“Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.”
Ambassador Londo Mollari – Babylon 5 “Ceremonies of Light and Dark”
Will that idiot currently occupying the Governor’s mansion in Tallahassee ever learn that when you’re dealing with Disney’s lawyer corps that you’ll find out very quickly that they’re the sort of people that can follow you into a revolving door and come out ahead of you?
Having been outflanked mightily by WED lawyers playing four-dimensional chess to DeSantis and his mob playing at draughts when Disney essentially made eunuchs of DeSantis’ hand-picked supervisors for the successor to the Reedy Creek Improvement District now known as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, you’d think he’d think long and hard before going for an even worse deal.
Apparently common sense and discretion are not amongst the Governor’s skills.
Whilst Governor DeSanctimonious (OK, I’ll give the former President credit…that was rather clever!) was in front of a friendly conservative college in Michigan, he couldn’t help but brag about how his administration was going to further punish Disney for daring to defy his wishes with the following punitive measures being the headline threats:
- Imposing more taxes on Disney’s hotels
- Imposing tolls on the roads leading to Disney properties
Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?
I do believe we’ve found the heir to the throne Londo was referring to!
I’m sure those measures would hurt someone but it’s sure as hell not going to be Disney.
I realise that critical thinking and reasoned deduction are not exactly a populist politician’s long suit but I’m thinking a chimpanzee and two trainees could shoot huge holes in both of those ideas without too much effort.
So let’s take his idiotic proposals one by one, shall we?
Imposing More Taxes on Disney Hotels
Has Governor DeSantis been to Disney World lately?
The massive crowds ever since the country (and most of the world) turned the corner on COVID-19 has the parks operating with the capacity controls even after the loosening of restrictions.
And they *STILL* manage to sell out access to the parks as well as their hotels on the resort property with short lists of guests hoping people will cancel their plans so they can slide into the parks in their place.
Disney has been raising prices well before the pandemic and that really started ramping up in this post-COVID period of inflation.
They don’t seem to have any problem filling the parks with guests paying *PREMIUM* prices which already has a breathtaking amount of tourist taxes baked into the tickets and resort pricing and all of the cottage industries round the Magic Kingdom.
Do you truly think that the WED accountancy corps is any less competent than the WED lawyers who just ensured that you were “out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse”?
First off, one of the key features of capitalism is that corporations never pay taxes. That’s what their customers are for.
At a minimum, they’d just tack the increased taxes onto the hotel bills and they’d still have far more demand for holidays spent in their sprawling kingdom than the capacity controls will allow to be in the parks.
Knowing how the House of Mouse works in practise, it wouldn’t surprise me if Disney didn’t double or treble the tax increases imposed by the Florida legislature and bake that into the price increase that covers the increased taxes.
If you think that’ll hurt them or their bottom line, you’re a much more delusional fool than I already think you are.
The only ones being hurt with that idea are the guests themselves and with it seemingly taking a mortgage or two to go on holiday at Disney as it is, the hard-core fans and the parents wanting to give their kids a Disney vacation not even going to notice the additional screwing. And more than likely they wouldn’t care even if they did.
Imposing Tolls on the Roads Leading to Disney
Again…who is going to be hurt by more toll roads in a metropolitan area currently littered with many toll roads that were there when I went to university at UCF over 30 years ago?
If the Disney guests choose to hire a car for their stay at Disney, the tolls are passed through on their bills by the transponders already on the vehicle, often with a big markup and administrative fees on top of that.
Likewise, the coaches that take you from MCO to the parks would bake the increased tolls into their pricing (and likely then some).
I can guarantee you this punitive measure will do precisely diddly to reduce demand for die-hard fans to go on holiday with the Mouse.
So the only people you’re hurting would be the cast members and residents that live near the Reedy Creek District.
I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to thank your GOP minions with a big thumbs down or an even cruder gesture.
“They can keep trying to do things, but, ultimately, we’re gonna win on every single issue involving Disney. I can tell you that.”
Governor Ron DeSantis at Hillsdale College, 06 Apr 2023
If you truly believe that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, you’re about as unfit for the Presidency as Mr Trump was (and still is) and really shouldn’t be taken at all seriously as anything more than a petulant whingeing child when you don’t get the sweet you wanted.
For goodness sake, Disney now counts Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine amongst their valued cast members.
You’re not going to win. You don’t have a chance of winning.
The proof of that is the persistent reporting after your first epic defeat at the hands of the WED lawyers that many GOP members of the legislature were quietly saying “God Save the King” in the hallways in open and outright defiance of your wishes for absolute lock-step obedience to your commands.
Those people almost certainly have had visits or other contact from WED lawyers in the last few months after Iger was returned to the C-suite. They have been reminded exactly who is buttering their bread and what the expectation of them is when Iger quietly commands them to finally act to take you down and goes shopping for politicians who will stay bought for those who try to defy him.
That is the raw naked political power you’re up against.
Not only are you not going to win every single issue involving Disney, I can guarantee you that when you are brought down in even greater disgrace before Mickey, you’ll have wished that you’d won on even one tangle with them.
You can’t beat them. They spend more on their lawyers than some of your administration’s departments to ensure they attract the best and the brightest.
You’ve gotten a taste of what that means.
Stop now before the deal is altered and made *MUCH* worse.
The plain fact of the matter is that if you ever succeeded in taking down Disney, Orlando and the surrounding counties would become ghost towns overnight and that would destroy that economy bad enough that it’d likely never recover. Universal has being doing amazingly these past few years since they opened the Harry Potter parks but neither them nor Sea World can truly move the tourism needle like Disney can.
Try remembering back to the recession of 1992, if you can.
Tourists stopped coming to Disney due to a nasty economic downturn and the ripple effects through Orlando were nothing less than catastrophic and devastating. Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County were on life support because they only thing they had for revenue was the sky-high property taxes which didn’t come close to replacing the insane level of taxation leveled on the tourists.
If you were to succeed in killing Disney, the effects would be far worse.
Disney knows that. Why do you think Iger just mentioned he’s planning on ploughing $17B into the parks? He knows darned full well you have no hope of stopping whatever they wish to do nor should you want to try.
Hundreds of thousands of pissed-off voters in the geographic centre of the state who will be very vocal about who turned their life to poo is not something you or your party can survive politically.
Seriously, it’s time to shut your mouth and start seriously listening.
There’s a reason you were given two ears and one mouth…one should be used twice as often as the other.
Think about it. Think about it really hard.