Florida Senate passes a bill to dissolve Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District

Apr 20, 2022 in "The Walt Disney Company"

Posted: Wednesday April 20, 2022 2:54pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

The Florida Senate voted 23-16 to pass a bill to dissolve Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District as Governor Ron DeSantis continues to seek revenge on Disney for opposing his "Don't Say Gay Bill."

The next step for the bill is to go before a vote in the state House.

If it ultimately passes, the Reedy Creek Improvement District will be dissolved on June 1 2023.

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

In a second vote, the Senate also passed a measure to remove the protection that Disney has regarding tech firm censorship.

These latest moves follow escalating tensions between DeSantis and Disney CEO Bob Chapek regarding Disney's opposition to Florida's "Don't Say Gay Bill."

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

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    JoeCamel5 days ago

    Welllllll....

    JKick955 days ago

    Do we have any updates on what this plan entails?

    MR.Dis19 days ago

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

    flyakite19 days ago

    Should anyone be interested and would like to attend:

    michmousefanDec 29, 2024

    cranbizDec 28, 2024

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

    LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

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

    LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

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

    LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

    🤫

    LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

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

    LAKid53Dec 28, 2024

    Bingo

    Chi84Dec 28, 2024

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

    StripesDec 28, 2024

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

    UnbansheeDec 28, 2024

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