#Dream Passport

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I went into a shop, but when I tried to leave they told me the inside of the shop was technically in Sheffield and I'd need my passport to leave and if I wanted to call anybody to bring it for me, I'd have to pay lots of money to use their telephone.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Foxx Nolte's "Hidden History of Walt Disney World"

NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

No one writes about Disney theme parks like Foxx Nolte; no one rises above the trivia and goes beyond the mere sleuthing of historical facts, no one nails the essence of what makes these parks work – and fail.

I first encountered Nolte through her blog, Passport to Dreams Old and New, where her writing transformed the way I viewed the project of these giant, elaborate built environments. It was through articles like this one – about the sightlines from bathrooms! – that I came to truly understand what design criticism means:

https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-awkward-transitions-of-disneyland.html

While her work on queue design transformed how I thought about waiting, scarce-goods allocation, and the psychology of anticipation and desire:

https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2010/12/third-queue.html

But I really knew her for a kindred spirit when I read her masterful analysis of the historical context and enduring power of the Haunted Mansion:

https://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2010/05/history-and-haunted-mansion.html

A decade after that Haunted Mansion post, Nolte published the definitive history of the Haunted Mansions, Boundless Realm, the very best book ever written on the subject:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/09/boundless-realm/#fuxxfur

This year, Nolte came back with another short, smart, endlessly fascinating history of Disney World, Hidden History of Walt Disney World:

https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/9781467156189

There are many histories of Walt Disney World, but none are quite like this. Nolte – who worked at the park for many years – combines her insider's view with her deep historical knowledge and yields up a "hidden history" that will forever change how I look at the built environment and the natural landscape it sits atop.

The path to Walt Disney World – an entertainment juggernaut that occupies a landmass twice the size of Manhattan – was anything but smooth. Its original design – Walt's design – barely survived groundbreaking, dying with Walt himself. Walt's successor, his brother Roy, used the occasion of Walt's death to assert his long-contested dominance over the park, drastically scaling back Walt's ambition for a bizarre residential/utopian community and replacing it with a kind of deluxe Disneyland with the idea of limiting the company's financial risk by re-creating a pre-existing, sure thing money-maker.

But Roy died within a few years of Walt, and the company transitioned from a family business to a managerial one, its direction set by executives who weren't named "Disney." These managers were just as flawed as the Disney brothers, but in much different ways (one long-serving CEO insisted that Disney should stay out of the hotel business, leaving billions on the table for contractors and third parties.

Of course, all of this is happening in Florida, and many of Nolte's funniest, juciest stories play Walt, then Roy, then various CEOs and execs off of flamboyant locals straight out of a Carl Hiaasen novel. In Nolte's capable hands, the many acres of Disney property come alive with the ghosts of Florida eccentrics and conmen who play against the deeply weird Disney brothers and their baffled corporate successors.

The history of Walt Disney World is also a history of the American narrative from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium, especially once Epcot enters the picture and Disney sets out to market itself as a futuristic mirror to America and the world. There's a doomed plan to lead the nation in the provision of an airport for the largely hypothetical short runway aircraft that never materialized, the Disney company's love-hate affair with Florida's orange growers, and the geopolitics of installing a permanent World's Fair, just as World's Fairs were disappearing from the world stage.

With Disney in disarray, corporate raiders smelled blood, and the company found itself on the brink of leveraged buyout hell, triggering another change in corporate leadership with the arrival of Michael Eisner. Nolte's portrait of Eisner is far more nuanced than the presentation in rival histories, surfacing his many forgotten gaffes – but also giving him credit where it was due. When the dust settles on the Eisner era, Disney has more theme parks in one place than can possibly be justified – in an America where workers get almost no paid vacation days, building more theme parks does not extend visitors' stays. It only adds to the expense of keeping those guests entertained during those brief, flitting visits.

The Disney empire is rooted in contradictions. The Disney brothers cordially loathed one another and the company split into "Walt people" and "Roy people" who schemed against one another in secret and sometimes even erupted into open conflict. There's something Hegelian about the Walt/Roy split: Walt went bust trying to run a creative empire that ignored the financials, and fled the ashes of his first venture to work with Roy in California. Roy disciplined Walt with financial rigor, often to excess. When the company emerged from WWII with its outside shareholders in charge, Roy became their champion and Walt's tormentor, with the ability to exercise a firm veto when he couldn't win the day through moral suasion.

Walt sought escape from his brother, proposing a series of ill-starred ventures that eventually became Disneyland. First, he proposed that he would transform his backyard ride 'em train-set into a public attraction that he would personally oversee, so that he wouldn't have to go to the office and let his brother boss him around. Then he proposed buying a locomotive and fitting out a train of railcars with exhibits promoting Disney movies, which he, personally, would drive around America, far from his brother.

Finally, he hit on Disneyland, poaching the company's best animators for a separate firm that Roy was eventually forced to buy from Walt in order to bring it back into the corporate fold. These power struggles, in which Roy first took orders from Walt, before turning the tables, only to have them turned again, culminated in the uneasy detente that characterized the era from Disneyland's opening to Walt's death.

Working with his brother may have made Walt miserable, but he evidently saw the benefit in this Hegelian dialectic, because he became infamous for putting together creative teams who were forever at each other's throats. The storied Sherman Brothers – Disney's star songwriting team – barely tolerated each other. The titans of early Imagineering were often at odds, and Walt took seemingly sadistic glee in forcing artists who disliked one another to work on joint projects.

In focusing on the conflicts between different corporate managers, outside suppliers, and the gloriously flamboyant weirdos of Florida, Nolte's history of Disney World transcends amusing anaecdotes and tittle-tattle – rather, it illustrates how the creative sparks thrown off by people smashing into each other sometimes created towering blazes of glory that burn to this day.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/15/disnefried/#dialectics

[judectrl]

Jude arriving at St. George's Park (Monday, 04/09)

[th3-c0ll3ct3r]

Preaching to all people who think some content creator are messaging minor for no reason

aka Twitter/tumblr cross over users.

AhEm... YOUR INTERNET PROVIDER(S) CAN SEE THE THINGS YOU DO WITH YOUR INTERNET AND THAT INCLUDES MESSAGING

(and discord... because you're using the internet to get on there... As hotspots too)

This means if a content creator is messaging a minor in an inappropriate or bullying way (in the UK at least) they would come knocking at you door asking for all your personal information, identification, means of contact and be asking questions.

Has that content creator been arrest yet? Nope.

Is cyber bullying/harassment a crime in the UK?

Yes! Under the laws:

Protection from Harassment Act 1997

Malicious Communications Act 1988

Defamation Act 2017

And can even prevent you from getting jobs in the future of your employment wants to look at your social media! Which is legal! (as in they want to make sure you're not a weirdo or anything! They can't deny you a job based on political stuff or opinions on other companies!)

Is messaging a minor inappropriately a crime?

FUCK YES‼️‼️

Sooooooo keep this in mind when you post things online, that the government CAN BE INFORMED OF YOUR ACTIONS ON THE INTERNET BY YOUR INTERNET PROVIDER IF YOU DO SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS OR THAT BREAKS THE LAW

[technofinch]

Ok I wanna start making long-term plans for my next big trip....

[robylovi]

Thinking abt that catradora ‘While You Were Sleeping’ AU fic I read that was so good it got me to watch the movie only for it to feel exactly like when you watch a movie based off a book you read and feel incredibly disappointed even though the fic clearly didn’t come first ??

[always-is-always]

.....Destination: Seoul -June 2025 ?

Holy smokes. I think I just added to my very long Bucket List. I even took a peek at flight prices across the Pacific Pond...

Yep.

If somehow I can call upon the most Miraculous and Benevolent Forces in the Universe to help, I am going to make a plan to go to Seoul next year.

What if............. Jimin announces a Hug event, for Festa 2025?

Omg.

Yeah.

I'm going to tuck this into that special place in my mind and Spirit, where my Dreams live. Yeah. Because, Miracles do happen. 💜

Anyone wanna go? 😁💜💜💜

[chuthulhu]

A conversation when getting a ride to work from @jaxmos:

Him: They're making you work on your birthday? Me: Nah I chose the days for my phased return I was just looking at a safe pattern of days of the week with enough breaks between them and straight up didn't look at the dates. I fully forgot it was my birthday until today! Him: You forgot 9/11??? Me, dying of laughter: Oh my god, I did! I forgot! I didn't never forget!!

In my defense I'm having my party on the weekend so I had it in my head that that was the day

[blackmoldmp3]

just remembered theyre going to play the end live.....

[fereldanwench]

tormenting myself watching tokyo travel guides this morning dfhgfdgdfg

[sexy-celestial]

[dimsilver]

🙏🏻

[fruitytiff]

Day 7: Passport If Antasma had a Kingdom, this is probably what the passport would look like.

The creature on the book is supposed to be like a mix between Japanese nightmare or dream related Yokai's...with Antasma, pretty cool right? DAY FOUR IS COMING SOON OK

[mysteriouswanderersworld]

I felt like her when I went to get my passport last week ~

[torsamors]

i had a dream abt packing last night😭😭😭 the semester starts so soon…

[jamelalatise]

Said goodbye to stamps today from Morocco, Spain, Japan, Poland, Switzerland, The States, France… I wonder where we’ll go next?