November 16th 1965 Walt Disney announces his plans for a new Resort in Orlando Florida having become frustrated by the lack of space for Disneyland expansion in the city of Anaheim California as well as the Seedy atmosphere that spawned around the park Walt and his company began searching for space to start fresh in Central Florida they attempted to hide their plans by purchasing the land in portions using shell companies but as the media began to notice the large amount of land being purchased speculation grew as to who was behind it it wasn't long before the Florida public learned that Disney was working on a new project in their area and they learned of these plans during very early development of the Disney World project it was so early that it was tough for the company to describe exactly what the plans were but with the truth unveiled Walt held a press conference to reveal what he could about the new resort in this conference he announced the Disney World theme park but he announced a second project as well one far more ambitious and exciting than anything the company had ever previously attempted i' love to be a part of building the model Community as a city of tomorrow as you might say uh I'm I'm not against the automobile but I just feel that the automobile has has moved into communities too too much and I feel you can design so that the automobile is there but still put people back as pedestrians again you see this is the Public's first introduction to Walt Disney's Epcot project Epcot stands for the experimental prototype community of tomorrow a City built with community and Innovation at the Forefront in the middle there is a town center where companies would establish workplaces to employ the residents these residents would live in neighborhoods and apartments stocked and designed by industry leaders and the city would be flush with Parks walking trails and community centers bringing the people together Epcot would be enclosed in a dome and would rely on a Montreal transportation system it was a utopian and radical concept meant to serve as a blueprint for American cities also I've had in mind uh one Community called yesterday and the other one tomorrow another another reason to if come here they they might come one time and they stay in tomorrow and their friends will say but have you stayed in yesterday and they'll have to come back along with the city of Tomorrow Walt also mentioned a city of yesterday but this was a concept rarely ever used following the press conference it was mentioned almost for a laugh and hardly ever again it was only because the Press revealed Disney's involvement in the area that Epcot was being talked about publicly so early into development this was an idea that was still formulating in Walt's mind an idea he was determined to bring to reality Walt was inspired by the industrial Innovations of his time from companies like Ford and General Electric he had revolutionized animation revolutionized amusement parks but he wasn't satisfied Walt wanted to do more than entertain the world he wanted to lead it into the future and his Epcot project was meant to do just that it would be the new prototype for American cities and cement his legacy as the next pioner of American innovation Walt's goal was to leave a legacy and create a lasting impact on his country and while he was excited about Disney World he was obsessed with Epcot a year later on December 14th 1966 Walt lay in bed as his brother Roy visited him Walt still obsessed with the Epcot project describ Des the layout of his city of Tomorrow pointing to the tiles on the ceiling using them as a grid to illustrate upon he described neighborhoods branching out radially from the city's Center like the spokes on a wheel always turning its citizens further into the future unfortunately for Walt the future was not on his side the bed Walt lay in was a hospital bed as he had been diagnosed with lung cancer Walt's obsession with Legacy blinded him to the sad reality of his declining Health which was all too apparent to his brother Roy the next day on December 15th 1966 Walt Disney would tragically pass away and with him his vision for Epcot the city of Tomorrow died as well speaking of cities adjacent to the Walt Disney World Resort property there's a new town under construction called celebration the first residents are moving into town homes Cottages Village and estate homes and apartment in six architectural styles that when blended with the Town Center create a public experience much the same as when you walk along Main Street in the Magic Kingdom park celebration is is really Epcot I think in the end of in the sense of what Walt was looking for a really nice place for people to to really live real lives we believe that has been created in celebration every lesson ever learned from any master plan community in the country or throughout the world studied in the design and development of this particular Community we've dealt with cars in a positive way we've dealt with garbage in a positive way if you can say that we've dealt with the way you live the way you can live in a mixed use environment with stores and apartments and houses and Banks and post office all together in a walkable way but then on August 1st 1991 Disney announced a new project Celebration Florida celebration was a small town designed by the Disney development company that was Roy Disney Jr son of Roy senior and nephew to Walt Disney as well as president of Walt Disney attractions Judson green and former CEO of Disney Michael Eisner although they and others involved in the project would describe the town as a rebirth of Walt Disney city of tomorrow in truth it also resembles a foray into the close-knit community structures of the past his city of yesterday it was both a push towards the future and a celebration of the past so welcome to Disney's celebration [Music] chapter 1 designing community in 1985 Peter rumel became president of the new Disney development company known known as DDC it was a branch of the company created to identify the potential of the company's land Holdings and generate profit from them when rumel joined there was one patch of land in particular that the company had interest in turning a profit on sooner rather than later most of the land that Walt had purchased in the' 60s lay in Orange County but a small portion at the bottom stretched into Oola County Walt's original plan for the Oola section was for an airport of the future that would provide direct monreal transportation to the rest of of the resort property but like the original plans for Epcot these never made it past the conceptual stages many in the Oola government were interested in having Disney present in their County feeling that they had missed out on the massive tax revenue boost that orange had gotten but after Decades of the land sitting unused Oola began to consider other options the land was actually a big swamp and had high environmental Value rumors circulated that the county might condemn and repossess the land if it wasn't used soon it is clear if this was something they were actually considering or if they just wanted to pressure Disney to hurry up and use the land themselves either way CEO of Disney Michael Eisner recognized the urgency of the situation and knew he needed to make a move on the land soon quote it really came down to the idea of use an asset or lose it just to sit on the land didn't seem smart and frankly I was loed to sell it off for development when it was pretty clear what kind of development would occur on the land you remember we had some experience in the past when the company could not protect the land around Disney land I certainly did not want a repeat of that Eisner hired Peter rumel as president of the Disney development company Rummel worked on a number of projects around the company including the Euro Disney project but rumel also had his sights on that patch of land in Oola and more than that he had a concept for it that was unlike anything the company had ever done before a master plan Community with a town center at the central Hub designed as a throwback to a time when communities were walkable and self-sufficient as part of my research I'd reached out to Peter to discuss his involvement and asked him about the experience of pitching celebration to Michael Eisner it was a new idea you know Walt Disney had had the idea for Epcot experimental prototype community of tomorrow and the Epcot that you know today is nowhere near what he he originally envisioned and we were trying to we were trying to kind of go back to that original idea and Michael really liked that idea he he liked the idea of of something adventuresome and something new a different Eisner approved the project in 1985 and rumel reached out to his mentor Charles Frasier owner of the Sea Pines company where rumel had previously worked Frasier was responsible for multiple large-scale real estate development projects including the master plan Community known as Hilton Head Island in South Carolina Frasier was hired as a consultant for the celebration project known internally at the time simply as Disney's new town Frasier suggested building a school that would attract families to the community Community which rumel incorporated into the plans rumel also Incorporated more walking and biking trails taking inspiration from Hilton Head Island and its focus on Wellness in a previous interview rumel said quote I figured out that learning and wellness were fundamental cornerstones for the place I had in mind rummel's designs and celebration were created under a design philosophy known as neotraditionalism which focuses on a return to the pre-war neighborhood structure of more traditional town and neighborhood planning it was a response to the rather disorganized post-war construction of the suburbs where houses were placed next to each other without uniformity in design or structure the idea of neotraditionalism is to renew the sense of community and togetherness that was lost to Suburban America through three main components first is density houses should be close together and communities should be somewhat walkable second a focus on public spaces over private basically more front yard space over backyard space so the kids can play together and parents can visit each other on their front porches as well as that more public parks and Community areas promote stronger Community bonds and third control of appearance through a homeowners association maintain the sense of uniformity that the community was designed with in 1988 work on Disney's new town stalled Rumble and his team became preoccupied with projects such as Disney's MGM Studios and Euro Disney now known as Disney's Hollywood Studios and Disneyland Paris respectively in 1990 the project resumed production it was around this time that Eisner visited the offices of DDC and looked over the plans for a shopping mall concept which was named celebration Gardens Eisner suggested that Disney's new town be simply named celebration and the name stuck years after celebration's announcement it would often be compared to the original Epcot project that Walt had never gotten to complete both official marketing as well as the Press sought to compare celebration in Epcot and there were some very key similarities the design of Epcot was meant to remove the new found American Reliance on automobile Transportation designed with a central Hub that monals would take the workers to and from similarly in the early years celebration was a highly walkable and bikable Community both Concepts focused on public parks in Open Spaces that would promote Community bonds but the question remains how much inspir Iration did Peter rumel and his team directly draw from Epcot I think inspiration is too strong a word um I don't we didn't pay a lot of attention to it frankly it very very quickly became a theme park in terms of master plan and so I don't think my memory is we didn't learn a lot from Epcot I also spoke to Jerry Ray who was hired by Peter rumel to be the head of PR for the Disney development company when I asked him the same question he had a similar answer the concept of Epcot man ested itself in a number of pieces that were developed over the next what 30 30 years and and perhaps it's not even finished yet if you go back to those original uh Epcot uh Concepts you you'll see it manifesting itself in many many ways throughout the throughout the complex it's not just in that one place with the boundaries around it yes it's Epcot is much more than that and it celebr ation is certainly a part of the new way of living uh A New Concept of living which which Builds on the past the whole ideas that it built on the past making sure the project was distinct from the company's theme parks was important to rumel and the team reportedly imagineers were at one point tasked by Disney to come up with a fictional backstory for celebration as a new settlement which was built on former swamp land the land didn't have a culture that its new residents would be able to relate to imagineers came came up with fictional backstories such as one where the town Rose quote From the Ashes of General Sherman's march across the South it's worth noting that Sherman never stepped foot into Florida but it didn't matter because Rumble shut the idea down the team wanted to create a real livable space where families could create their own history and culture rather than create a theme park that people live in in our interview rumel highlighted how important building a strong Community was to him and his team I think it was huge it was it was and and one of the Lessons i' Learned is is that Community comes from physical location if how you how you put the place together and particularly if it's you can make it walkable so you don't have to get in your car to go to the grocery store the other thing that makes it makes it human is is uh governance structure cob structure and and the things that can make people feel like not only they belong to something because they live on live on 8th Street in celebration but just a sense of belonging and a sense of of being there and and so we had we had a pretty elaborate structure that adds to the U to the to the sense of place that you that you create and I think the combination of the two together is important celebration was founded on five key cornerstones education Wellness technology place and community and with those components in mind the team was ready to unveil the plans to the [Music] public chapter 2 announcing the plan on August 1st 1991 Disney announced their plans for celebration the plan was for the town to initially house 20,000 residents in four neighborhoods known as Villages which surrounded the Town Center plans for a fiber optic Network were also described which would allow neighbors to send and receive info to one another which was very Innovative for the time the shopping mall now known as the Celebration Center was also unveiled and described as the then largest open a shopping mall in Central Florida finally they announced the celebration Learning Center the Innovative public school for children as well as the Disney Institute for adults focus on offering social activities and educational classes despite the announcement in 1991 it wouldn't be until March 29th 1994 that ground would be broken in celebration this is when celebration was officially founded and that's why the the year shown on the town's logo although there was a delay between the announcement and construction public interest did not wne as the years went by many people were interested in moving to Celebration and many more were interested in keeping an eye on the project and seeing what happened the media was particularly Keen to watch for issues along the course of celebration's lifespan and the negative press over the years was something Disney would find themselves ill prepared for but even under so much scrutiny there was a massive amount of people interested in moving to celebrate so many in fact that the Disney development company needed a plan to manage these people effectively let the celebration begin so on November 18th 1995 the company held a large event hosting around 5,000 people interested in joining the new community a lottery system was implemented where deposits of $11,000 were taken in exchange for the chance to live in celebration five lotteries were separated into five tents one was for apartments and the rest were for the four Villages or neighborhoods available these Villages were named the estate Village Cottage and town homes these were collectively known as Celebration Village and were part of phase one of construction upon winning buyers were allowed to select their house styles Coastal classical colonial revival French Normandy Mediterranean or Victorian they also got to choose their house color white blue yellow green pink or pale beige color choices depended on the house style and whether or not houses near you had already picked those colors 1,200 deposits were submitted some people submitted to multiple lotteries hoping for the chance to win any of them prices were somewhat high and non-negotiable as Disney was seemingly ready to return their investment sooner rather than later it's worth noting that while the Town Square was actively being built at the time the people were paying for homes that had not even begun construction the sales office was in a pre-fabricated building with the s of a home on the outside despite the risk that these people were taking many were Overjoyed at the opportunity and some went to Great Links to secure their future in celebration in the book celebration USA journalists Doug France and Katherine Collins described their experiences living in the town although they moved into celebration during the second phase of construction they interviewed those who were there at the lottery at the time one resident had previously lived in New York where it was illegal for him to be solicited with promotional material regarding celebration this meant he would miss out on vital information regarding when he could try to bid to move into the town because of this he illegally got a Florida's driver's license and bank account using a friend's address so that he could receive the information he needed others were less adamant about moving in another Resident put his name in The Lottery on a whim after skipping an event he had planned to attend nearby he was interested enough to move in when he won but less invested in the project than many others I got to to speak to one of the first residents Jackie Flanigan who told me the story of how her family ended up in celebration my name is uh Jackie Flanigan and my husband and I and our two daughters at the time moved to Celebration on August 7th 1996 so we were very early um in celebration we um there's a fun story about how we ended up there in that we knew we were moving to Florida and we had heard about this town and and you know we owned the Disney Vacation Club and we were Disney people well interestingly enough my husband took a position that made Disney his client so obviously in terms of location when we moved we needed to be close there because you know Disney when they needed something they expected you to come and just the convenience of not having to fight I4 every day so we were looking for someplace close and then we found out about celebration after the fact and we're like wow that would be really cool but we were quite certain it was way out of our price point and then we found out about the lottery that the people who lived in Florida had first crack at housing there so we were like okay well that's off the table and then we found out that there was going to be a day that opened up and anybody as long as you know anybody could could purchase in celebration my husband literally I'm not kidding you got on an airplane in Columbus Ohio at like I I don't know 5:45 in the morning someone holy hour and flew to Orlando rented a car drove to Celebration and was like in line he was like the first or second contract that they wrote outside the lottery and he called me and he said we've just bought a townhouse and I I never saw it so it's like how many people would do that fast forward we moved uh literally in August of 96 um and I remember the date because uh it was literally the day after our anniversary so um anyway it being there in the beginning was just a little on The Surreal it was like you were embarking you felt a little bit like a Pioneer that you were embarking on something new and unknown but could be really awesome no matter how those first residents ended up at the lottery that day and no matter how adamant they were about being a part of Celebration every person who put their name down was taking a big risk and with that risk came a feeling of uncertainty but more than that a sense of excitement and anticipation those who were there at the lottery often consider it to be a badge of honor as the event has become a big part of the town's history and culture this was the beginning of the community as the people perhaps unbeknownst to them had created their first shared experience although celebration was technically Tech Ally founded in 1994 it wasn't until June 18th of 1996 that the first family moved into their home many families such as Jackie temporarily lived in apartments until their houses were completed construction on homes moved quickly and many were completed that summer on November 12th 1996 downtown celebration completed construction this was known as the first Founders Day an annual event held in the town attending the first founders day also grants dragging rights as they were present for another piece of Celebration History Michael Eisner was also in attendance at this event on March 1st 1997 Phase 2 of construction was announced which included new neighborhoods known as West Village North Village and Lake Evelyn but in the same year many of those who heralded this project from the start began to leave the company Peter ruml and Jerry Ray included and as they left the company focused on securing profits even quicker eager to fully return their investment in the next few years the town would experience some Growing Pains the company had not foreseen and the media would soon draw attention to the problems and as expansion began and construction continued it would be the town's construction that would cause the first set of struggles for the community to overcome chapter 3 cracks in the foundation November 18th 1995 the day that the Lots were sold to the the first residents of Celebration they were Pioneers Brave volunteers for Disney's newest experiment some were Disney Fanatics some were simply looking for a change but everybody was Taking a Chance on celebration June 18th 1996 the first family moves into their new home and many more would follow over the course of the summer families stayed in apartments eagerly waiting for their houses to be ready but some began to notice their stay in the rentals was Tak taking longer than promised delays and construction issues meant families were stuck in limbo growing increasingly frustrated slowly people began to move in as phase one of construction moved into phase 2 however as the first groups of residents began their new lives in their new homes they noticed that their houses were not meeting the high quality standards that they were promised new construction issues were being uncovered rapidly almost every day some of these issues included non-functional Outlet drooping ceilings doors without weather stripping broken shower doors hot and cold water lines being reversed large bumps in their lawns and more celebration USA covers a lot of the construction issues that the first and second phases held and authors Doug and Kathy face many of their own one of the most glaring was when they discovered that their property line extended into their neighbor's porch these were many of the minor issues but there are more glaring and Infamous examples of shoddy workmanship one family discovered their house was not connected to the sewer system another visited to see the progress of construction on their house only to find a crane had fallen into it multiple houses had porches built with supports that could only bear half the weight of the porch and worst of all one family showed up to find the workers trying to lift and rotate the foundation of their home without their permission after the workers realized they had placed the foundation at the wrong angle we could keep listing off problems but instead let's focus on the question hand here why was this happening to answer this question we need to get a little more specific about who was having these problems there were two construction companies hired to build the homes David weekly homes as well as Town and Country Homes you might have heard of these companies before as they are wellknown and largely well respected the problem was that these companies were not previously established in Central Florida and had to make the move especially for this job basically how it works is when a construction company is hired to build something they hire subcontractors that they trust with the job but if you haven't been working in the area for a while you don't know who to hire or who not to hire David Weekley anticipated this problem and began establishing relationships with subcontractors 2 years in advance hoping to secure the contract with DDC when they got the chance to work in celebration they were more ready for it and their houses by and large fa less construction issues town country did not get the chance to establish themselves in the same way they were based in Chicago and DDC reached out to them for the job they didn't get 2 years to establish themselves in the area and therefore hired less experienced subcontractors who were ill equipped for this kind of big project not to mention the time frame from sale to the first family moving in just 7 months that's not a lot of time to build a neighborhood and sure these houses weren't custom but construction was held to a very high standard the celebration company the team responsible for running the town implemented the celebration pattern book to guide Builders and homeowners on the acceptable appearance for their home according to the hoa's stipulations cover to cover this thing is 80 pages so what do you have when you hire two companies who are new in town team them with subcontractors who can't handle the job give them strict guidelines and high expectations all within a time frame of at best a year what you have is a problem and it's a problem that the homeowners had to often piece by piece Rectify and reconstruct themselves and it shouldn't have been their job to handle those with Town and Country Homes face massive delays on moving in and despite getting a head start David weekly received some complaints about the quality of construction as well one resident decided to make her grievances known in a uh very creative manner she took her car covered it in lemons and put a sign on the side that said David weekly built my house the sign further explained that her $400,000 home had floors so rough that they hurt to walk on and invited anyone else to come visit and see for themselves she then took her car and parked it in the Town Center for tourists and anyone else to see In fairness it's worth noting that some homeowners particularly other David weekly customers were satisfied with the quality of their homes in response to the lemon protest one resident half jokingly said quote we're thinking of starting a campaign with signs that say David Weekley built our houses and we loved them despite all of the trouble and controversy most felt the construction issues were worth it in the end in their book Doug and Cathy summarized this sentiment quote almost everyone we talked to in celebration felt much the same way the construction difficulties were troubling and annoying but the end result was worth the woe and there was an unforeseen upside to all of the consternation the delays and the nagging problems people found once they moved in became a shared experience while certainly not the backstory that the Disney imagineers would have envisioned these common problems resulted in a common vocabulary there was a vitality and even humor to the conversations like residents of New Towns and subdivisions everywhere people in celebration were eager to share the latest tale of Woe and then offer one to top it and actually it's easy to see why they felt this way celebration particularly its Town Center was beautiful DDC had assembled a team of worldclass and esteemed architects to design each of the most important buildings in the community's centerpiece Robert Stern was hired to lead the architectural vision and he helped assemble the team what's amazing is that we got a lot of Architects who in their work outside of um work for Disney do very abstract and different kinds of work and they we got them all to agree to work within a framework of the American town the town hall was designed by Philip Johnson the post office by Michael Graves the bank by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown the movie theater by Cesar Pell and Stern himself designed the health center the Press was ready to call attention to all of the problems that celebration was facing right out of the gate and yet there was also a recognition of how special celebration was from celebration USA quote even as critics weighed in from around the world the Tiny Town had been anointed the next great place to live in America with more than 700 newspapers and magazine articles already written about it Vincent Scully Yale's esteemed professor ameritus of architecture had decreed quote celebration is the most important thing happening in architecture it marks a return of community professional builder magazine described it as quote the biggest experiment in real estate development end quote people across the country For Better or Worse had their eyes on celebration and as the town was becoming a community they would face further tests bigger challenges and more scrutiny than ever before scrutiny that Disney was less than prepared [Music] for chapter 4 narrative control there's no mistaking the fact that celebration was an experiment for the Walt Disney Company by founding the Disney development company Eisner and management were testing to see if they could Leverage The Many real estate holdings of the company into short-term profits and although Eisner as he often did with projects under his leadership did take interest in the creative aspects of Celebration from time to time his attention was mostly Elsewhere on things like Euro Disney and Disney's America for many of the residents celebration was a renewal for their families a bright new chapter in their lives but for eer and the company it was a side project and it was a side project that was proving more complicated than anticipated part of the reason is that the company didn't just choose to build homes and sell them off but rather wanted to build an upscale community that could serve as a blueprint for future settlements the company said as much a number of times to the Press Eisner was quoted as saying it will set up a system of how to develop communities I hope in 50 years they say thank God for celebration likely they were hoping that these future settlements which were inspired by celebration would also be owned by Disney all criticisms aside though the company was actually trying something evident with how much effort they put into the design of the town but they didn't just work Cardon appearances they were also working behind the scenes on maintaining control of the community so that its nice appearance would exemplify the perceived quality of the Disney brand one of the reasons it became tricky to maintain control of Celebration was the fact that the company had to give up control at the very beginning of the project what a lot of people may not know about the Walt Disney World Resort and all the company's Holdings surrounding is that the large swath of land is enclosed within the REI Creek District this is the company's own personal government system that allows them full legal control of their establishments within the region they secured this control all the way back on May 12th 1967 but the process began all the way back in May 1959 Roy Disney senior Waltz brother met with Florida government officials to pitch the company's plans including Walt Disney World and crucially the original Epcot project they showed the government the famed Epcot film which showcased Walt detailing his plans for the ambitious project when the officials heard of Walt's Grand plans for city of tomorrow they allowed the company to establish the REI Creek District in order to realize that Vision what they didn't know was that the company wasn't planning to make Epcot at least not for a while Walt had died at the end of the previous year and without the Project's Visionary leader driving it Forward there was very little reason for the company to take such a massive risk on such a risky project and yet they still pitched it pretending they were moving forward on Epcot in order to gain control of their Holdings within the re Creek District but when celebration was being developed the company faced a problem if they were going to allow residents to live within the REI Creek District those residents would gain voting rights on things that happened within the district that means they could jeopardize any Future theme park construction projects the company already had and has similar issues with Disneyland in Anaheim since they do not hold their own District in California around that Resort so in order order to prevent any loss of control on their theme parks they had to De Annex celebration from the REI Creek District all of that to say they no longer had full governmental control of Celebration when it was established so at least in the company's view if they lost control in the start they had to find ways to get control back celebration would always be a representation of their company and they knew the media would be watching closely so they established control of the community in a few key ways first they established a homeowners association and two Community Development districts with boards elected by land owners since Disney still own most of the undeveloped land at this time they were the majority voice in all three organizations and through legal maneuvering as long as the company owned just one piece of property they retained veto power over any decision and celebration they also exerted power to maintain the appearance of the town as stated previously through the stipulations of the celebration pattern book as well as the additional rules laid out by the homeowners association some rules were fairly standard for neighborhoods of this type stipulations over garden and Lawn appearances as well as not being allowed to park a recreational vehicle on the street some expectations were very specific though like how all visible Windows must have white or neutral colored curtains or that independent house sellers cannot put up a for sale sign but who is enforcing these rules well that brings us to the second method of control the celebration Company the company was created by Disney and positioned as the unofficial government the responsibilities of which included enforcement of HOA policies Brent Herrington was hired as the town manager and would publish a monthly newsletter with Town information often including topics regarding company policy and town expectations he was sort of the pseudo mayor one of the things when I first interviewed with the the celebration company this was essentially a quote that was shared with me they said our goal was to take The Proven planning principles from the past and combine them with the best thinking of today to create a community for tomorrow and that resonated with me as okay I get that but hold on you might be asking yourself how is a company in charge of town government that's because celebration itself notably is not a democracy when Disney D anx celebration it became an unincorporated area it's actually not a city or under the umbrella of o TOA County's government so by and large the residents do not have voting rights in the town to be sure there were a lot of rules and stipulations in place for those living in celebration but for those outside of the community rumors and misinformation made life in Disney City out to be Insanity tourists would find celebration on park maps and drive down to see what all the fuss was about when they arrived they would ask residents about the various rumors and misinformation they had heard about the town some of these beliefs that tourist help about the community were ridiculous and kind of funny so let's quickly go over a few of them false rumors about the town which people really believed included that residents had a strict dress code that there was a limit to how many children residents were allowed to have that ownership of homes reverts to Disney after 30 years side note this is actually a mixup with the Disney Vacation Club which sells time shares that actors were hired to walk dogs downtown to make it appear more homey that potential buyers were interviewed vetted and approved by the Disney company that the animals around celebration were audio animatronics like the ones found in the theme parks and finally that there was a nuclear reactor hidden just below the town although again side note Disney technically has the power to do so within their District but opted to build a giant solar farm instead and again none of these are true tourists increasingly began to see the people living in celebration less as normal people and more as an exhibit or spectacle similar to those they left left behind in Disney World they would drive through neighborhoods at crawling speeds watching the people some would stand on their cars and peek into yards and reportedly one couple took their curiosity a step further going into somebody's backyard and asking the residents for a tour of their house there was actually a very common misconception that celebration was the shooting location for the fictional Town sea Haven from The Truman Show funnily enough that town was actually Seaside Florida another master plan Community about 6 hours away but the perception from the outside was clear they saw celebration as an extension of the theme parks pristine but ultimately phony they expected to find houses painted on wood and facades not homes that families were really living in it was a perception the news was definitely running with and one that residents were growing tired of but although the ongoing trend of negative press was more than anticipated the tourism issue was expected and planned for by the Disney development company multiple plans for the town were sheld to help curb the amount of Tourism the Disney Institute an adult targeted educational program was moved closer to Disney World than outside of Celebration the massive shopping mall concept was scrapped as well the company had celebration on park maps meaning tourism was directed to Celebration and particularly to the shops on Market Street in the town center but the goal was to reduce it this was a tricky balance to maintain and some decisions frustrated the residents many of the shops were selling things meant for the tourists while res residents wanted local shops that were more practical like for example a local hardware store when I asked rumel about tourism and celebration he had this to say we saw it as a problem um it was uh we didn't we didn't we didn't want a town that was overrun by transient people but on the other hand it was there were people who moved into celebration because they wanted to be either for the children or grandchildren they wanted to be near Walt Disney World and you know people bought second homes and so on but but it was it was designed to be a place where people lived and spent 365 and and uh um not a not a tourist attraction that may have been some of the reason why Disney Institute got taken out of it it was Disney Institute was became a bigger idea than it started with and it was U and there there may have been some concern that it would overrun celebration though the strict guidelines for homes and governmental structures were efficient methods for controlling the pristine of appearance of the town there was one more problem that Disney felt the need to solve opinions and rumors celebration had a lot of rumors traveling through the community one of the biggest ones was that Disney was planning to pull out of celebration after facing so much negative press the company certainly didn't help after they removed their name from the water tower at the front of the Town previously it had read Disney's town of Celebration but in the fall of 1997 an employee was instructed to paint Disney off the tower however Disney denied this rumor multiple times and tried its best to quell the controversy but it's almost impossible to control people their opinions or what they say Disney's dealings with people had usually fallen into two categories employees and customers it's fairly easy for Disney like any company to control their employees through things like dress codes employee guidelines and clear expectations if someone steps out of line you can have their employment terminated and replace with someone that represents the brand better with certain exceptions Disney can easily control their employees customers are fairly easy to deal with as well if someone likes your products they will buy them if someone likes your establishments they will go to them if they don't buy or they don't attend someone else will as long as your brand is never tarnished completely if you're selling something people want then people will buy but suddenly Disney had found themselves with the long-term residents on property that they had marketed and sold some of the residents were Disney fanatic While others could care less about the brand but it didn't matter all were tied to the brand all of them had different opinions about the town and all of them were talking about the town and the media was listening Disney knew they could not control these people's opinions about the town or the rumors that circulated so how do you control a narrative there was a final method used to control the narrative in and around celebration rather than coming from Disney directly though this last method was used by by the celebration company themselves it's a little bizarre and I want to briefly cover it so let's take a quick detour and talk about the third method used to control the narrative in celebration the town fathers a quick detour the town fathers the town fathers was a group of six town leaders that secretly met to discuss emergencies and town controversies talk about potential Solutions and unify their approach to handling these issues the group was founded by Brent Harrington the celebration company's Town manager the other five members were Pat rley pastor of the Community Presbyterian Church Charlie Rogers manager of the local bank Kathy Johnson leader of the celebration Foundation a local charity Terry Wick an education expert working with the celebration school and Dot Davis the principal of the celebration school at the time the existence of this group and its goals was largely meant to be a secret and most of the towns seemingly did not know it existed this makes sense since internally the town's main source of news was the monthly newsletter which Brent Harrington and the celebration company put out so if the celebration company didn't want people to know it would be easy to leave residents in the dark the goal was to unify the people in charge of the town's five cornerstones education technology Health Community and place although Health seemingly didn't have much representation the other four were mostly covered now it's unfair to say that this was a method did Disney themselves used to control the narrative in celebration any idea that they may have directed the celebration company to create the town fathers would be pure speculation very little is known about the group I only found out about it in my research from celebration USA as Doug France and Katherine Collins discovered the group after seeing them meet together at the nearby golf club's restaurant other than that seemingly nothing else has ever been reported about it and unfortunately I was never able to speak with anybody who was a part of it it's also not unusual for a town leadership committee to exist meet and discuss Town matters outside the public eye it's actually a good idea because if one group is having trouble the remaining five members can help direct their resources to best Aid the town and its different components what it seems weird though is the fact that it was kept a secret it's also worth noting that not everybody wanted it to be a secret Kathy Johnson reportedly said she wished it was public If part of the group's purpose was to identify and quell rumors before they got out of hand and it seems weird to keep the existence of the Town fathers a secret since that could become controversial itself so while the existence of the Town fathers cannot directly be attributed to Disney it may be fair to say that their purpose and goals align with those of the company the town fathers mainly focused their attention on issues with the town's Public School do Davis was actually the school's second principal the first principal Bobby vogle had only stayed as head of the school for a year and that was hardly the only challenge the school faced in only 2 years the school had become the most controversial talking point between residents with tensions Rising so high that they threatened to destroy the town's Newfound sense of community so now let's dive in and discuss this celebration School chapter 5 the celebration school when crafting the plans and concepts for celebration there was a clear desire from the team behind the project to go the extra mile the master plan community is a concept of living that people like Peter rumel have been trying to innovate on for Years celebration was meant to be the next generation of the planned Community but in order to push the community aspect of a town you have to do more than build neighborhoods you have to design a town in a way that people naturally gravitate to the same areas like the Town Center the parks and walking trails and of course for families the public school celebration was made with families in mind and while it would have been easier to let the children all get shipped off to the regular Oola Public Schools easier wasn't good enough for the team behind celebration they wanted to rethink what a community should look like and with the celebration Learning Center later renamed this celebration school they wanted to reconstruct K through2 education from the ground up creating an environment that enhanced the learning of the children who entered it although Rumble and his team made it clear that any direct inspiration drawn from the original Epcot project was minimal it's worth noting that Walt himself had education in mind in the early days of his project I love love to be a part of building up a school of Tomorrow this might become a poted operation for teaching AIDs that uh would go out across the country and across the world it's a great problem today the one of teaching Walt saw the public schooling system as an inefficient means of educating and preparing children for adulthood and in designing celebration rumel and the team likewise saw the opportunity to make the celebration School into a blueprint for modern education to do this DDC assembled a team of Education experts from across the country these included Howard Gardner and Lois hetland of Harvard David Johnson and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota and William Glasser psychologist and acclaimed educational Improvement author ston University also partnered with the town to create the celebration teaching Academy a program meant to train teachers in the town as well as around the world in the Innovative methods of Education that the celebration school was implementing to the team of acclaimed educators the American public schooling system was failing to create the proper environment to maximize the learning capabilities of students and the plan was for the celebration school to remedy these problems and serve as a guide to schools across the country moving forward the structure and curriculum of the school was vastly different from public schools around the world as planned by the team of Educators here was the basic setup the school would be K through 12 as Research indicates there are benefits to siblings being in the same School classrooms would be 3 to five times the size size of a standard classroom each classroom would be known as a neighborhood and would house around 100 students each each room would have around four teachers known as learning leaders and these instructors would be responsible for teaching the students all subjects in the same room the neighborhoods would combine a few grades together and the school was split into K through 2 grades 3 through 5 grades 6 through 7 grades 8 through 9 and grades 10 through 12 students would typically Gather in different areas of the rooms to do different subjects at different times of the day and teachers would split subjects according to their own expertise this structure was loose and it was meant to be much of it was built upon Howard Gardner's belief that children learn differently from one another at different speeds or in different manners and that this structure would help cater to each child best throughout the school year learning leaders would meet with parents and their students to discuss each child's personalized learning plan this was a guide map customized to each student that was meant to track their education throughout the year and push them to work to their full potential in the ways that work best for them individually students were given quite a bit of flexibility in their daily schedule to get their assignments done encouraging personal accountability and their assignments would often be learning projects that incorporated a variety of subjects like math science and history teaching the students to apply the skills they were learning rather than traditional testing the team of Educators created the authentic assessment which was a rubric that would evaluate each student's abilities in learning prog regression over time each quarter students would make a portfolio detailing what they learned and authentic assessments would be used to evaluate the effort put in in the quality of the work this of course meant no letter grades report cards would instead say things like not yet in progress proficient or achieving they would also include more personal details regarding each student's learning progress so that parents would ideally know where their child was at in their education in a lot of the marketing for celebration it was showcased as a town on the Forefront of Technology most of that was found in the school with one example being the Mac computers which housed digital textbooks and software for writing reports that's all very common in schools now but in the late '90s it was a big deal but let's take a step back because a lot of these elements such as no letter grades or group classrooms were present in other schools at the time but while you could certainly find these methods in other schools it was rare to see them all implemented at once this was definitely an experiment but it was one that the education experts behind it believed in and it was a concept that many of the teachers were excited for as well in my research I got to speak with two former celebration School teachers one of which was Dr Tom vital I started with celebration back in 1996 um I got hired um I honestly can't remember if it was May or June but it was the summer before the school opened for the first time um and then we spent the next month um you know four to six weeks just kind of prep preparing for the school to open that first year it opened in its temporary facility um and that was where my involvement began with them another teacher I got the chance to speak to was Jackie Flanigan who appeared earlier in this documentary talking about her experience moving into celebration Jackie had a unique perspective on the school because she was both a teacher and a parent with two kids enrolled you know we looked at a lot of different schools and felt like you know the more I read about what the school was going to represent the better I liked it was an educator myself um and I thought this is really awesome so school started we moved into our apartment because our town home wasn't going to be built for a while they they went to school there I started volunteering there a teacher just she resigned it wasn't a good fit for her and it's kind of hard to hire teachers on the Fly and I was there and Bobby vogle the principal hired me for the position and because I I my own kids were there and I believed in in what they were doing I thought this is really the way education needs to go of course not every teacher meshed with the school's unorthodox structure this was a brand new school trying a bunch of new things at once in classrooms with a hundred kids each it was a learning curve for not just parents and students but teachers as well reportedly one award-winning educator was quoted as saying I'm not qualified to teach in a school like this I just know chemistry I asked Tom about his experience handling so many students at once and he explained how his neighborhood worked so we looked at it we said okay we have 100 kids here are the K2 kids and so you know we had say just roughly 50 we tried to be like when they were assigning kids tried to make it half primary and half intermediate um so then we had the two primary teachers look at those roughly 50 kids um and then me and um the other teacher would look at roughly the other 50 kids and what we start the year by doing is getting some baseline assessments on all the kids right where are they in Reading in math and things like that and then we would just start breaking out into ability level groups so I might teach a math class that had third fourth and fifth graders all in the same in the same little group so it was based on okay well this is the skill that we're we're going to be focusing on and teaching these are the standards and based on our assessments these are the kids that need to be focused right here and so all of our groups would B be based like that and then we would just kind of negotiate amongst each other who was going to do what groups the school was trying a lot of new Educational Concepts at once and making them all work together was going to be a challenge to help the teachers get better prepared to teach in such an environment Disney created an enhancement fund of $10 million that allowed the teachers to travel around the country and attend numerous professional development events Disney had also provided some of the funds needed to build the school and also donated the Land There were also small perks that came with being a part of a school pushed by Disney I wrote to another teacher Renee castillan and she wrote back telling me about a time she was able to take her French students to Epcot allowing them to practice their language skills while ordering food at the French Pavilion which provided a level of immersive learning that may have not been otherwise possible but despite the excitement for the new school shared between parents students and teachers there was one glaring issue the school hadn't actually been built yet for the 1996 school year the students and teachers were crammed into the much smaller celebration teaching Academy which meant the teaching Academy itself had to be put on hold until the school was built and already in the first year some parents began to take issue with the unorthodox format of the school particularly parents of high school age students began to worry that colleges wouldn't accept them since they didn't have letter grades parents with younger kids complained that their children crammed into rooms with 100 kids at a time weren't getting the attention they needed to properly learn at crucial developmental stages teachers were scrambling to make this unorthodox curriculum work and stick to the school's plan while also trying to meet the needs of parents and their students the small building was becoming a pressure cooker and parents were growing increasingly frustrated in response to these problems Brent Harrington and TCC scrambled to organize pep rallies and events in support of teachers they used these events to raise money and then funnel that money into an ad hoc group known as the positive parents who would then use the funds to create other events in support of teachers it was a noble effort to raise morality at a time when the town was beginning to struggle and there were many parents who held strong in support of the school believing that with time the structural Kinks would be worked out but by creating the positive parents group TCC had possibly helped cause a bigger problem those parents that had concerns and criticisms had many Fair points about problems with the school that needed to be addressed but by labeling some parents as the positive ones TCC had drawn a firm Line in the Sand between those fully for the school and those fully against the school when that hadn't really previously been the case now the celebration school had become a controversial subject in the town and the community was beginning to divide now we've talked about the involvement of parents teachers and TCC but before we go any further let's identify a silent fourth party that caused some of these issues the Realtors selling the homes what I didn't previously know was that some of the Realtors themselves were making promises about the school that they had no business making so the school was a big draw right everybody wanted to be in school this is a it's a Oola County public school but in partnership with the Walt Disney Company right at the time that was unheard of and of course Disney is a big name so it was used as a selling point for the community hey come live here it's a great Community we're you know connected to Disney but look what Disney's doing with the school right and so the Realtors were using the school as a marketing point to sell homes and they would say things to people to buy homes that weren't necessarily true some of the things we heard I'm sure Jackie probably told you this one but you know we had parents that thought that the Mont rail would be connected to the school and that kids would be able to jump on the montre rail to school and you know take it to Disney and go back and forth and just really ridiculous crazy stuff like that and I can tell you because we were homeowners in celebration we lived there our kids went to school there and I taught there and that's that a good portion of pressure on that school was relative to how the houses were being sold you had these Builders and families would come and they'd you know see the models and they would work with their Builder these Builders were promising things and we didn't know this until it was too late it was like their mouths were writing checks that we couldn't cash as a school and we didn't find out about it of course until after it had been going on for probably almost a year because that's you know when the parents start to get angry is when you find out about it because you're sitting in a conference and they're like we you know they're banging the table we were told X Y and Z and and Jackie and I we would look at each other and be well who the hell told you that and they're like when we were talking with you know you know you know vtor who who's he was it um we were you know told this or we were promised that and then that's when we started put together and we're like wow that's that's that's nuts I mean that's nuts this was a massive learning experience for everyone involved and it was clearly going to take some time before the system began functioning correctly Jackie and Tom were very open about certain things they wish they'd handled differently I think defining what Progressive meant was not done well um as an educator I know Progressive means not doing it the way it's always been done uh you know that's that's a loose definition but I think families moved into this community because it was like Norman Rockwell it was Main Street in the Magic Kingdom and then you get to a school that looks nothing like the school that they went to and the teaching was nothing like what they had experienced so there was this sort of internal weird battle between I think they beli that Progressive meant all the desks the textbooks everything would be new it would be the newest version of everything they had when they were kids what we did wrong in retrospect was we changed everything about what school meant and looked like what you know when you when you close your eyes and picture K12 schooling right you went through K12 school you know what it looks like your friends went through it you've seen it and then they dropped their kids off and it looked different right it it just did look different we didn't have individual chairs we had tables kids were sitting in groups we um didn't necessarily have classes in that in that that neighborhood we would pull small group and do small group instruction and um instead of having like basil readers it would be you know we would be reading novels but we'd have a group of five or six kids reading this novel and a different group of five or six reading another one and we would basically have book talks and that's what we were doing and so we changed everything at once and we didn't talk to them about that we were doing that right we just kind of assumed everybody knew because we were out there saying hey it's all different we're going to be great because we're different but we didn't explain to them what was different and what to expect like if you went when you go to a doctor when you go to the hospital you expect to see a doctor wearing a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck right if you walked in and he was wearing you know flipflops and you know a swimsuit and you know in a tank top you you would probably be be like um I have cancer could I see a different doctor right and this guy might be the best in the world but you changed what it meant to be you know in a in a hospital looking at a doctor and um and we I don't think we did a very good job in fact I know we we didn't do anything to kind of prepare parents and teach them about what to look for the promise of a brand new school was listed as a top reason for why people moved to Celebration in the first place with around half of the resident families having schoolage children and actually many of the parents were looking for a new place to live specifically because their kids were not succeeding in the schools they were already in many of these students had been labeled problem kids by their previous schools because of learning difficulties they had and actually a school with the format of the celebration School often works for kids who don't function well in traditional educational environments but the problem was with expectations they were all over the place and as time went on parents were dividing further on what kind of school they wanted the celebration school to be I was lucky to get the opportunity to speak with Andrew Ross an educator of over 45 years who has written for the New York Times the guardian the nation and more Andrew lived in celebration during its early years and occasionally taught in the school his time in experiences in the town were documented in his book the celebration Chronicles and he also studied the Oola housing crisis surrounding celebration in his book Sunbelt Blues his research was invaluable to this documentary and I was very happy to get the chance to speak with him and particularly learn about his involvement in the school when I asked him about the divisions in the town over the schooling he had this to say one of the problems is that uh you know Disney Disney's a developer and Disney has a high um a high reputation for customer satisfaction I think there was that kind of consumer mindset of a lot of folks who moved into town schools don't work that way education doesn't work that way you don't see uh I speaking here as an educator for more than 45 years sometimes what you teach in classroom uh you really don't see the impact of it until 10 years after in students so I I've learned not to expect to see short-term results but uh in a with a consumer mentality that's what you expect you expect to get you know to be able to see those results immediately schools don't work like that celebration school as it was set up was certainly not designed to work like that and uh and I think that was part of the problem by the end of the first school year six out of 19 teachers had left the school Bobby vogle the principal also resigned and left with the suggestion that the upper and lower schools be separated reportedly the school planned to hire two principles to replace vogle perhaps indicating that they were planning to take her advice and separate the grades but the problem was the budget this was a public school and since they only had the funds that Oola County granted them they couldn't afford two principles besides that went against the vision of the original plan of the school that kids would go from childhood to Young adulthood learning along with their siblings in the same school the first year hadn't gone well but it didn't mean that the intent and the vision of the school was completely flawed but instead perhaps the curriculum and structure needed more time to develop as the 1996 school year began the students and teachers were able to start fresh in the brand new celebration School building and a new principal named dot Davis was hired to lead the school but it was clear that Disney and TCC were rushing to patch the issues and stop the pr nightmare that the school had become in fact the hiring of do Davis was a great example as according to Celebration USA the process was extremely rushed Davis had been the Principal of the academy for academics and arts in Huntsville Alabama for 13 years during her tenure she transformed the school bringing it from a low performing institution to one formally recognized as an outstanding school by the Department of Education after working at the school for so long she was considering retirement until she happened to come across the job listing for the celebration School principal she applied on a whim and didn't hear back until 2 months later when she received a call from a TCC representative she was interviewed on the spot and asked a bunch of Personality based questions including things like can you remember a time when you were the life of a party and what is your most embarrassing moment she didn't hear anything for 3 weeks until she received another call with another impromptu personality exam she was selected as a finalist and a week later flew down with her husband for an interview while she met with Brent Harrington and the school staff her husband examined the town deciding that there was nowhere for them to live and the prices were just too high the next day she met with some of the educational team working behind the scenes including Larry Rosen from stsun University Terry Wick the liaison between TCC and the school and Thomas mccrawley school superintendent they interviewed her for 15 minutes then stood up to leave when Davis stopped them to ask some questions of her own they said quote you may ask one question as we walk out as Davis and her husband were about to leave a teacher received a call from mccrawley the superintendent the teacher hung up and turned to Davis to inform her she got the job Davis called mccrawley back and found out he was was already preparing a press release to announce her hiring even though she had not accepted the job yet she asked for more time to consider it over the weekend and also mentioned that she needed to tell her current supervisor if she was taking the job that's when mccrawley informed her that he'd already called and told Davis's supervisor that she was taking the job despite everything by the end of the weekend Davis decided to accept the new position and attended a grand press release where she was given a key to the school teachers also walked across the stage wearing football jerseys with their names on them new teachers were announced as first draft picks and teachers that stayed from the last year were announced as returning players it was a big spectacle but behind the scenes things were clearly still chaotic and parents were not fooled into believing all of the problems were solved some parents had already tried to leave the town during the first school year but they discovered a roadblock preventing them from doing so in the contracts they had signed when buying their homes there was a clause preventing residents from selling during the first 9 months there were a few exceptions if residents could prove hardship like a divorce or a job transfer but problems with the school were not a valid reason to leave this backfired when parents tried to leave Disney said no and parents went to the press and started whistleblowing Disney quickly backpedal offering homeowners an NDA preventing them from criticizing the town and school in exchange for the freedom to leave the town had already suffered a lot of negative PR and many of the residents weren't having it anymore after all the school was the reason many had moved there and those still in staunched support of it began to react strongly to criticism the positive parents got heavily involved in the PTSA forming a group known as the Dream Team within that stood firm in their undying support of the school prompting the occasional shouting match between them and those with criticisms soon some neighbors stopped talking to one another and teacher morale reached an all-time low a boiling point was reached once the Press started approaching students forcing children to defend their school in response a local PR firm was hired by TCC and all further questions regarding the school were directed to them but the owners of the firm also had children in the school complicating their feelings on the matter and they weren't the only ones in that position many of the higher-ups at TCC had children in the school scho and some of the teachers did as well including Jackie Flanigan I lived within walking distance of the school you know my kids and I walk to school every day um it was difficult because I did believe in the system I I did um I wouldn't have put my kids there if I didn't you know and then on top of that I also recognized that we had a lot of work to do the teaching design and the imple mentation of it were Ste were deep in the research I mean it it was it was the right way in my in my honest opinion did it have flaws yes it did it was it demanded an awful lot of the teachers and there were lots of those kinds of things that had to be worked out you know it the easiest way to describe it is I'm sure you're aware we had University Partnerships we had universities that were involved one of the universities was Harvard I can recall very vividly they used to have it was required I guess it still is in Florida they they were called uh School advisory councils Sachs that's what they were called and it was like an advisory group of families and stakeholders that they weren't a board they had no governing power but they would advise so it would be weird because in that first couple of years we were still getting a lot lot of input and training and oversight by those University partners and so they would come you know come from wherever one of John's Hopkins was one uh UCF was a big one um big partner because they were local Harvard was one Stetson was a partner in collaboration with UCF I Auburn was the other one so these were respected universities and they would come in and they'd spend all day in the school and they'd be in our classrooms and they'd meet with us and do a training or whatever after after school and telling us we were way ahead of where they thought we would be and we were doing such a great job and they'd give us pointers on how to make this better or how to do this more efficiently and this is wonderful and taking pictures and notes and all of that and then one particular time it was happened to be on the same they were there on the same day that we had a sack meeting and we had to have a police ES scored that's how riled up the parents were so we would go from hearing you're doing fabulous this is what you should be doing this is the way Direction school needs to be blah blah blah to your ruining my kids life so it was a little like Whiplash and the hard part for me is like why would you think I would do this to my own child tensions were reaching an all-time high during one PTSA meeting Larry Rosen the representative from Stetson University said that he believed the problems could be attributed to not enough training and too few teachers in response to this one parent stood up and exclaimed quote we blame you Larry Rosen for all of this you and do Davis he also added one final jab saying quote Larry you are the cancer it's worth mentioning that Rosen also had a child in the school and surely wanted it to succeed as much as the rest of the parents although things were getting nasty between par parents and faculty there was increasing cause for concern High School seniors were having serious trouble getting into colleges one parent spoke to a representative at Auburn University who told her quote ma'am you are being grossly misled regarding portfolios you need grades Auburn University by the way was also involved with the celebration School somehow despite all of the interesting and potentially beneficial ideas the educational experts had implemented into the school they had forgotten to consider what the next step for graduates would even look like in response to this the teachers had to do a rush patch job sometimes providing fake grades and credits for classes students had never officially attended this raised ethical concerns but also educational concerns if a student receives credit for pre-calculus but never took it how can they possibly succeed in a college calculus course but really the teachers can't be blamed for trying to fix the problem since through the end of the second school year the higher faculty and administration had not made any progress themselves these were immediate concerns and the future of the students was at stake and with a seeming lack of effort from Administration to fix the problems suddenly the strength of the positive parents began to wne and a new group known as the concerned parents of Celebration formed they first met in a hotel on the outskirts of town since criticism of the school had been met with such Swift hostility in the past there was a real fear of of being outed for attending the meeting about 50 parents met that first day and compiled a list of 30 concerns into a document they met with do Davis and presented these findings Davis expressed support for many of the ideas listed and after that first meeting the concerned parents group grew from 50 to 150 oddly enough the problems with the school which had initially torn the town in half was the unifying cause that brought most people together in the fall of 1998 big changes came to the Celebration School a more traditional class schedule was implemented honors and AP classes were also introduced as well as an elective for sat preparation traditional textbooks were reintroduced and the Reliance on digital textbooks through school computers was reduced and most crucially numbered assessments more equivalent to grades were introduced most of these changes were implemented in the upper grades at first but it was a start on top of that many of those in administration who were behind the initial vision for the school were demoted let go or left on their own doc Davis insisted that these changes were all in the works before the concerned parents presented their concerns and that may be true but either way it was a massive win for those who wish to return to traditional schooling the fate of the celebration teaching Academy was even more Bleak the academy was created in partnership with Stetson University and TCC but differen and goals for the Academy led to more and more delays TCC wanted it to focus primarily on training the teachers at the celebration School while Stetson wanted it to be used for training teachers Nationwide as initially promised eventually the building was split between Disney and Stetson with Disney using it for administration offices while Stetson briefly offered Adult Educational classes and soon after an even bigger change was announced in Fall of 1999 celebr school would become K through 8 and high schoolers would move to a new school being built 2 m away those formerly known as the positive parents in the PTSA were dumbfounded and upset and many leaders in the group left the town many of the teachers were upset as well after all the school at this point was basically a normal public school what was the point of fighting for the future of the celebration school if it ended up no different from any other public school even worse many of the students were not happy with the massive overhaul of the school structure remember a lot of these kids had learning disadvantages and many were actually really connecting with the curriculum and loose structure the school offered when they found out the school was becoming more traditional many feared it would become just like the schools they had struggled in previously it is understandable why many parents were unhappy with the school they had been promised various things that never came to pass and their children were in some ways guinea pigs in a grand and educational experiment but at the same time it could be said that if given more time perhaps the celebration school could have worked out the bugs in their initial plan and push to remain the Innovative and unique institution that it was intended to be when I asked Jackie Flanigan Tom vital and Andrew Ross if they agreed here's what they had to say I struggled with that a lot because I did believe in I still believe in it I still believe what we were doing in fact you know there are probably those people that you've talked to that have said things like you know you know how did celebration fail or they'll use the word fail as they talked to this the original design of the school and myself and and others others teachers who were there at that time will say it really didn't fail it succeeded for a really short time but when you look back at some of those kids that we had for you know those first two years um and you look where they are now and what they're doing now um so many of them will still to this day talk about their experiences at Celebration school and how that impacted their educational Journey um and that it made a difference and that you know it really taught them to think I mean I've been in education for like 32 years now and I I haven't had other kids come back 10 years 15 years 20 years later and and talk about that with their you know traditional Public School experience I mean they talk may talk about a teacher or they may say hey when I was in your class this thing really inspired me but they don't talk about their education as a whole that way so I think that was a a big success I wish we could have held on to our concept um longer I think it definitely deserved more time and um in in in general you know I got to know the teachers quite well and had a lot of respect for what they were doing and I learned a lot about education while I was there that was not possible for all sorts of reasons one had to do with the scrutiny that the town was under you know celebration was very closely watched in more stories written about it than any other town in America and so uh for sure you know the school was at the center of many of those stories Disney is uh like most corporations is very U uh you know risk averse and uh acts to protect uh exposure to his brand and so stories in the press that were damaging to the brand um had to be had to be addressed in some way and there were a number of ways in which the company did that one of which was I think to uh to revert the school certainly the Disney company was unhappy with the negative media attention that the school had prompted but more than that celebration as a whole which was initially poised to be an easy money maker for the company had proven to be more complex than anticipated this was unlike any project they had worked on previously because they had to contend with real people with real opinions and when their opinions of dis Disney or its work in the town were less than desirable they had the ability to make those opinions known in the Press Disney despite their efforts could not control celebration because the town was a growing community of individuals and people aren't easy to control silence or sway in your favor and so after years of denying the rumors it finally happened Disney left celebration chapter 6 celebration without Disney the signs had been there over the years that Disney was interested in reducing their involvement in celebration as mentioned before the first sign of Separation was when they took their name off the water tower the next was when celebration disappeared from their park maps in the early 2000s Disney had already seemingly reduced their involvement with the celebration school and was able to slowly transition governance to the various Home and Commercial owner associations of the town then in 20 04 Disney finally sold the Town Center to lexon Capital which would take over maintenance of the town's iconic centerpiece for some residents this felt like a rug pull many came to Celebration due to their belief in the quality and craftsmanship the Walt Disney Company was known for many of those in celebration were big Disney fans and wanted to be a part of the company's history as Disney attempted to revolutionize the concept of a modern Community but for many others these were not the reasons they came to Celebration many came for the school or the seemingly safe and pristine atmosphere of the Town many wanted to change from the cramped Metropolitan lives they had previously LED and some just ended up in celebration on a whim being in the right place at the right time celebration had a lot of what the internet would call Disney adults but it also had a lot of people just looking for a change people moved to places for all kinds of reasons and so they had a lot of different feelings about Disney leaving so instead in my interviews I wanted to know something else was it the negative press and complications that changed their minds or was Disney planning to leave celebration from the very beginning oh yeah for sure I mean that's what every developer wants to do um and that's why the governance structure was set up the way it's set up and that's not untypical that a developer will gradually see Power on the board to elected members of from the residents and over time until they reach a point when um it's you know they've extracted um extracted the maximum Revenue that they can from the development they got return in their investment and um and then they pull out I I remember hearing that from early early on that the goal was Disney would Embrace this would throw its vast resources at it get it up and running and then turn it over as its own municipality I I I was on the original stakeholders board Disney always planned to leave from everything I can remember from serving on that stakeholders committee to being a teacher at the school to being an early early member of that Community they always planned to go they there was never always going to be Disney's Town it it was go they were going to transition out at some point all throughout cele A's development and existence Disney was focused primarily on its other larger projects things like the cancell Disney's America Euro Disney Animal Kingdom a second gate at the newly renamed Disneyland Paris and those are just the theme parks Toy Story Hercules Mulan A Bug's Life Toy Story 2 Monsters Inc lelu and Stitch Finding Nemo Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles were all released from 1995 to 2004 Pixar was revitalizing the success of Disney's movie releases but disagreements between leadership threatened to end the partnership of the two companies in 2003 Roy E Disney son of Roy Disney and nephew to Walt resigned in protest of the management strategies of Michael Eisner and Leadership was beginning to shake up a year after celebration's Town Center was sold Bob Iger would replace Eisner as CEO of the company big things were happening at the Walt Disney Company during this time and to them celebration was a small footnote in a storied and tumultuous chapter of the brand at the same time celebration was a complicated project which dealt with real people living in a real town that Disney was responsible for it was a unique project but it was always a side project and to the company it was becoming more trouble than it was worth after all Disney is an entertainment company part of the reason celebration was so closely examined by the Press was that in all honesty Disney had no business business building a town they make movies and themed entertainment experiences and celebration was neither of those things the same has been said of the Epcot project it was an idea from a man at the end of his life wanting to be more than an Entertainer Walt had wanted to be an American Pioneer someone to turn the dial from the past to the Future changing the everyday lives of the people of his country despite the marketing celebration was not directly inspired by Epcot and yet it had a similar purpose to become the next evolution of the American Town it was meant to push us into the future even if just a little bit and in the same way it was meant to bring us back to the past to be more than just a subdivision or town but a community built on strong bonds a type of small town close-knit community practically lost to time Epcot was meant to be the great city of tomorrow but in a way celebration was meant to be the great city of yesterday day recapturing neighborly bonds we had lost over the years perhaps Disney had no business making celebration in the first place and perhaps then it made sense for them to leave their city of yesterday behind in their company's history books but that's the thing about a community of people it cannot be owned bought or controlled you can own the government you may buy the town and you may control how it looks but you can't do any of those things to the community a community is planted when people form a central bond in a central place and it naturally grows as those people develop culture and history with one another when I started this documentary I thought this would be an easy story about a bunch of Disney adults who locked themselves into a failed town that Disney left in the dust but that's not the story of Celebration it might be the story you've heard before but it's not the truth when I talked to those who had built it who had lived there who had worked there I very quickly realized that these people loved this town not because it was Disney's town but because it was theirs my son-in-law was one of the lottery kids oh wow yeah so how's that for connection TP there lived there kids went to school there daughter married a lottery kid um so my son-in-law Jonathan um he was one of those kids and he and my daughter met when they were in middle school and oh wow together yeah that's really cool so so they met they met in middle school and then got married met at Middle School in celebration neither one one of them ever dated anyone else never I mean they went all through celebration from the time he started there until they graduated from high school I was there I was there for for the alumni Gathering and five or six years ago and I was there a couple years ago I've never had this experience but it's got to be like having a child and and and then meeting the child you know raising the child until they're two and then losing him until they're seven or eight and it's just it's and they turned out fine and it's it was nice to see it was very satisfying it told me that what we did was right what we did was smart all of this has been about Disney's time in the town but that's what celebration was now before we wrap this up let's move on from the history of the town and talk about celebration today [Music] chapter 7 celebration today in exploring the story of celebration's past I knew I would eventually have to hop on a plane and see the current state of the town because celebration is alive and well and its story is still unfolding every day and there are a number of things that have happened in celebration after Disney sold the Town Center that are worth diving into first let's talk about the state of the community celebration was sold as a place where the close-knit community makeup of pre-World War II America was reestablished the question is is that still the case from what I could tell yes on my first day in celebration they were holding their weekly Farmers Market a tradition held since the beginning of the town I walked through and could see a blend of both residents and tourists exploring the market I walked around the lake and saw residents both young and old sitting on benches taking in the scenery the restaurants on Front Street always seemed to be busy and I myself enjoyed some chocolate I got from Kilwin's Ice Cream shop and sat next to the water fountain that's not to say that things haven't changed since celebration was founded most of the people who were there in the early days seem to have moved on in Andrew Ross's book Sun Bel Blues he explores the housing crisis in America by returning to acola County and interviewing those living in motels and on the streets one couple Andrew ran into at one of the motels were early residents at celebration but due to the recession we're forced to leave the town after the recession prices have generally risen in celebration and many companies have bought and rented out homes this is a far cry from the early days where generally rentals were exclusively apartments and homes were usually owned celebration is a great case study for a larger wealth disparity in the United States one clearly visible as soon as you drive outside of the community the area of Oola surrounding the town is touristy and while there are nicer areas and shopping centers much of it is a bit run down celebration was always a bit of a bubble shielded away from the rest of Oola and many of the rundown buildings have been there since the town's founding but it's hard to point the blame solely at a place like celebration after all the wealth Gap in America is a problem found in almost every major city in the early years Disney had talked about creating lowincome housing to truly make celebration into the ultimate mixed income Community they opted instead to send funds to programs supporting lowincome residents in acola and made celebration a middle to upper class community and while this is increasingly unlikely to ever change in celebration itself Disney recently announced an affordable housing initiative in neighboring Orange County I took a quick detour up the highway and visited a patch of land Disney has offered for lowincome housing like celebration this land and the area surrounding used to be part of the REI Creek District but was de annexed to prevent residents from Gaining voting rights in Disney's areas notably Disney themselves are not planning to develop the housing rather they've partnered with the Michaels Corporation to handle construction and operation opposing voices in the community have raised concerns about the development one issue being a lack of schools in the area but if celebration scared Disney away from one thing it would probably be building schools the land itself seems to be a leftover patch of farm life land with a dilapitated barn still sitting on the property so hopefully this development will allow lowincome residents to find stable housing in the region and more developments like it will be established soon but back to Celebration itself because in recent years there have been headlines about the town becoming rundown as well with mold and Decay allegedly eating away at the Town Center these stories have circulated after the area was sold to lexon Capital when lexon took over the Town Center shop owners were assured that the only difference would be a new name on the rent bill but this has not really been the case when lexon bought the property Disney offered them $750,000 to use for maintenance and repair of the area but the company declined instead they quickly sold two parking lots for condo development turned some of the more affordable rentals into condos for sale and later refinance the town saddling it with debt so the company could profit as much as possible meanwhile the town has reportedly sunk further into Decay with lexon not seeming to care enough to do anything until they absolutely need to as well as that Disney retains the ability to force lexon to make those repairs through Representatives on celebration's non-commercial owners board but they have seemingly yet to do so going into celebration I had planned to highlight these structural issues and call upon lexen to do their job and maintain the town but when I arrived I was surprised to find that celebration was was beautiful really I had read all about how nice the town was how unique and impressive the architecture was and how nice the community was and honestly that all remains true and the fact that I as a tourist see very few flaws in the town and its Town Center is great but it's also not great because if the structural problems and repairs needed are all behind the scenes hidden behind a clean and shiny outer appearance that means lexen probably is isn't going to do much about it and that's a big problem in purchasing the Town Center lexon assumed the responsibility of maintaining the buildings and therefore the future of Celebration and it doesn't matter if a tourist like me can readily see the problems if the problems exist then it's their responsibility to fix them and I sincerely hope they do now we've looked at the state of the community the town center and the buildings within next let's briefly focus on one of those buildings the movie theater designed by Cesar Pell it remains a staple of the town's architecture with its Twin Spires piercing the town Skyline but unfortunately in December 2010 it closed its doors and to this day the iconic theater sits in the center of the Town unused why did this happen well it was rented and operated by AMC since the town's beginning known as AMC celebration 2 towards the end of the theater's operation it struggled to to attract customers as seen in these photos from its final day of operation the closure of the theater was quiet and received little Fanfare despite its closure however AMC continued to rent the location because it was cheaper for them to pay the rent than to operate it and since they have a nearby location in Disney Springs they didn't want another company to take over and detract from their sales that is until the pandemic hit theaters hard and AMC was forced to cut C severely because of this in 2020 they stopped paying rent to the building no other company or individual has taken over the building yet but there is a Hope from many in the community that this iconic building will one day open its doors again next let's talk about the state of Disney's involvement in the town now hold on you're probably asking yourself the last chapter was all about how Disney left celebration well that's definitely true in a sense Disney sold the Town Center leaving maintenance and upkeep to lexen Disney also left the homeowners association meaning they are no longer involved with maintaining the appearance of houses ever since their name came off the water tower they've been wanting to distance themselves from the project and the perception from most of the people I've talked to is that Disney packed up and left the town until I talked to Andrew Ross what was not typical about celebration was uh this the the the company retained a veto vote as part of the governance structure that even after um all of the all of the governance uh boards have been turned over to Residents uh the corporation can still exercise a veto that's very unusual the perception that Disney has left the town a long time ago is uh is a flawed perception companies still owes chunks of land I mean the business plan always was to sell off the land that the you know the highest market value at the right time and that continues to be the case but they still own little chunks of land and especially a large chunk of land um that lies to the west of the I4 Corridor which currently is undeveloped they still control the commercial um the the commercial governance board and um and effectively they have have control over the joint board yeah the the the company has sort of withdrawn a lot of its uh uh imagistic or rhetorical association with the town but its property stake is still considerable my perception had always been that this is celebration but it turns out that's only a portion of it on the other side of the I4 freeway this large swath of land is also a part of Celebration and it is massive over 1,000 acres of land about 2/3 the size of what is developed in the town Disney has had little areas of commercial land in celebration for years that they have recently begun to sell off but at time of recording they have yet to sell this massive patch of land now their ownership of the land means a couple of things first it means they can be involved in the government according to the rules they outlined when the town was founded as long as they own more than 10% of the land in Celebration they're allowed representation on governmental boards in the town of which there are many and of course even if they sell that land they still retain veto power over any decisions made second it means that more than a third of Celebration has yet to be developed into anything most of the land is just a giant forest and it would be expensive to develop so it may not be used for anything at least not for a while however their ownership of the land means they are the biggest non-residential land owner and allows them sway over cnoa the non-residential owner board so by holding on to this land they can exercise their authority over lexon that and the price tag of development are probably the reasons Disney is holding on to the land and how they are quietly still connected to the town even if the land is ever developed it's on the other side of the freeway and would likely be seen as separate from the town even if it would technically still be a part of Celebration but if Disney ever decided to develop it and therefore become more involved in the town once again it would be interesting to see the reactions of residents after all Disney has spiritually left the town and the residents have continued the story of celebration on their own so for Disney to reinsert themselves into that story would likely be controversial to those living there now we've covered the community lexon the state of the Town Center the movie theater and Disney's continued involvement before we go let's talk about one final important part of Celebration its Legacy it's an idea that has persisted all throughout this story from Walt's obsession with Epcot and designing the future to Celebration recapturing the community structures of the past celebration was sold as a continuation of Epcot as a final chapter in the history of Walt's final project but celebration has its own story and its own legacy as well carried on by the residents themselves I first noticed this in talking to Jackie Flanigan Jackie highlighted how despite the failure of the original celebration School many of its ideas and philosophies made their way into a number of the nearby schools these included montauri Academy of Celebration neoc City Academy and the dicese of Orlando again the influence of the celebration School design was so prevalent that when I went to work at the dicese some God years later I I remember having a meeting we were doing some work on on a school and we went to a meeting with um this architectural firm and they were selling us on because they were make presenting a proposal for some you know building that they wanted to do for the dases schools and they start showing this and I'm sitting around this big table and The Architects are going through and they've got these pictures and they're showing their portfolio and I looked up and I went that was my classroom and the guy looked at me and he's like what and I said that's upper three in celebration school and it's like that they use that to pitch the way school should be I found fascinating more than just schooling the design philosophy of Peter Rummel and his team as well as the architecture and layout of the Town served as inspiration for a handful of more recent developments two former members of TCC Charles Adams and Don keran went on to found celebration Associates which worked with developers to create a pattern book and design Philosophy for master plan communities around the world as well as that Brent Harrington celebration's first town manager went on to work as president and CEO of dmbb development taking his experiences in celebration and using them in further developments around the country and as for Disney after all those years of avoiding the Epcot project they had finally built a town that that kept some of the spirit of Walt's original plan celebration was no utopian society but it was a town built with community at the Forefront and yet it was far more difficult than they had probably ever anticipated celebration had earned them more grief from the Press than anything else and so while it may have been a success in the long run Disney distanced themselves from Community Development they've been known to build the occasional neighborhood from time to time but celebration served as their first and last foray into building communities except that is about to change we are here in Rancho Mirage to celebrate the groundbreaking of cotino our first story living by Disney Community together we Mark the ground upon which coino will be built and in addition to residential homes this development is also expected to host a hotel in range of shopping dining entertainment and activities as well as a Grand Oasis featuring clear turquoise Waters with Crystal lagoons technology coino is a new community currently being developed by Disney in partnership with Brent Harrington's dmbb Associates it doubles as both a master plan community and mini vacation destination with offerings including a resort hotel and Town Center it will be located in Rancho Mirage which is near Palm Springs in the California desert cotino will have parks and walk walking trails like celebration and even has a lagoon in fact if you look at the map Coo's master plan is pretty similar to celebrations more recently Disney announced a similar plan Community located just outside of Raleigh North Carolina called aeria less details are known about this project as construction has yet to begin and sales probably won't open until 2027 although there will be houses available for people of all ages at least some of the res residential offerings in both cotino and Asteria will be reserved for those 55 and older this seems to indicate that Disney has learned a lot from the successes and failures of their celebration project rather than try to create the next great community of mixed income residents Disney is interested in creating communities of a higher price point geared mainly towards retirees they're not building schools and they're not trying to reinvent the wheel with Community planning their plan is to create a nice place to live and make a quick profit off the land sold as well as generate continual income by charging residents and visitors membership fees for the community's clubhouse they'll also charge visitors for Beachside access to the Lagoon for coino providing more additional income both cotino and esteria are part of an initiative called story living where imagineers design communities with a Disney touch meaning if these places are profitable Disney is planning to make more communities at the time of my interviews Asteria had not been announced but COA was in development and most people I talked to had actually already heard about it since they had all been involved in celebration in one way or another I was interested to hear if they had any advice for Disney in terms of what they should take from the celebration project and incorporate into cotino I think they you know they've got to got to try and be new and different without without being so so I'm on guard that that they that they make people feel uncomfortable people have got to feel like it's home like it's a real place people don't want to live in a theme park so celebration if it were started now it would probably manifest itself differently than it did in 1994 from its Beginnings then and it'll be interesting to watch and see what they do in California the California Market's first very different than the market in in Central Florida so that in it of itself would would would suggest a different kind of product mix it would manifest itself differently people are different the markets changed I'm not gonna say don't build a school because I believe that the heart of every Community is its school and it should be that we've lost that underc commit and overd deliver that that would be my my advice you you can't sell something that doesn't that you know doesn't may not exist you know um and if if you're doing something really different you might I don't should Market it because if it's that new and that Innovative you don't know that it's gonna work so I have heard of it and and to answer your question directly manage expectations don't oversell it or don't let the people that are there selling it oversell it make sure that you have some over watch in what's being said because um you know PE these people work on commission they're going to tell you whatever you want to hear and they're going to say whatever they you know need to say to make the sale because that's their bottom line um and and they they need to as a company if they're going to do it again they need to make sure um that the people that are doing the selling are are actually selling the the the reality of what they're building and not the fantasy of what some want it to be yeah I I kind of I noticed that I was surprised that they would actually I thought celebration would be their first and last uh fary into residential development my sense is that uh the the the one in California is not being designed as particularly mix income Community is fairly highend um so the the more risky I would say the more risky features of uh the celebration blueprint the mixed income part of it the school the public school that was at the heart of it um these are these are not going to be part of the uh the plan for the new community so in a sense would you say that celebration is the first and last time Disney has built a community I mean one of the reasons I want to live in and and write about live in celebration and write about it was that uh no one really built a new town in the US since the 1960s I mean a town with everything with all the features built in um we're not talking about subdivisions or master plan communities this was designed as a town coherent town and it's not often that developers do that for very good reasons you have to have very Deep Pockets to be able to do it and Disney was able to finance it in that way um that is uncommon so uh again yeah there's a difference between building a master plan community and and building a new town New Towns are very rare well it will be interesting to see what happens with all of the new communities Disney is planning down the line at the end of the day celebration was a unique and singular project that was unlike anything the company had ever tried before and is unlikely to be surpassed by any Community they will ever create again and maybe that's for the best because celebration deserves to be more than a footnote in a company 's history or a stepping stone to grander and more profitable community plans it deserves to be remembered for more than its parallels to the final idea of a Visionary Creator it deserves to be remembered as less than a Utopia and more than just Nostalgia like any place like any moment its history is worth preserving and its history is held by those who created it those who contributed to it and those who lived in it many of those who have come and gone over the years but each added their own thread to the tapestry of celebrations history a tapestry that holds all the trials and triumphs all the successes and failures with threads held Strong by the bonds of the community a community built upon the belief that people could and should be neighborly to one another living and growing together as one beautiful community and that's all celebration is just a town built for its community I've dedicated a year of my life to presenting the history and culture of Celebration and I couldn't have done it without the help of a number of people who I'd like to thank I'd first like to thank my family who have been incredibly supportive throughout this whole production second thank you to those who helped me with my research and to those who took the time to do an interview with me thank you to Peter rumel Jerry Ray Jackie Flanigan Tom vital Bob rhods Renee castillan and a very special thanks to Andrew Ross whose research was vital to the creation of this documentary if you're interested in learning more about celebration in Oola County I'd highly recommend checking out his books the celebration Chronicles and Sunbelt blues and to the people of celebration after years of negative press I hope this documentary can serve as a fair account of your history and culture and as a celebration of you and your community and finally if you took the time to watch this film whether you watch the whole thing 10 minutes or just 2 seconds a very special thanks to you thank you
