Disney World is a cornerstone of Central Florida, but few people know how it came to be so – and how it almost never was.
Author Chad Emerson wants to fix that.
On Sept. 29, Emerson gave a presentation at the U. Central Florida Library on his book, Project Future: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Disney World.
The presentation was open to the community as well as students and faculty, and despite the poor weather, there was a good turnout.
“The story needed to be told about how and why Disney ended up here,” Emerson said. “It is an interesting story, indeed, full of secret meetings, broken deals, dummy corporations, and the dream of one man that others worked to fulfill even after his death.”
According to Amazon.com, “Project Future” – the code name for the Disney resort in the ’60s – covers how and why Walt Disney selected Central Florida.
Emerson is a professor of law at Faulkner U., where he specializes in land planning law, intellectual property law and amusement park and leisure law. He began writing an article for a law journal in 2008 about the land acquisition in Central Florida that Disney was involved in and soon found that there was greater potential for this relatively unknown piece of Disney history.
“My wife read the paper and said, ‘You can build on this story – just get rid of the legal jargon,’ ” he said.
After another year of work and research – interviews, archives and, most importantly, documents from legal depositions – Emerson had his book.
Emerson said the biggest obstacle with putting together the book was finding the documents that were the most reliable.
“I purposefully did not use the Disney archives or sources,” he said. “I realized this story would be more credibly told if I found research independent of Disney. They didn’t oppose it; people informally helped me; big Disney executives wrote testimonials [for the book].
“But to get the official approval from Disney is a very Byzantine process that I didn’t want or need to go through.”
Instead of using Disney archives, Emerson used official depositions to source his book.
“The biggest challenge of writing the book was deciding what really happened. I double-sourced everything,” he said.
Emerson thanked the librarians who assisted him with the project and helped him find two boxes worth of depositions.
“That’s why I decided to write the book,” he said. “I didn’t want to write based on speculation; what’s more reliable than sworn testimony?”
Other Florida libraries have also had a hand in supporting the book. Apart from his presentation at the UCF,
Emerson also had a discussion of the book at the Orlando Public Library in June.
His lecture at the UCF Library had been publicized with posters, e-mails, and announcements on myUCF, where senior civil engineering student Alex Navarro heard about the event.
“I like all of the history of Walt Disney; also, I’m a cast member,” Navarro said.
Although he is a Disney employee, Navarro said that he never heard of a lot of the history revealed by Emerson at the lecture.
“I didn’t realize how close Disney World ended up to being in Palm Beach,” Navarro said. “That surprised me.”
Professors are showing interest in the book as well.
Karl Sooder, a professor of marketing and business, will be using the book in a new class that focuses on tourism and marketing in the Central Florida area.
“This is the first class of its kind at the university,” Sooder said.
He will be using the book as required text for his class.
Emerson said the one thing he is still most surprised by is how close Disney World was to being built somewhere else.
“It could have been in another state,” he said. “A lot of people see it as a foregone conclusion that it would be be built in Orlando, but that just isn’t the case.”
Emerson’s interest in Disney will continue to show in future projects. He is currently working on editing a series of essays written in honor of Disney World’s 40th anniversary in October 2011.