After Disney humiliation, Florida governor DeSantis's revenge plan is to toll roads going into Disneyworld

That is so appropriate on such a deeper level, comparing DeSantis to Le Petomane, both talking out their ass.

For those not aware of the inspiration for that movie Governor’s name:

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Oh well, lawyers. That’ll hurt, but at least it wouldn’t be a foreverburn like a thinly-veiled cameo bad guy in a Disney feature, possibly with LGBTQ+ issues…

Never invade Disney in the winter.

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Tolls get factored into the ride price. All these things DeSantis is proposing isn’t hurting Disney, it’s hurting tourists.

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I look forward to Disneyland printing on every restaurant, store or hotel bill an extra surcharge explicitly stating that it’s covering the added cost for employees to pay these tolls.

Some people stop digging when they’re in a hole. DeSantis puts a steam shovel on his credit card.

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They mention Texas too in that article.

Both are excellent examples of professing to be anti-tax, but in fact the total tax burden on the average resident is much higher than they claim.

I’ve seen it in Indiana as well: real estate taxes aren’t actually lower, because if you live somewhere like Chicago you have a much smaller square footage (home and land) being taxed, and meanwhile all the other required fees (everything to do with vehicles, for example, which are absolutely required to live in about 99% of the state) are significantly higher, plus many of the things that real estate and other taxes pay for in a place like Chicago aren’t covered in Indiana, so you have to pay for your own utilities (water and sewage), support your local volunteer firefighters and EMTs, and wait at least a half hour for the county sheriff’s office to show up in an emergency because there are no municipal police in rural areas. This is not a cheap lifestyle, but it is a lifestyle that revels in not working together as a community but rather thinking of oneself as a rugged individualist. Joy and rapture.

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And I would say it hasn’t even been successfully removed yet.

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Reaction GIF

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Parts of it, sure. From what we’ve seen in the last decade or so–these types of tactics spread. Ultimately it might be self defeating, but if it plays well with their donor class perhaps by punishing the competition it will be used elsewhere.

They went after social media companies for anti-republican bias despite them disproportionately serving up right wing propaganda/hate speech often in violation of their own TOS.

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This is going to directly affect me (I live less than 10 miles from the RCID) but it’s not going to impact me. Who it is going to impact is the army of blue-collar service workers who transit the RCID regularly to the surrounding communities in Orange, Osceola and Polk counties. If you don’t live here, it’s not obvious how much of day-to-day life tends to involve crossing some part of Disney property in some way to get around, in large part because the RCID has some of the best infrastructure here in the Orlando area.

But more importantly, vast swaths of the communities around Disney rely on Disney tourists to patronize their businesses - whether that’s actual foot-traffic, or via deliveries into Disney property for everything from food and groceries to “owner locker” services that act as storage for the tens of thousands of Disney Vacation Club members who store stuff for when they vacation down here. This is mostly carried on the backs of blue-collar workers who need to drive all over Disney property to do their jobs. They are going to be the ones most hurt from this stupidity, the same way they were the most hurt by the property tax increases that the RCID bruhaha caused in the first place.

Gotta give it to Desantis - he’s figured out how to basically yell at Disney without hurting them much, energize his base, AND give a huge middle finger to the blue counties in Florida all at once.

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Yeah. The cost gets passed by though to the rider.

BTW, Uber to Disney is definitely the way to go. It’s around the same price as parking, with significantly less hassle.

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holy crap! this guy is literally raising taxes!

RON DESANTIS IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE

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Not in the traditional sense of the word. But modern American conservatism either is fascism or enables it.

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It’s not at all realistic for Disney to move out of Florida, but how much would it hurt tourism if it did? Or if it just shut down the parks for a little while?

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From what I read it wasn’t “fast” at all, they worked methodically on it for months to make sure it was all by the books, including stuff publicly available that DeSantis ignored.

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/s

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I think “fast one” is Florida Conservative code for “smarter than us.”

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The dumdum should realize that Walt Disney himself was looking into opening his second park in the Niagara Falls area even before considering all the cheap swampland in Florida. Weather in that part of the country (Florida) has been getting more extreme over the years so if Disney did decide one day to open a park in NY in the most environmentally habitable part of the country in a few decades due to climate change, it could be easily done within 6 years. Plus factoring possible future transit changes like high speed rail around the great lakes through New England and it being within a 6 hour drive of Toronto a Disney park there would be profitable in less than 12 years.

A few more degrees hotter and with more wild changes in humidity, Disney World won’t be able to deal with the mutant mosquitos that used to terrorize the park let alone being able to keep said park open after the fifth hurricane in a month. Plus the way things are now there it’s a logistical nightmare for folks to plan a trip to go there halfway away on the continent.

The population in the south let alone the declining wealth would end up hurting Disney in the future. Why not rebuild it in a much friendlier environment where folks from NYC, Toronto, DC, Boston and Chicago can have an easier time going to it?

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The toll system in Florida is well constructed. I’ve had a “SunPass” or a variant since the turn of the millennium. Non-pass-holders had to divert to the cash lanes but now they’ve got plate readers on most tolls, especially in the Orlando area. I don’t know if that was already in the works or was a COVID addition. I think you might pay more for a plate-read, normal price for cash, and I know you get a discount for using SunPass.

I don’t believe there’s a ton of high-moral-ground toll construction companies out there who are going to say “we will not build tolls for you on principle alone!”

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And even better, the Uber drop off/pick up area is right up front by the bus loading area. If you drive your own car on a busy day, you might not even be able to SEE the gate from your car! :wink:

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Depends entirely on how much the tolls and taxes are.

$10/mile toll roads and 200% hotel taxes for Disney properties?

That might stop guests from coming, which would definitely impact the parks.

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