Absolutely. If you read the bios on these board members (some of which is included in the NPR story at the top of the thread) I would not bet against them refusing to approve new rides or expansions tied to any IP that they consider to be too “woke.” And what’s worse is that it could lead to Disney self-censoring rather than waste time with concepts that they expect to get rejected. This is a real risk.
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Oh, it’s much worse than that. Think less like someone making a good faith adjacent evaluation and more like a mobster.
That’s a nice theme park/hotel/resort you have, be a shame if something were to happen to it.
If the new board doesn’t like any content or Disney policy anywhere in the company, they can use the district as leverage over Disney. Don’t like the diversity training, statements about policy, some character meet, an episode on Disney+, and entire feature film? Suggest that they should remove that, perhaps some random ride is shut down for safety inspection. Maybe they “find” a reason to close a restaurant or shop. That road improvement project that is halfway through and the roads are a complete nightmare? Yeah, that just got cancelled, it’ll stay half done for years now. Waiting on the certificate for that new hotel, here’s the punch list to fix that seem to always have more stuff on it.
Currently, Disney is betting none of this will happen. That the impact of stuff like that is larger than Disney and would hit the local FL economy so they will not do it.
Conversely, they’ve said they want to control Disney content and this is the only mechanism to do that. They also don’t care about the largely blue counties surrounding Disney.
When Disney changes the next Marvel movie to comply with Ron’s (or the board’s) opinions, you’ll know they’ve lost the company and clearly made the wrong bet.
You are an asshole; and I, for one, thank you for your service.
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The thing is, that I know I’m not doing enough, and I need to do far more. Because real people are getting hurt here…
But Disney - if they really did put their money where their rainbow washing was, could make a huge difference in this struggle. It’s nice they do LGBQT+ day. It’s nice they have content with representation. It’s nice they offer benefits for same sex couples. But all of that is the easy stuff. They are sitting in the middle of a state undergoing a fascist take-over. Imagine what closing down that shop would do to state coffers and how bad that would impact Desantis’ future aspirations.
But we know that they won’t go that far, because they want the dollars from both sides… 
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Hopefully, with the number of people identifying* as Trans increasing, they will become a large enough market to swing the corporations away from the dying right-wing market. As ever, there is a Beau of the 5th Column video about this shift in demographics.
*I’m not certain that’s the correct way of stating it.
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Coming out?
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I think the truth is that any attempt to go that far would result in shareholder lawsuits, and the board ousting management (and maybe the shareholders ousting them, not to mention unions), let alone DeSantis trying to take it over as a Florida government-run property or something. I wouldn’t put it past them.
However! I think there are things they can do that would move the needle - make noise about wanting to build a fifth park but instead looking to locate it in another state because of this shit. Move their training and admin facilities back to CA. Move their call-center locations out of FL. end their relationship with Port Canaveral and move their ships out to Georgia or elsewhere. As you said, there’s more than can do here even if the nuclear option is probably a nonstarter.
I hate all of this because gerrymandering is at the core of it all. Florida is not a red state, it’s a purple one (that almost went democratic in 2016 save the third party vote), and yet like so many other states the government here is co-opted by assholes in a supermajority without actually having a supermajority position in the popular vote.
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I don’t see how there’s a path to controlling the Disney empire media output via land-use fuckery. It’s bluster that would fall apart if they tried it.
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I admire your optimism. I don’t share it, but I admire it.
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Which means he’s probably going to try it before the end of the month.
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Oh no doubt… but it would send a huge message too.
Indeed… the question is if they will do so!
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Disney’s way too big, there’s way too much money involved in their media outlets, to be manipulated by a relatively small land-use issue around the theme park. It just seems like economically things are weighed against Florida. I’m sure Disney will happily cave on a bunch of other stuff, though (like the well-being of their employees there).
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Well, “relatively small” is up for debate, I think. Some of the recent expansions such as the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge land have involved investments of about $1 Billion or so, which is real money even for a corporation like Disney. Let alone the potential construction of a whole new park.
Disney absolutely has been shown to be influenced by the governments of places where they want to do business. They’ve self-censored films to appease the CCP that brought in a fraction of the revenue that some of the theme park projects do.
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… interesting typo 
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I’m not sure how much the changes in the control of the district actually impact how they go about building anything in the park itself, though. (Disney’s special district involves a lot of land that has nothing to do with the park itself, including some planned communities, and their loss of control doesn’t necessarily mean they even need extra approval for anything they’d like to do in the park itself. Unless they want to build a nuclear power plant, apparently.) Limiting Disney’s speech with threats to their business is obviously also unconstitutional, so there’s that, too.
Disney’s whole thing with China is a) changes that make movies more palatable to China usually make them more palatable to other countries, too, and b) it’s not so much about how much money they’re currently making in China, but how much they could make (which is absolutely enormous).
Without getting into too much detail on my background, I can confirm that the (former) Reedy Creek Improvement District is deeply involved with any construction they do there. They’re the ones that issue construction permits,
among other functions. Nothing can be built anywhere within the district without their involvement.
https://www.rcid.org/doing-business/building-department/
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None of the residential communities are in the district, all removed before being sold to people.
All building permits, land use, roads, now safety regulations added, are approved by the district. Ever hear stories about people having trouble getting permits approved to build stuff? Now make the approver mad they want to control some unrelated content. There’s a thousand ways, all very reasonable on the surface, that they can cause Disney problems using the powers of the district.
Show up for a surprise inspection of space mountain and shut it down for a day, lots of happy guests. Schedule some pot hole repair and disrupt traffic all day, creating a low level of chaos. Nobody is going to say safety inspections or road repair are sketchy on the surface. That new DVC being built, a few permit delays to validate and inspect here and there, disrupts the schedule adding time and cost. Of course, they could just remove a character from that new movie and maybe things would go smoother.
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So the new board just had their first meeting.
The prohibition of any Covid restrictions is disappointing, but predictable. But are they really going to replace 1000 manhole covers with ones that include an updated logo??
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There’s a reason it’s called the “sunk cost fallacy” - because it’s false. Expenses that have been irretrievably spent must, by a rational business person, be treated as nonexistent. Factoring prior costs into future actions is foolish, and weak business strategy.
It never really did. And I’m going to take liberty with the term “Republican” and generalize it to “conservative” due to US political parties changing places in the late mid-20th Century. Conservatives are bad for business, and the record shows this. However, conservatives often have ideologies that align with business leaders and their self-interests, even if they don’t align with the business.
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Pithy, easily remembered summary of long political debates. I like it. I will keep it. 
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