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3. Run emergency services, law enforcement...and even municipal courts

Image: Jenny & Elizabeth , Flickr (license)

While Disney uses some powers often, like issuing bonds and rewriting zoning laws, there are others that they've opted to avoid implementing. One such power is, in fact, the power to create their own municipal court system.

Now, technically, this power is not granted to the District, but rather the two incorporated towns within it – Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista. However, the two towns are controlled entirely by employees of the Walt Disney Company, so they essentially serve the same role as the District itself.

When Disney was planning on building a real, working city in Florida, these powers made a lot of sense. Wherever people are living and working together, it would follow that a legitimate court system should be in place. Additionally, the District had the right to its own police force and fire departments – and could even run its own hospitals and medical research facilities.

Once the actual city was scrapped from the plans for Walt Disney World, most of those services were filled by the nearby counties. The only one Disney still uses today is the Reedy Creek Fire Department, which provides emergency first response to all points within the District.

And honestly, it's probably for the best you can't go to Disney Court.

4. Use experimental technologies


Disney Drones

Image: Disney

Above all else, the Reedy Creek Improvement District was designed to allow Walt Disney and his selected innovators to create and implement technology no one had ever seen before. The legislation forming the District specifically included language to that effect, ensuring that whatever city Disney was planning would not be held back by the slow-moving superstructure of local government.

The legislation specifically granted the District the authority to utilize new, innovative methods of power generation or utility management. Famously, the District has the ability to construct its own nuclear power plant – something that was indeed proposed during the initial planning stages of the Florida Project, but later abandoned.

But the power didn't stop there; Disney has the ability to construct airports and transportation systems and anything else it can imagine, and do so without needing permission from local authorities.

Like anything else, this can result in both positives and negatives. The positives are that Disney can stay nimble – building new experiences on its own schedule and creating new technologies without any restrictions. The negatives are that they lack any real local oversight, operating in a netherworld between private company and public work.

But ultimately, the Reedy Creek Improvement District is a fascinating relic more than anything; a vestigial structure leftover from the grandiose plans of Disney World past. When it was created, it was done so in order to help Walt Disney construct his world of the future. Now, it mostly helps the Walt Disney Company earn more money. Is there romance lost in that? Sure.

But when it finally takes less than two hours to find a parking space at Disney Springs, I think we'll all be at least somewhat grateful it exists.

 
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Comments

That's awesome that disney can eliminate the bureaucracy crap and cut the red tape and have their own
building and zoning rules and build their own stuff. It also saves disney time and they can run their own stuff and property without bureaucratic nonsense.

The article implies that tax payers are funding the Disney Springs parking garages. That's not how bonds work.

In reply to by Rex Mumea (not verified)

The new parking ramps are not owned by Disney and were built be public funds.

That’s not how that works. That’s not how bonds work. Any money RCID spent is not Florida tax payer money. It’s tax revenue RCID has collected from Disney.

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