World, Man, Disney World a magical place.
And you know, they haven't been challenged in court on
the way this was set up right, and they're not
doing villainous things. They're actually having a nature preserve is
an admirable thing, and I'm sure it's it's a massive
economic force area and an experience for countless children that
(39:00):
they will remember for the rest of their lives. I mean, honestly,
can you can you guys have like really fond memories
of going to a Disney place right anywhere? Forget's Disney.
I went to Disney World when I was a kid,
and what I remember more than Disney World itself was
like driving to Florida and eating like gator nuggets at
some hole in the wall place, the taxidermy stuff everywhere.
(39:24):
That's what I remember. I remember precious little about actual
Disney World. Really yeah, yeah, I think a lot of
people have fond memories of Disney World. Um. I remember
Space Mountain, which was just the krem And Dale like
krem uh. And I remember being super impressed with Epcot
(39:46):
and thinking, man, we should all live in the City
of the Future. I drank the kool aid on Epcot
real quick. It was the first time I had been
introduced to other cultures in a tangible way like that,
even though you know it's in Epcot, it's theme park
or whatever. But they had real things that I could
touch and interact with that I'd never seen before. I
do remember one ride that was like a Norway round
(40:08):
do you mind, like a creepy like monster troll thing,
And I remember that. I actually was talking to Jonathan
Strickland friend uh, a friend of me of the show,
and he said that that ride has now been replaced
by a frozen ride. But that's actually the first time
I thought about that in years, And I said, don't
remember anything from disney World, but I do remember that
it feels like you're going to go off. You're writing
(40:31):
and almost like a flume loggy looking thing and you
get to the edge and the troll like, whoa Norway. Yeah.
I remember it specifically because when he was a kid,
my I wanted to buy like a snack, right, and
there was something this chocolate ball covered with chocolate sprinkles
and was called like a rum ball and I had
(40:52):
no idea what that was. And the guy behind the counter,
who I thought was an adult, was probably like, you know,
nineteen he um he seventy or nineteen. He said, I
can't sell this to you, and uh, it's like you
have to get your mom or your parents or your
dad or something. So I had to go to negotiate
a rumball and then I got an imaginary fight with trolls. Yeah, dude. Also,
(41:17):
it really uh, it really hyped up Norway for us.
I think for you to know big time when we
go to Norway, is it going to be this is
gonna live up to the expectations set by Epcott. I
don't think that. I think the trolls kind of keep
to their own in the in the tundra. I don't
think they're just like flopping around, Willy n you know
(41:39):
they're flopping around. Sit through a completely dry example in here,
just for everybody. I think it's Japan this bit here,
and I think it's Japan the section about Japan. And
maybe it's not Japan, maybe it's South Koreana. I don't
remember which country it was. But when I was a kid,
seeing the architecture of some of the parts of Asia
over there that I had never seen before blew my
(42:01):
mind and I wanted to live in a house that
looked like this is like the International Pavilion thing, this stuff.
I don't remember any of that, but that does sound
like that'd be pretty mind blowing for a kid to
see all that, because that has some cool weird stuff.
Does you never see it ever in like, at least
in my life from where I was from. And there's
a lot of this stuff still exists today. It's going
(42:22):
to change with the time. Like Nol said regarding Jonathan's
report about the troll right being replaced, uh, this seems
set to continue. The mouse is going to continue ruling
over this part of Florida for the foreseeable future for sure.
And although it's a weird situation, legally, speaking, One of
(42:44):
the big questions is it's a weird situation. It does
clearly involve conspiracy of sorts, But the big question is
is it a bad thing? I mean, they're not running
a criminal empire, right that we know of What do
you what do you think? Do you feel like there's
some thing going on that's more than meets the eye,
something a little more sinister, or do you think it's
(43:04):
just how how it's been and how it's gonna keep
going and Disney is amazing and who cares how they
got the land? Who cares how they set up and
run the puppet governments. I mean, you can have a
lot of valid feelings about this. We love to get
your thoughts, especially if you've lived in the area. Maybe
you're one of those people who's a landowner and you
(43:25):
want to get us some information from the inside, huh,
from from one of these phantom cities. Send it to us.
We won't tell anybody except for everybody listening, except except
and then also, what are some of your favorite strange
Disney rumors? And do you think said rumor is true
or unsubstantiated, because we've fund a lot of stuff that
(43:47):
was you know, pretty easily dismissed, but that reminds us
it's time for Conner. First shout out of the day
comes from Bruce. I got I was say, yeah, I
wasn't on this episode, but like I love this and
I love this sema um in the Wood, the World
and Tomorrow episode. You meant this is a gay Bruce talking.
(44:08):
By the way, you mentioned Gary Oldman's unfortunate fashion choice
in the Fifth Element. You guys remind me so Gary
Oldman in the Fifth Element and Gary Oldman amazing actor
uh in the fifth Element. It's kind of a funny
voice in that foghorn leghorn. He's yeah, he's going for
what we call big old sing. Just chew that ax
(44:29):
like a nice slow last lemonade. You gotta chew you. Yeah,
that's what the alphil like. So he he has this
U sort of a high higher collared shirt. But the
thing that really stuck out that we're talking about is,
for some reason that has never explained or addressed in
(44:52):
the film at all, he has a plastic uh four
transparent forehead covering on one side of his head and
his hair is combed around it. No one mentioned in
this coming back to me now I just pulled it up,
but it never really clocked that particular piece. But that
(45:12):
is super strange. His name was Zorg, by the way,
that was his last name. At least Jean Baptiste. Well,
his his name sounds very similar to the person that
our friend Bruce blames for this monstrosity. He says, I
can assert with some confidence that this choice is not
to be blamed on Mr Oldman. Instead, I childishly blame
(45:34):
French fashion designer Jean Paul Gautier, who is culpable for
designing the costumes for the film. He only just manages
to redeem himself through the costume from Mia Djobovic's character,
which is, you know, iconic. It's like she's wearing like
a strap be kind of like overalls kind of thing.
It's it's super cool, um, he says. Jean Paul Gautier
(45:56):
may be best known to US Americans as the one
who designed the costumes for Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour, including
her infamous cone bra. I'm familiar with that. I think
any red blooded American would be. When you put the
cone bra in play, the weird plastic headshield loses some
of its mystery. That's just JP being JP. He's somewhere
(46:20):
on a set today now going I gotta be me
exactly exactly, he says. It's getting late in the morning
on the last day of our collective lives, so I
need to get this sent out and get the yard mode.
I like this guy's sense of humor, right, like the
cut of his chip. Yeah, thanks for writing, Bruce. We
get like the whole, like the whole, the whole, not
the whole thing. Good and thank you for I answered
(46:43):
that question. I didn't know Jean Paul Gautier was a
madman in the world of fashion. But I do feel
like much more at peace with the world by having
an explanation, because sometimes you get those little things that
stick under the skin of your mind and they can
haunt you. Man, That's what this show is all about.
(47:04):
It's all about haunting your mind skin. And this concludes
our gosh, but not our show, assuming that the mouse
doesn't find us and strangle us in our sleep. And also,
like the original Giallo, you know, I'm talking about like
those movies where like you see the perspective of the
(47:24):
killer and it's from the gloves. Wouldn't it be cool
to have one that was like Mickey and you can
just see his creepy gloved hand in and then he
slices up, you know, like a beauty queen. Oh man,
well there's a darkness inside me. Yes, so right in,
let us know what your opinion is of Disney. If
(47:47):
you have any strange encounters or anecdotes from Disney, we'd
love to hear them. And we'd love to hear whether
or not you think these rumors are plausible, you know,
like does no one only die at Disney? Is that
a myth um? You know? Are these like smear campaigns?
Or is there some sand to them? You give a
cast member backstage listening to this when you listen to
(48:11):
podcast backstage, I don't know, maybe around break Oh perhaps
what's back there? Just a bunch of water coolers and
snacks probably and and that um. And there's there's a
poster of a night of Night Rider, but with a kitten,
as like the David the hassle Off characters, always picturing
(48:32):
the like hanging there kitten, you know, hanging off the
tree branch. I like yours way better. No, it's the
same thing. Let's just have it's like the cats hanging
off a tree branch, but also the car from Night
Riders there and kid kids going, Michael, is that an
even dude. Yeah. You can find Matt, Noel and I
(48:53):
on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Instagram. We are Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy
Stuff Show, depending on which one you try. And you
can find every episode that we have ever done on
our website, Stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com.
If you want to write to us directly, you can
always find us at our good old fashioned email address.
(49:14):
We are conspiracy at our stuff words dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My
name isn't they call me Ben? You are you? And
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today,
of course, when we joined as always with our super
producer Alex Williams, and for this episode, let's take an
imaginary road trip. Okay, well we going dad, Well let's
(00:48):
uh what about Disney World. Have you guys ever been
to Disney World? I went once when I was very
I guess I went several times I was very young, right, Uh,
Disney World is like this global legend. People around the
world are aware of Disney World. Right. It's a magical
place every day and estimated two d and fifty thousand
(01:09):
guests visit and in a lot of ways, it's a
city of its own, more ways than we knew prior
to researching this episode. And getting into the history of
Disney as a company is huge proposition, dude. And the
twists and turns you take and some of the legal
stuff we're gonna get into in this episode. UM very
(01:32):
surprising to me considering the way I view the company
and like the the image the word Disney. So we yeah,
so we have to be we have to pick our
battles and be pretty specific. So today we're going to
look at the story of Walt Disney World, located in
Bay Lake and Lake Buena, Viz, Stuff, Florida. This wasn't
the first part Disney built. There was another part called
(01:54):
Disneyland in Anaheim, California, that opened in nineteen and uh Nolan.
I actually stayed across the street from there recently, and
now I really kind of wanted to go, but I
just I couldn't justify spending more than a hundred dollars
to like wait in a series of lines all day,
which is kind of what it seems like a trip
to Disneyland involves. Yeah, and they have fireworks every night.
(02:17):
We saw those for free though from the street from
just like driving around. That was pretty cool. We went,
Tyler and Holly and I went when we went to
Star Wars celebration. Specifically, we I paid money to get
in there to be with Holly to watch the fireworks
because it was like a Star Wars themed thing. And
that's a Holly Fry friend of the shows and one
(02:37):
of the co host of stuff you missed in history class.
So was it was it worth it? Did you have
a good time? I mean for my money? No, But
the look on Holly's face, like with the tears coming
down after the Star Wars presentation, I mean it was
worth it. Oh that's beautiful man. Yeah. I I didn't
(02:58):
make it into Disneyland that time around, but who knows.
Life is life is long, right. Uh. The most well
known park the Disney owns is probably still the one
in Florida. It's Disney World. Uh, it was built in
one Currently it's over twenty seven thousand acres or forty
three square miles in size. And it's got a bunch
(03:21):
of stuff on there too. Oh yeah, You've got four
theme parks that are massive on their own right to
water parks which are also hefty. Twenty seven themed resort
hotels that blew my mind. I knew of maybe eight.
I did not know there were twenty seven. I wonder
if they start reaching after like number twenty, they've got
to know. Those last eight, I think is one of them,
(03:43):
just the themed on the Parrot and a lack. Well,
you see, that's the thing with every new property they
produce in their other ventures in their media companies. You
can just pop a resort up and now you've got
money just coming in. There's an Avatar one now, right,
And then there's also the Star Wars. There is one
where it like lets you like almost like be a
character in your own Star Wars adventure. And I think
(04:06):
it's kind of creepy to me a little bit, where
like you don't really leave at the park or the hotel.
It's all this like unified experience where everything follows you
from your hotel to like your time at the park
and a lot of stuff, and you like maintain this
reputation I guess based on choices you make. It's all encompassing,
(04:27):
self sustaining. It's a theme we're gonna continue to cover
in this episode. It's a bubble. It's almost alt reality.
I was talking to Holly from history class about it,
and she's kind of a disney a ficionano, shall all
we say? And I was sort of saying, like, man,
I don't know, it's a little ways just like what
about that sounds weird? That sounds like the most amazing
thing ever in the history of anything. I'm like, cool,
well you can you can have that. People. Yeah, people
(04:49):
who are fans of Disney are often you know, die hard,
lifelong loyalist, you know, like traveling every year, have a
reserve place, maybe have a a home that they spend
part of the time, part of the year in near
the parks. They're also nine non Disney hotels if you
need a Disney break, Uh, they've got Call of course
(05:11):
is of course as a camping resort. Here's the craziest
thing we found. There's still more room for growth. Less
than thirty four per cent of this land has been developed.
A quarter of it is a wilderness preserve, which I
think is reflects nicely on them, doesn't it. And you know,
it's not exactly easy to develop land in that part
of Florida, just you gotta do a lot of work
(05:34):
to even prep it to put buildings on there. Oh,
just because it's swampy. Stay Walt. Disney World is the
most popular vacation resort on the planet. According to them,
I feel like I have to add that part. And
every year they have an estimated attendance of over fifty
two million people. That's not at Disneyland and Disney World combined.
(05:55):
That's a Disney World. So we mentioned the total square
mileage by way of comparison. This area, this complex, this bubble,
it's community of its own, is about the size of
San Francisco. Oh, it's actually going to Orlando for a
non Disney work related thing next week. And when I
(06:15):
went to rent a car, the stat popped up on
the car rental site that Orlando is like the car
rental capital of the world. You're going to be a
part of history. When you land on the plane or
when you sit next to someone on the plane, you
should just tell them that you're going because it's the
car rental capital. I've always dreamed of visiting the car
(06:38):
rental capital of the world. No, but seeing all these stats,
it makes sense. I guess I didn't realize how massive
this whole complex is with all this different stuff. Makes
sense if you're if you're not familiar with San Francisco,
imagine the entire island of Manhattan, New York, where New
York City is, and now double it and then put
it in Florida. And that's how large places. I get
(07:01):
some a cartoon mouse too, and just a kick ass castle.
Can I say that? Like, I know it's not a
real castle, but that thing looks cool. It really does.
Magic Kingdom opened up in nine one, right, and when
it did, it had about five thousand, five dred employees.
The term for park employees, by the way, is cast members.
(07:24):
And this is interesting because there's a there's a whole
terminology or language used by the company to describe guests,
to describe experiences or attractions. And it reminds me of
when we all learned through just weird conversations here at work.
We all learned about how the w w E and
the world of wrestling has its own weird language. Superstars
(07:48):
right right, Uh makes me want to put my hands
under my armpits and smell them. Wow. I wonder how
many people in our audience get that right, and they
all just they come up a freak that is an
Saturday night or anyone. I did not make that up.
That's a good one. No, no, please, I think we
should keep it. Somebody will write in with an email. No,
(08:10):
they'll get it, you know. So it's like a whole
branded like like like Disney speak. Yeah yeah yeah, so uh, No,
employees everybody's a cast member. They're always performing, and they're
always guest. Uh. And the secret stuff that happens, which
is fascinating Underworld of its Own, is just all referred
to as backstage. Yeah, and then anytime you're around a guest,
(08:34):
you're on stage. That is so cool. I kind of
like that. I mean, you know, I guess they have
to have pretty easily understood and clearly defined rules because
today Walt Disney World employs more than seventy four thousand
cast members, and that means it's payroll is like one
point two billion dollars annually a year. Yeah, not not
(08:57):
every day, but that's really exciting. That means this company
must bring in just butt loads of cash, right, because
payroll is just going to be a percentage of profit. Right. Uh.
And before it gets too weird, right, we've got to
admit it's easy to fall into a Disney rabbit hole.
Over the years, the Magic Kingdom has been the subject
(09:17):
of all kinds of conspiracy theories and unfounded rumors, and
you've probably if you're listening to this show, you've probably
heard at least a few of these before. Oh yeah, dudes,
there's the idea that secret events. They're they're secret places
in the Disney theme parks, and there are these like
secret parties that occur at these things, and there's there
(09:39):
have been crazy accusations online about what goes on at
some of these. But we do know there's a grain
of truth here because there are a lot of exclusive
clubs that exist in the different resorts, in the different
parks that you have to be a specific type of
member to get in and you know, have a drink
there or whatever. Yeah. One the one that I think
(09:59):
started this sort of conspiracy or this rumor is a
place called Club thirty three, private exclusive five star restaurant
in and it's actually in Disneyland in California, so not
in Florida. But the idea, you know, like to prove
an existence of Club thirty three will make people some
people say, like, you know, there's a secret spot in Florida. Two. Yeah,
(10:23):
there's a you have to know the right you have
to shake the right mouse's hand. Plus let's talk about
the number thirty three. Oh, I feel like I'm good
on the number thirty three. Oh, that's right. This is
our first time recording since the world didn't end, right,
We're Okay, I wasn't even aware that that was a
potential thing that was gonna happen. You guys, you did
(10:44):
include me in and didn't send mimmo. We were banking
on it not happening. But if it did, that would
have been pretty terrible on our part. Then I'm sorry.
I would have felt I would have felt really bad.
If the world ends, I wanna, you know, I want
this show to go out. Uh, guns lazy. We should
get some guns in the studio and it wants to
be like the whole crew. Yes, you know, but for now,
(11:08):
of course, the world hasn't ended, and I'm very glad
it hasn't. That's right. Uh. And you can still get
into an exclusive club at Disneyland. And the question is
are there other secret places at Disney World. But that's
just one of the us. There's other stuff too. Speaking
of people dying, apparently that's not a thing at Disney.
(11:30):
In Disney, no one dies. Only that's not true. But
the theory is that no one dies at Disney is
the idea that both cast and guest deaths are covered
up to keep the park's image squeaky clean. Um. Part
of that focuses on the whole underground backstage system where
if anything kind of starts to go down, things get
(11:51):
swept away and down into the catacombs. Uh. You know,
it's an interesting idea for when I first read that
this one, I thought it was like some sort of
weird legal distinction that only Disney have, like the zone
of death. So we did where it's like, you know,
you it's not possible for you to die. Yes, you're Dad,
but you're not when you're at Disney. You just I
(12:13):
don't know what happens. So they just used a different word.
They're like, uh, you get promoted. They probably turn you
into like a costume and prop you up like a
puppet's school. See, I think you become a cast member
permanently at the Haunted Mansion. See it's got his Hotel
California vibe. So su you know, they know Disney listens
(12:36):
to this stuff. They have may monitor all frequencies for
any mention of the mouse. Well, you know it might
not be Disney monitoring. There might be somebody else just
given it to Disney. And again we're going to get
into it, man. Yeah, We're going to focus on a
single aspect of Walt Disney World just just one facet
of this gem, and that is the construction of the
(13:01):
of this ideal world. Because of course, buying over forty
square miles of land in Florida, even swamp land, it's
not something you just go out and do on a
lunch break, and it can also be quite expensive. If
that is you do it legally, you can do that illegally.
So in the fifties, when Disney began searching for property
(13:24):
in Florida, the company realized they were kind of at
this collective crossroads. Uh there were two ways to look
at their situation. So I'll present their perspective and then
the other way to look at it from the company's perspective.
How the land was purchased was crucial. If multiple private
landowners realized a single company was purchasing land in the area,
(13:46):
the owners would almost certainly jack up their prices, and
if they knew it was Disney, this would be compounded right. Uh,
So they would start speculating, maybe even becoming just holdouts,
just saying like I have my you know, level ranch
home in the middle of what of all the land
you want? So now it's going to be a million
dollars pay me or eminent domain. Son. There wasn't a
(14:09):
way to claim imminent domain or anything, because that's a
power technically restricted to the government. And imminent domain is
the thing in action when you see roads in your
neighborhood get widened. We have a lot of that in Atlanta,
and that that happens because the city says, well, for
the good, the public good, we are taking possession of
(14:30):
you know, like this front four feet of someone's yard,
and generally will pay you right, you know what we
determined to be a fair market rate. There's another way
to look at this, and that is Disney realized that
by obscuring, obstucating the company's identity, by making certain that
landowners did not really know who was buying what, the
company could conspire to get land at a price significantly
(14:54):
below market rate. And when we say below market rate,
we're talking around two hundred US do dollars for an acre,
an entire acre of land for two that's crazy, that's
a good deal. Yeah, that's clearly I'm not a land baron.
So there was a conspiracy going on. Is that conspires
(15:14):
like the Yeah, that this is a textbook group of
people conspiring to buy land at a much lower price.
But the mouse would never do that. That that he's
he's in looking at him. He's got those big white
gloves and smiling, was facing that pie pitched voice. It
wasn't the mouse though, it was the mouse's boys. Yeah,
the mouse is. The mouse is like an idea guy.
(15:35):
He doesn't get those gloves dirty, but he does have friends.
And they posed another question to Walt Disney, and let's
just refer to Disney as the mouse. I like that
a little bit of autonomy, right, So they posed the question,
They said, well, once you own the land, how do
you control it? He who controls the spice controls the world.
(16:03):
Here's where it gets crazy. So Disney, as Matt has
as mad is sort of foreshadowed the mouse. The mouse, Yes,
the mouse. How soon I forgot the mouse had friends
and the mouse did not do all of its own
work and acquiring this land. Believe it or not, the
(16:24):
mouse worked with the CIA, using the same tactics that
CIA agents had previously used to destabilize foreign regimes. The mouse,
in a small circle of close contact from the intelligence community,
created this enduring fiction. It involves puppet governments, shell companies,
(16:44):
all all the hits all the goods, and you may
be thinking to yourself, what again, You're gonna say that
a lot this episode. The truth is stranger than fiction
often so Disney the mouse had a contact with the
CIA there probably what's called their initial contact, and it
was a person you may have heard of previously, Good
(17:04):
Old William Donovan a k A. Wild Bill, a k
A Father of the CIA, a k A Hurdy Gurdy Man,
Sunshine Superman. That's not true, that's a different Donovan. I
like the A K A game. Remember we we played
that back in the day. That you know, I think
you should keep it quiet, but I think you should
market that. That could be a boxed up game that
(17:27):
you can see, you think to the nerds, yes, we'd
see some like you know, clandestine, hard to follow rules.
Yeah yeah, we uh un a tangible. We're off air.
We we have all sorts of schemes, plans and shenanigans.
And one time we made up a game called a
k and it was great. Our version of it, though,
(17:49):
is just like a K A A thing is it
was there? Like, but what if you have to do
it in alphabetical order, like you know, like like like
going to a add a couple of things. You have
to be some some rules. We'll get back to you
guys on that will work on that. Don't steal our ideas,
but you know, you can send us suggestions. If there's
nothing to steal yet, be on the lookout for it
on our on our new merch shop that we're working on. Yeah,
(18:11):
all right, So who is this wild Bill? Well, they
call him the father of the CIA because he was
the founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the s
the OSS. You may have heard us speak of that before.
It was the agency that came before the CIA, what
the CIA would become. And he also co founded, interestingly enough,
(18:32):
a New York law firm called Donovan Leisure, Newton and Irvine.
It sounds really nice. They did lots of good work
and according to author T. D. Allman, he uh he
wrote a book called Finding Florida, The True History of
the Sunshine State. He says that attorneys from this firm
they provided very specific services for Disney and he calls
(18:56):
them agents who were attempting to acquire land in Florida.
What we were talking about, Well, they did things like
provide fake identification for agents working on behalf of Disney
set up a secret communications center so that they could
talk to each other clandestine lee. They also orchestrated disinformation
(19:16):
campaigns wherein they spread false rumors about the Ford Motor
Company being the behemoth that was coming through and buying
up all the land, so that Ford ended up getting
some flak in the press and they were kind of shielded.
Kind of crazy stuff, right, Yeah, I mean that's how
the that's how the apples get squished. It with Uber
(19:37):
ordered all those uh, fraudulent pizzas from lift drivers. No way,
that's not true. It's the other way around. It's the
other around. Uber does like apparently like ordered a bunch
of lifts that weren't going to any actual people just
to like get them off the off the grid. Whoa
and completely legal. Yeah, but yeah, this guy wild Bill
(19:57):
was not the only CIA contact. There was another fellow
named Paul Hello. Well. He was hired as the Mouse's
chief legal strategist. This was an extremely extremely shady character
he was. He was what I would call part of
the deep sketch and uh he had helped launch the
(20:18):
secret CIA wars or conflicts in Indo, China, and he
had returned to Florida, Miami specifically to help orchestrate various
agency attempts at overthrowing Castro. And yes we're talking about
the bizarre assassination attempts as well, really cartoonish stuff from
a different cartoon dynasty. Dynasty. Uh, they tried to give
(20:43):
Fidel Castro exploding cigars his beard fall off. It made
me think a wildly coyote. The level of scams. And
you know the various different acme products in the big
box that the word on it, and acmee was such
a successful company, but there's never seemed to work, you
know anyway this Uh, he was part of this fighting Castro,
(21:09):
making c I a wars and said I'll help you
out Walter. And his first big task with the mouse
was to buy up land for Disney without letting any
of the property owners know that Disney was the one
buying them out. And so that works in concert with
the stuff that wild Bill is doing where he's spreading
rumors and somebody says, you know, are you from the
(21:32):
Ford Motor Company? No, no, no, but we hear they're around,
you know exactly. He started out buying land as low
as eighty bucks an acre, which again not being land barrens.
Still that sounds pretty good, right, eighty bucks an acre,
I'll take it. I will build so many houses. That's
like what three acres for a video game system? Yeah.
(21:52):
Uh So he started buying this stuff like eighty bucks
an acre through various Shell companies while Donovan Bill Donovan's
firm ran that disinformation campaign. And today A neat note
about the palampsest of history is that today you can
walk down Main Street, USA at Walt Disney World and
(22:15):
you can find the names of those Shell companies because
they are listed on the upper story windows of the buildings. Yeah,
that's where they run. Man, that's where those Shell companies operate.
Is that true? I mean why not? Why not? I
would hope. So that would be kind of cool if
like you had a you had a Shell company job
that was not amusement park related, but your office was
(22:38):
in Disney World. It's just a single desk in a
room and it looks out over Main Street. Parking is
probably really tough, though, so this doesn't work forever. Eventually,
you know, word gets around as it as it is
want to do, and people finally find out that the
there's only one big buyer in the area. And it's
all Disney. And then the price shoots up to eight
(23:01):
dollars an acre, at about what it probably should be
for a massive corporation buying a plant. But here's the deal. Yeah,
at that point, they bought so much land for such
a cheaper price that the average overall is what we
stated before, two hundred dollars an acre. Wow. They got
away with it so hard, and it seems like kind
(23:23):
of an exciting project to be involved in. I don't
want to sound to a moral or something, but it's
not like they were buying it to build a nuclear
waste site. Then that sounds just a moral enough to
be true. I feel like I would be okay at it.
You know, I've seen you wringing your hands in private.
(23:46):
Oh the thing is you just do one hand when
you're talking to the people. Yeah, it looks like you're
always about to do something. Yeah. But but here's the deal. Guys.
So they've acquired all this land, right, you've off the land.
But what are your next steps? Because you're you just
own the land. What can I now do with this
(24:06):
land legally? Right? Right? So he also started pitching the
mouse on this other idea. He said Okay, we've we've
bought the land. How can we ensure the highest level
of sustained control over it? In very real sense? Hello
(24:27):
Well becomes the conceptual architect of this domain and gives
instructions on how to get close to something like severenity,
uh self governance for the mouse's layer. Yeah, they're at
a secretive. Walt Disney sets up a secretive meeting in
May of nineteen and he calls it a seminar, and
(24:50):
at the seminar, Hello Well pitches this approach that would
allow Disney to avoid a lot of taxation and environmental
regulation and main haying immunity from the U. S. Constitution. Wow,
that does not sound sinister at all. That really escalates, right,
It's like the first one, the second one of the
third one is yeah, the taxation things, you know, every
(25:13):
church that's ever existed. The problem here is the guy's
name is Hello l. So I can't like fault him
because every time I hear his name, I just think,
Hello Well, He's just a good guy, or is it? Hell?
It depends on, you know, if you're a friend or
a foe. But I could definitely see it being the
name of like a character in a children's book. Definitely
(25:35):
like an animal that talks. No, he's a he's like
an emoji. He's a Hello hel hellol never mind it. No, No,
I see where you're going. I think this has legs.
I'm going nowhere fast, but this story is going somewhere fast. So,
just like in the earlier operations, Hello Well advised Disney
(25:56):
to set up a puppet government that doesn't sounds sketchy
at all. He's part of the deep sketch and have
the entity dude Disney's bidding basic um. And then Hello
l told Disney to establish at least two phantom cities.
So you've got puppet governments and phantom cities. It's just
(26:18):
to keep keeping stuff straight here. Then he said that
they should use these fake governments to control land use
and make sure the public money the theme park generated,
like taxes, for example, stayed in Disney's uh private you know,
white glove clad hands. Yeah, so you're paying yourself taxes.
(26:39):
M m m yeah, totally legit, totally legit. It's it's
what they call soup's legit, right yep. So on pay
for Disney World cities would be just these you know,
regular role American hometowns. Just you you want to go
and visit the Disney hometown, you can. It's great, the
great values. Here. Here's the deal. First, you have to
(27:00):
bend the knee and swear field seeds of the mouth. Yes,
well sure, because oh God, at the start of a
combination of goofy and and and make you yeah, I
feel like I would do a better movie character. So
here's the deal. Like we're saying, the ben the knee
(27:20):
thing kind of was there because the only official residents
who lived in these two cities would be hand picked.
They would be um, I guess, loyalists if you want
to call them that, people who just get tears if
you will. They worked for Disney, and they are the
ones who would periodically elect officials for these two cities,
(27:43):
who in turn would seed complete control over to Disney executives.
So ultimately, it's just we're gonna put you in here,
you're gonna vote for us, We're gonna make the decisions,
and we're the guy's way up there are going to
be the ones who tell you what to do. It's weird, right.
In early nightteen sixty seven, Florida's legislature got into action
(28:04):
with this, they signed over municipal jurisdiction for the land
owned by the mouse. Uh and Walt himself named named
this jurisdiction entity the Ready Creek Improvement District, and it
was named after a waterway that went through the land called,
in a burst of creativity, Ready Creek. So Disney officially
(28:29):
isn't really doing stuff. The Ready Creek Improvement District is.
And this means that Disney the Mouse can do whatever
it wants on that land without government interference, including if
they wanted building a nuclear waste site. And you know,
there there were rumors online that Disney had or was
(28:50):
about to build a nuclear power plant. As recently as
we have not been able to confirm any of those stories.
It's called Space Mountain. Yeah man, they woke. Okay, why
do you think so much as Space Mountain is dark
and so that you don't see the huge concrete shell
over the core. I never thought about that. It's cool.
You only get mildly irradiated by going on that ride,
(29:12):
which I'm into. I'm into like a good mild dose
of radiation. It's like going to the SPA. Yeah, So
I love how we co sign that. Please don't poison
yourself with the radiation chasing a mild spa high. This
essentially means, you know, now that they can have this
agency to build build structures that a government went usually build.
(29:37):
It means that they're in charge of things like fire
departments now right, waste disposal. They can build airports and
industrial parks, all that stuff, and they can this gets
a little dry, but they can issue tax free bonds
that are for internal improvements, right. And then they are
also exempt from laws regarding zoning or land use. So
(30:01):
the floor the Florida legislature creates these two phantom cities,
and they're both named for artificial reservoirs that Disney engineers made.
Since nobody actually lives in these phantom cities, Disney just needs,
Asthmat said a couple of hand picked employees to to
tow the line. On a side note, I am starting
to think the phrase handpicked is really weird. You don't
(30:23):
ever hear like footed hand hand pick anyway? Uh? Elbow robed,
elbow right? Yes, nipple pinched. Sorry, I had to keep it.
I had to. I had to have the last pinch.
Yeah yeah, so many possibilities. Okay, okay, I will I'll
(30:46):
stay on the rails here. So we've got these handpicked employees. Yes,
and this whole Shenanigan is definitely sketchy, probably illegal, arguably unconstitutional,
but with the aid of the compliance state legislature, the
cities were incorporated. These would be Bay Lake and Lake
(31:07):
Buena Vista. They sound like beautiful places and they still
exist today with a combined population of around fifty seven people.
Most people have living in Bay Lake. All of them
are Disney employees or retired employees, or the children of employees.
And when you visit Disney's Magic Kingdom, you are visiting
the city of Bay Lake, Florida. As we record this,
(31:27):
Bay Lake has a population of forty seven yep. And
then there are ten people hanging out in Lake Buena Vista,
although they might not be hanging out there because they
probably have houses other places to All they have to
do is own the land. Yeah. In both cities. The
Disney engineered legislation established a qualification for holding executive office,
(31:47):
requiring that each candidate for office must be the owner
either directly or as a trustee, of real property situated
in the city. In order to be able to hold
the office of a council person. And that's important because
with like five exceptions, Disney owns all the land, all
(32:10):
of them with these five exceptions. And we'll explore this because,
as we said, through this r c I D. Red
Creek Improvement District, Disney is able to supply municipal services
like fire department, street cleaning, all that stuff. But despite
the pretty cozy arrangement, Disney and the State of Florida
still butt heads on different issues. Obviously, there's a lot
(32:33):
of money in play, and one of the big ones
would be property assessments. As you can imagine, the Magic
Kingdom is not it's not cheap. And Uncle Samson I
the that's the state Uncle Sam of Florida, the state
Uncle I like Uncle Sampson, and I needs that cash,
you know, to put in his Sampsonnite cash briefcases. Yeah,
(32:53):
it's a lot of probably a lot of cases for that.
Those Disney Bucks puts bend Bucks to shame. Know what.
It's one step at a time. I'd I'd rather be
fighting for something I believe in than joining big Disney dollars,
you know. So where does that leave us today? We'll
examine the contents of that mouse trap when we return
from a quick break. Currently, Disney remains in control of
(33:21):
the area. The phantom cities we mentioned earlier are still around,
as is the town of Celebration, Florida, a Disney Plans
community where Disney remains the largest land owner. Yeah it was.
This thing was built, and it was built as an
homage to the Walt Disney EPCOT plan. This this real
utopian future of what a city could look like. Yeah.
(33:45):
EPCOT is an acronym. It stands for Experimental Prototype Community
of Tomorrow, and it could be the subject of its
own episode. It was one of Walt Disney's long running
dreams to build this perfect town or that obeyed his
ideals of a perfect town. And the plans are pretty interesting.
Oh yeah, and if you are interested in moving to Celebration,
(34:06):
you can get a one bed, one bath for I
think it's a condo for a hundred and thirty five
thousand dollars right now, that seems reasonable. Yeah, No, for
a condo nuts a little high right again, not clearly,
not in anything, baron or property or otherwise. I just
don't know how much anything costs. I'm like a child.
(34:27):
If you did just win the lottery, though, if you're
listening to this, you can move there and be as
close as you want to the mouse for four million
dollars three million dollars. There are some mansions in celebration
for your mouse proximity, your mouse maximity. One of the
unexpectedly fascinating things we found we were looking at the
weird beginning of Disney was that all is not well
(34:52):
in celebration. It is a deceptively normal town, but it's
been it's been home to some murders. People say that
they've gotten a Stepford vibe if they're not fans of
the town it has. When you move in there, you
get a handbook with pretty exacting rules over what you
(35:15):
can and can't do. You know, I'm assuming what is
it the what are the homeowners? Yeah, I'm assuming those
are pretty intense there. And uh, speaking of lotteries, more
than four thousand people entered a lottery to pay over
the market price for the first homes. People were all
about it. There have been murders and there was a
(35:36):
guy bludged to death by traveling homeless man who said
that he bludged the guy for trying to sleep with him.
Less than a week later, an armed man barricaded himself
in his home. Yeah, burying the lead a little bit,
and it gets weirder. There's there's a group of British
(35:58):
expatriots who moved there when like retire and stuff, and
there's a phenomenon that they refer to a celebration separation.
This describes the tendency only some members of the community
see it for living and celebration, for people to move
to celebration being happily married and then to pretty much
get divorced because of the living in that town. So
(36:22):
it's there's something sinister when you hear people talk about
it that way. Um. One guy also said, you know,
they're out here just swapping wives out of boredom. It's
like I've never met so many swingers, which was not
what I was expecting. Not to like profile anybody, but
that's not what I was expecting when I was reading
about celebration the disneytown. You know, yeah, but somebody, You know,
(36:45):
there are a group of people, larger of people that
are loving it. And also if it bleeds, it leads.
So I'm conveying information about like the bad things I've heard,
but I'm sure that there are people who have been
to celebration listening in the audience. Who can tell us
a little more about it? Right, and that's probably exaggerated.
(37:05):
God help you. If Holly's listening to this episode, God
help you. She is. She is a celebration fan. No,
she's just you know, I think us she's a she's
a she's a Disney uh life firm. It's true, it's true,
and stuff you missed in the history class has some
excellent episodes on Disney. Don't just say God help me.
Remember you're in this. I'm trying to I'm doing my
(37:26):
best to keep my mouse gloved hands clean. Here. You
came up with the mouse, dude, I didn't come up
with the mouse. People call it the mouse. People were
fer to Disney as the mouse. It's the thing. I
wish I could claim credit for that, but at last
I cannot. The overall area is still controlled by the
Reedy Creek Improvement District. It's governed by a five person
(37:47):
board of supervisors, all of whom are senior Disney employees.
Remember when I mentioned those five exemptions or five exceptions,
So each of these five senior employees on the board
own a five acre undeveloped a lot of land within
the district. It is the only land not technically controlled
by the mouse or used for public slash road purposes.
(38:11):
And this means that they can vote. The residents of
the so called phantom cities can elect city officials, but
because they are not landowners, because of that qualification, they
have no power to elect the board of supervisors. In
many ways, this remains an autonomous area with relatively little
government influence. It's a world in many ways all of
(38:35):
its own. Disney World, Man, Disney World a magical place.
And you know, they haven't been challenged in court on
the way this was set up right, and they're not
doing villainous things. They're actually having a nature preserve is
an admirable thing, and I'm sure it's it's a massive
economic force area and an experience for countless children that
(39:00):
they will remember for the rest of their lives. I mean, honestly,
can you can you guys have like really fond memories
of going to a Disney place right anywhere? Forget's Disney.
I went to Disney World when I was a kid,
and what I remember more than Disney World itself was
like driving to Florida and eating like gator nuggets at
some hole in the wall place, the taxidermy stuff everywhere.
(39:24):
That's what I remember. I remember precious little about actual
Disney World. Really yeah, yeah, I think a lot of
people have fond memories of Disney World. Um. I remember
Space Mountain, which was just the krem And Dale like
krem uh. And I remember being super impressed with Epcot
(39:46):
and thinking, man, we should all live in the City
of the Future. I drank the kool aid on Epcot
real quick. It was the first time I had been
introduced to other cultures in a tangible way like that,
even though you know it's in Epcot, it's theme park
or whatever. But they had real things that I could
touch and interact with that I'd never seen before. I
do remember one ride that was like a Norway round
(40:08):
do you mind, like a creepy like monster troll thing,
And I remember that. I actually was talking to Jonathan
Strickland friend uh, a friend of me of the show,
and he said that that ride has now been replaced
by a frozen ride. But that's actually the first time
I thought about that in years, And I said, don't
remember anything from disney World, but I do remember that
it feels like you're going to go off. You're writing
(40:31):
and almost like a flume loggy looking thing and you
get to the edge and the troll like, whoa Norway. Yeah.
I remember it specifically because when he was a kid,
my I wanted to buy like a snack, right, and
there was something this chocolate ball covered with chocolate sprinkles
and was called like a rum ball and I had
(40:52):
no idea what that was. And the guy behind the counter,
who I thought was an adult, was probably like, you know,
nineteen he um he seventy or nineteen. He said, I
can't sell this to you, and uh, it's like you
have to get your mom or your parents or your
dad or something. So I had to go to negotiate
a rumball and then I got an imaginary fight with trolls. Yeah, dude. Also,
(41:17):
it really uh, it really hyped up Norway for us.
I think for you to know big time when we
go to Norway, is it going to be this is
gonna live up to the expectations set by Epcott. I
don't think that. I think the trolls kind of keep
to their own in the in the tundra. I don't
think they're just like flopping around, Willy n you know
(41:39):
they're flopping around. Sit through a completely dry example in here,
just for everybody. I think it's Japan this bit here,
and I think it's Japan the section about Japan. And
maybe it's not Japan, maybe it's South Koreana. I don't
remember which country it was. But when I was a kid,
seeing the architecture of some of the parts of Asia
over there that I had never seen before blew my
(42:01):
mind and I wanted to live in a house that
looked like this is like the International Pavilion thing, this stuff.
I don't remember any of that, but that does sound
like that'd be pretty mind blowing for a kid to
see all that, because that has some cool weird stuff.
Does you never see it ever in like, at least
in my life from where I was from. And there's
a lot of this stuff still exists today. It's going
(42:22):
to change with the time. Like Nol said regarding Jonathan's
report about the troll right being replaced, uh, this seems
set to continue. The mouse is going to continue ruling
over this part of Florida for the foreseeable future for sure.
And although it's a weird situation, legally, speaking, One of
(42:44):
the big questions is it's a weird situation. It does
clearly involve conspiracy of sorts, But the big question is
is it a bad thing? I mean, they're not running
a criminal empire, right that we know of What do
you what do you think? Do you feel like there's
some thing going on that's more than meets the eye,
something a little more sinister, or do you think it's
(43:04):
just how how it's been and how it's gonna keep
going and Disney is amazing and who cares how they
got the land? Who cares how they set up and
run the puppet governments. I mean, you can have a
lot of valid feelings about this. We love to get
your thoughts, especially if you've lived in the area. Maybe
you're one of those people who's a landowner and you
(43:25):
want to get us some information from the inside, huh,
from from one of these phantom cities. Send it to us.
We won't tell anybody except for everybody listening, except except
and then also, what are some of your favorite strange
Disney rumors? And do you think said rumor is true
or unsubstantiated, because we've fund a lot of stuff that
(43:47):
was you know, pretty easily dismissed, but that reminds us
it's time for Conner. First shout out of the day
comes from Bruce. I got I was say, yeah, I
wasn't on this episode, but like I love this and
I love this sema um in the Wood, the World
and Tomorrow episode. You meant this is a gay Bruce talking.
(44:08):
By the way, you mentioned Gary Oldman's unfortunate fashion choice
in the Fifth Element. You guys remind me so Gary
Oldman in the Fifth Element and Gary Oldman amazing actor
uh in the fifth Element. It's kind of a funny
voice in that foghorn leghorn. He's yeah, he's going for
what we call big old sing. Just chew that ax
(44:29):
like a nice slow last lemonade. You gotta chew you. Yeah,
that's what the alphil like. So he he has this
U sort of a high higher collared shirt. But the
thing that really stuck out that we're talking about is,
for some reason that has never explained or addressed in
(44:52):
the film at all, he has a plastic uh four
transparent forehead covering on one side of his head and
his hair is combed around it. No one mentioned in
this coming back to me now I just pulled it up,
but it never really clocked that particular piece. But that
(45:12):
is super strange. His name was Zorg, by the way,
that was his last name. At least Jean Baptiste. Well,
his his name sounds very similar to the person that
our friend Bruce blames for this monstrosity. He says, I
can assert with some confidence that this choice is not
to be blamed on Mr Oldman. Instead, I childishly blame
(45:34):
French fashion designer Jean Paul Gautier, who is culpable for
designing the costumes for the film. He only just manages
to redeem himself through the costume from Mia Djobovic's character,
which is, you know, iconic. It's like she's wearing like
a strap be kind of like overalls kind of thing.
It's it's super cool, um, he says. Jean Paul Gautier
(45:56):
may be best known to US Americans as the one
who designed the costumes for Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour, including
her infamous cone bra. I'm familiar with that. I think
any red blooded American would be. When you put the
cone bra in play, the weird plastic headshield loses some
of its mystery. That's just JP being JP. He's somewhere
(46:20):
on a set today now going I gotta be me
exactly exactly, he says. It's getting late in the morning
on the last day of our collective lives, so I
need to get this sent out and get the yard mode.
I like this guy's sense of humor, right, like the
cut of his chip. Yeah, thanks for writing, Bruce. We
get like the whole, like the whole, the whole, not
the whole thing. Good and thank you for I answered
(46:43):
that question. I didn't know Jean Paul Gautier was a
madman in the world of fashion. But I do feel
like much more at peace with the world by having
an explanation, because sometimes you get those little things that
stick under the skin of your mind and they can
haunt you. Man, That's what this show is all about.
(47:04):
It's all about haunting your mind skin. And this concludes
our gosh, but not our show, assuming that the mouse
doesn't find us and strangle us in our sleep. And also,
like the original Giallo, you know, I'm talking about like
those movies where like you see the perspective of the
(47:24):
killer and it's from the gloves. Wouldn't it be cool
to have one that was like Mickey and you can
just see his creepy gloved hand in and then he
slices up, you know, like a beauty queen. Oh man,
well there's a darkness inside me. Yes, so right in,
let us know what your opinion is of Disney. If
(47:47):
you have any strange encounters or anecdotes from Disney, we'd
love to hear them. And we'd love to hear whether
or not you think these rumors are plausible, you know,
like does no one only die at Disney? Is that
a myth um? You know? Are these like smear campaigns?
Or is there some sand to them? You give a
cast member backstage listening to this when you listen to
(48:11):
podcast backstage, I don't know, maybe around break Oh perhaps
what's back there? Just a bunch of water coolers and
snacks probably and and that um. And there's there's a
poster of a night of Night Rider, but with a kitten,
as like the David the hassle Off characters, always picturing
(48:32):
the like hanging there kitten, you know, hanging off the
tree branch. I like yours way better. No, it's the
same thing. Let's just have it's like the cats hanging
off a tree branch, but also the car from Night
Riders there and kid kids going, Michael, is that an
even dude. Yeah. You can find Matt, Noel and I
(48:53):
on Twitter. You can find us on Facebook. You can
find us on Instagram. We are Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy
Stuff Show, depending on which one you try. And you
can find every episode that we have ever done on
our website, Stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com.
If you want to write to us directly, you can
always find us at our good old fashioned email address.
(49:14):
We are conspiracy at our stuff words dot com
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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