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“I have trivia question for you,” the bus driver announced over his public address system.
“Let’s see if anyone knows the answer.
All Disney theme parks here opened on the first of October, except for Animal Kingdom.
Does anyone know the significance of October first?”
Initially, nobody answered.
“Any guesses?” the driver asked.
I yelled, “The Magic Kingdom’s grand opening was October 1, but it soft-opened one day earlier.
September 30 was the last day of Disney’s 1971 fiscal year, so Disney qualified for the Federal investment tax credit for that fiscal year.”
Okay.
I wasn’t 100% sure of that, but I vaguely remembered something along those lines.
The driver responded, “You must be an accountant.
The real answer is that Walt Disney picked the first of October because that’s the day he was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army for making cartoon drawings on Army trucks during World War I.
Walt Disney was proud of his dishonorable discharge.”
The bus arrived at my stop, so I got off the bus.
I suppose I could have stayed on for one more stop so I could have yelled, “You’re wrong!
Walt was never in the Army, so he could not have been discharged from the Army, honorably or dishonorably.
And I’m not an accountant.”
The real story is that sixteen-year-old Walt Disney wanted to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I, but was too young.
So he lied about his age and enlisted in the American Ambulance Corps of the Red Cross.
Young Walt arrived in France in November 1918, just shy of his 17th birthday.
On October 9, 1919, after eleven months of overseas service, homesick Walt returned to the United States.
His official discharge from the Ambulance Corps was the next day.
And there was nothing dishonorable about it.
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The urban legend may have its origin in a 1919 photograph of young Walt Disney in front of a canvas-topped ambulance decorated with one of his cartoon drawings, which was presumably mistaken for an Army truck.
According to the urban legend, Walt Disney had his discharge papers hanging upside down in his office.
Somehow, this “fact” is supposed to make the dishonorable discharge story credible.
In researching this story, I came across numerous examples of people who believe that Walt Disney was dishonorably discharged from the Army.
On one forum, someone claimed that Walt Disney did not personally buy the property in Florida;
he could not legally do so because of his dishonorable discharge; so it was his older brother Roy Disney “who did all the owning and buying.”
Oh, and Disney-MGM Studios actually opened on May 1, 1989, not October 1.
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The stories of a new Disney park in Texas aren’t limited to e-mail sent to Yesterland.
There have been dozens of rumors over the past dozen years that Disney has bought this site or that site in various locations throughout Texas.
Not one of these rumors has ever turned into a real announcement.
If Disney ever wants to build a third major destination resort in the United States, then Texas is probably the best state for it.
There are parts of Texas whose climate is not much worse than Orlando, making all-year operations possible.
Like California a few decades ago, Texas has a large and growing population—providing a lot of potential local guests.
It’s a well-known story...
In 1964 and 1965, several unknown companies acquired over 27,000 acres in Central Florida.
With so much forest, swampland, and cattle country changing hands southwest of the sleepy agricultural city of Orlando, speculation began that there might be a big company behind it all—especially because the buyers were willing to pay several hundred dollars per acre.
Could it be Boeing? Maybe Ford Motor Company? How about Martin-Marietta?
On October 24, 1965, the Orlando Sentinel ran a banner headline, “We Say: ‘Mystery’ Industry Is Disney.”
They were right.
The newspaper’s headline two days later was, “It’s Official: This is Disney’s Land.”
On November 15, 1965, Walt Disney, Roy Disney, and Florida Governor Hayden Burns faced reporters at the old Cherry Plaza Hotel in downtown Orlando.
The sign at the front of the room read “Florida Welcomes Walt Disney.”
There are people in Texas who expect history to repeat itself.
So when a large Texas cattle ranch changes hands, it can mean only one thing, right?
It must be the Disney Company!
Search against any of the Disney forum websites, or just do a Google search.
You can spend all afternoon reading rumors of Disney parks going into Texas.
If the Texas Disney rumors were all true, Disney would now have parks planned for Austin, Beaumont, Celina, College Station, Conroe, Frisco, Frelsburg, Huntsville, Katy, Houston, Lampasas, Lubbock, Magnolia, Midland-Odessa, Paris, Round Top, San Antonio, Sealy, and Woodlawn, Texas—and undoubtedly other Texas cities too (but I got tired of reading Google search results).
Of course, the rumors aren’t all true, but could one of them possibly be true?
A major Disney theme park in Texas is highly unlikely at this time.
Speaking at the Merrill Lynch Media Fall conference in New York in September 2007, Disney Chief Financial Officer Thomas Staggs confirmed that Disney has no plans to develop another major theme park in the United States in the “foreseeable future.”
Until Disney management feels that a third destination resort in the United States would result in considerable new business—rather than just cannibalizing Florida’s Walt Disney World and California’s Disneyland Resort—any new Disney destination resorts are likely to be overseas.
A smaller Texas project could be a possibility some day.
At a February 2007 Investors Conference, Disney Parks and Resorts Chairman Jay Rasulo spoke about developing themed hotels and shopping districts away from Disney’s two major U.S. locations.
In October 2007, Disney announced plans for a resort at Ko Olina on Oahu in Hawaii.
Texas is not quite Hawaii, but it has some lovely vacation areas—and plenty of people.
So a minor Disney presence in Texas would not be unreasonable.
The press in Texas these days isn’t nearly as optimistic as the press in Florida in 1965.
In an August 20, 2007, article in the San Antonio Express-News, business writer Sean M. Wood wrote, “Despite what your hairdresser, grocery store checker or barista at your favorite coffee bar tells you, the Walt Disney Co. is not building a theme park here.”
Oh, and there’s no major Disney theme park being built in Branson, Missouri, either.
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, Curator of Yesterland, February 1, 2008
