September 12, 2024 • 52 mins
The town of Celebration, Florida was supposed to be a utopia. What it ended up as is a mediocre neighborhood on the outskirts of Disney World.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, and that makes this the happiest
podcast on Earth. Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think we need to CoA this one. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of like really dark violent discussion
in here.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
What else just the violence? You know, you'd think of
a podcast episode about Disney's own branded neighborhood would be
safe for all ears, And it is except for the
five percent of it where we talk about the awful
crimes that have happened there.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yes, Yeah, which will be okay, something something I think
that was a good good thing to do. But something
to know about Celebration Florida if you don't know anything
about it. We're talking about a town that Disney built,
not figuratively but literally. Yeah technically it was in Walt Disney,
but the Disney Company did. Okay, so get off my
back because it was this town meant to be. Outside
(01:16):
of real life, everyone outside of Celebration is fascinated with
anything that can possibly be construed as dark or twisted
or bizarre or awful. It's almost like people want to
root for it to be messed up. I don't get it,
but it's all over the place.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yes, is it really interesting? Okay, yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
You read articles about it. I think every major publication
within the last ten or so years has at least
one article about the dark side of Celebration Florida. And
it's all the same stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I mean, I think if you are doing a thing
where you're like, Hi, we're going to build a town
that harkens back to the good old days of peach
pie and picket fences and the ultimate eden for your
for your family to live in, and then these kind
of things happen, then of course it's going to get
I'm not saying they're asking for that kind of treatment,
(02:14):
but when it's billed as such a you know, Wonder
Years sort of thing, right, that's like if the Wonder
Years had episodes with murder and sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, what the very special two parterre of different.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Strokes, Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It was stunning. Yeah, it kind of puts a target
on your back. Even though these people just want to
be left alone, they want to go live off in
their own bubble. It's kind of the point of the
whole thing. And as a matter of fact, people who
live in Celebration I'm not sure if they still do,
but at the heyday, toward the beginning of it, people
definitely referred to it as living in the bubble. Yeah,
(02:51):
And I say we get to the backstory first, because
there's a very interesting backstory about the Disney companies and
Walt Disney in particulars machinations that ended up leading to
Celebration Florida being established. I love this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Some might say the backstory is the best part.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I don't know who would say that, but sure it's
good for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
All right, So let's go back in time then to
the mid nineteen sixties, specifically sixty four and sixty five,
when Disney, Walt Disney, the real person, was like, Hey,
this is Disneyland out here in California is a huge hit.
Let to do the same thing in Florida. And so they,
the corporation that is, went in and very quietly, one
(03:37):
might even say, in a clandestine manor bought up about
forty three square miles over twenty seven thousand acres in
the Orlando area through I guess, I mean, were they
shell companies or just different arms or set up just
to do this.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They were shell companies set up just to do this.
They were aliases used.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, and one of the companies was called not Walt
Disney Llc'.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Ricky Rouse Enterprises. Like it was all legal. But the
point that they were doing that for was because if
any landowner at the time had been like, oh, Disney's
buying up a bunch of land, I'm sure they're gonna
need my parcels, so I'm gonna triple the asking price,
it definitely would have happened. So they were very smart,
and by the time people caught on, they'd finished their
(04:23):
buying spree and they were finally outed in the Orlando Sentinel.
I think in I don't know, sixty five maybe as
surely the people who were behind this buying spree, you
said something about them, like Walt Disney saying like, hey,
let's try Disneyland in Florida. He definitely wanted to do that,
but he wanted to do it on just such a
(04:44):
vastly larger, more sweeping, more imaginative scale that it was
almost like, it's just amazing that this man ever lived.
And there's tons of criticism of him, rightfully so in
a lot of ways, but his imagination and like what
he got done and what he gave the world is
just it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah. And one thing we need to point out about
this land is it was not like you know, prime land,
especially in nineteen sixty four, before there was Disney World there.
It was not the Orlando that we know today. And
this land, like a lot of it was swampland that
they had to spend a lot of money and time,
you know, dredging, draining, building canals and making it a
(05:29):
you know, a habitable place.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah. I saw that they moved ten million cubic yards
of dirt. Yeah, they had to develop twenty thousand of
the twenty four thousand acres because it's just basically swamp.
And it dug fifty miles of canals and they were
doing all this. Like you said, Orlando wasn't the Orlando
that it is today. Orlando is the way it is
(05:52):
today because of what they were doing during this period.
This is what started it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I don't think anyone is under any misc inceptions
about like what built that town. Sure, and it was
a guy with a little pencilly mustache, but the town
that ended up there celebration is not what the original
plan was. The original plan was way cooler because if
you've ever been to Epcot, their Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,
(06:21):
one of their theme parks there, and you walked around
and looked at the vision for this idylic society, that
was what they were trying to build. They were it
was supposed to be a neighborhood where people lived, and
it actually Epcot was a real place and not a
theme park.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Did you see that the photo spread of the Epcot model,
the original Epcot model I sent you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, a couple of those houses were pretty sweet.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Isn't that sweet? Yeah, it was really cool. And I
saw that Walt Disney planned for Epcot, the Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow, to never be finished, to never be complete,
to always be trying new stuff ABTNS I think is
what he said. Yeah, and it didn't quite go that way.
(07:08):
They after he died, and when they finally did build Epcot,
they called it that and they it is like meant
to demonstrate future cool technology and then also kind of
confusingly all the countries and nations of the world at
the same time. But it is a really cool park,
but it's nothing like what he wanted. The people don't
live there, it's not like an experimental community, and that
(07:32):
would actually become Celebration later on.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, I mean he kind of wanted it to be
like Tomorrowland, which is, you know, people parking their cars
in tunnels underground, moving around on the monorails and the
people movers and again just sort of this idyllic suburban
but like a new type of suburbia. And in fact,
(07:57):
what would eventually go to be called in the eighties
and the early eighties new urbanism, which was this you know,
we'll get well, I guess we can get to that
right now, huh.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sure, yeah, because they kind of prefigured it.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Right, Yeah, for sure. New urban urbanism came along in
the early eighties, and it was based on this idea
of you know, nice looking architecture houses with you know,
where different people of different income levels would live very
walkable set up in a nice grid and you could
(08:27):
walk to the store and to the playground and to
work into school and it's super safe and it you know,
this was just sort of again that a deal like
idyllic vision of the future, right.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, So this is what Celebration ended up being. It's
considered a new urbanist town. But again, like I think
Epcot opened in nineteen eighty two, right, yeah, and it
would be that was a full decade or so before
they even really started to think about building celebration. But
in the meantime, I have to say, I want to
(09:01):
give the obligatory shout out anytime we mentioned Epcot to
the I think it's on Dangerous Minds website about the
group of friends who hid out in the Horizon's ride
at Epcot in the late eighties and photo documented their
time there. It's really cool to check out. And then
one other thing there I found this year's back. But
(09:23):
they planned an airport, and there actually were flights that
went directly to Disney World for a very brief time,
I think in the early seventies. But on the landing strip,
you know rumble strips when you'd like start to go
off of the highway on the shoulder, it's got those
those ripples that like make it sound and wake you up.
(09:44):
They created a rumble strip on the runway for the
plane to run over that when you run over it,
and you can do this in your car. I think
at about forty five miles an hour it plays when
you wish upon a star as a rumble strip.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, they have those in row in different countries and
it's not like a solid strip, but it just hits
various you know, tiny little bumps that caused musical notes.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's neat. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Okay, So back to it. So we've got Epcot in
nineteen eighty two, and by the mid eighties there was
a guy named Michael Eisner running this show, right.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and we should point out that, you know, one
of the big reasons that the original Epcot idea of
a like a lovable real space when the other direction
is because Walt Disney died in the interim, and after
that everything kind of changed and that's when it became
a theme park. But yeah, Eisner would come on board
in the early I guess mid eighties and eighty four,
(10:41):
big new urbanism guy was a big architecture guy, still is,
and things were like, this was the early to mid
eighties when Disney World was really really in a big,
big growth pattern I guess, you know, hotels and expanding
the park and all kinds of stuff. And they said,
all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're
(11:03):
gonna lop off part of this southeast corner of the
property on the east side of I four, and we're
just gonna reserve that for now think about what to
do with it. And they started to get a little
nervous that they were taking too long to think about
it and that the state may come in and be like, hey,
you're not developing it like you said you would. We're
taking that.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Back, right, So they decided to build a community. They
kind of took up that part of EPCOT that had
been cut off of the actual executed plan and see
what they could do with it. Right, So they in
nineteen eighty five they started they started figuring out how
to do this, and they put out a request for bids.
(11:44):
I can't remember what the last word is, but sure
like a brief, Yeah, a request for proposal RFP.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, those those business things that we've never had to do.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
No, thank god. And then for architects. Firms submitted their
ideas and I think two were selected to put together
the final plan, and the whole thing started to take
off from there, starting in nineteen eighty five. I saw
that as far as at the beginning, they were starting
(12:17):
to like kind of test names for the place, like
right off the bat and focus groups. Terrible names. Tell
them some of the names.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
The Golden Oberon Jubilee. Okay, where do you live? You know,
Golden Oberon Jubilee or Godge goch what else?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Odyssey, Ventura, Horizon's Landmark or Oval?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
How about Aurora, Solaris, Rainbow Majestic.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Seriously, they sound like CIA projects.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, that's ASRM, not to be confused to ASMR.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Right. I also saw Fantasia Jubilee in hyperionra Like they
were just I don't know what they were doing, Like,
how could you even waste money on a focus group
with these ideas?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So finally they're like, well how about something shorter?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Horizons? No, they used that on the ride already a
Maritown that's a little on the nose. Yeah, somebody said
celebration and they went celebrations it man, celebrations it uh
And they fired that person so that they couldn't take
any credit for coming up with the idea, and they
told everybody Michael Eisner.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Did I'm surprised that they didn't literally name it like
Mouseville or something.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
H Yeah, I mean, that's better than Odyssey Ventura Horizons.
I mean it sounds like a Horsey book like tweet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh that's good stuff, all right. So they also, you know,
it was a good move for Disney at the time
because in the mid nineteen eighties had a little bit
of a black eye because of this tens of millions
of dollar infrastructure money that Disney didn't steal, but they
kind of kept, yeah, or used for themselves.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, essentially, So, as we'll see in a second, Disney
was granted essentially the same status as a city or
a town. A municipality in Florida has a lot of
the same rights, and one of the things it can
do is apply for state money for its projects.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So Orange County apparently went to go apply for a
bunch of grants to help to build low income housing,
and they found that they were too late. That Disney
itself had hoovered up all of the money that was
earmarked for Central Florida fifty cities and towns had hoovered
up all of that almost sixty million dollars for its
(14:55):
own infrastructure. Yeah, Like, Central Florida was not happy about
this at all. Orange County had to actually go to
Disney and be like, can we borrow one point eight
million of that for this low income housing project? Disney like, sure, sure,
at eighty percent interest. So it was a big scandal.
So them announcing celebration was a big like, hey, look
over here kind of thing. Look, we're still a big
(15:17):
part of this, We're sinking money into this area. Don't
be mad at us kind of thing exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And that sort of quasi governmental group that you spoke
of was the made a lot of news in the
past few years. The Reedy Creek Improvement District, you may
have if you're outside the state of Florida, you probably
never heard those four words until twenty twenty two when
the governor of the state of Florida got into a well,
got into a fight with Disney and dissolved it, and
(15:45):
it is now the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The
irons is on the oversight, Yeah, for sure. The irony
here is is the Reedy Creek Improvement District came about
in nineteen sixty seven because Disney Company successfully lobbied to
get this whatever new designation, in large part on the
(16:05):
strength of that original Epcot plan. So they oh, really,
they gave them this because of this EPCOT. You know,
neighborhood idea bailed on that and then ended up being like, hey,
we got our own little mini government here.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, very much so, I mean like it. It was
a government up until very recently, like they could tax
residents and businesses in the area. They One of the
reasons why they were granted this was so that the
company could undertake things like infrastructure programs like providing sewer
and water and stuff like that, generating power they could
(16:40):
have as long as the improvement district goes around. They
were allowed by law to have built a Mickey Mouse
nuclear power plant if they'd wanted to. Like, they were
that legal. It was a city essentially, right, So yeah,
it was a big deal to have that taken away.
But the upshot of that part was they were able
to use some money to help build celebration. But then secondly,
(17:06):
the people who live in the Reedy Creek Improvement District
are able to vote to decide what happens with Disney
World and stuff like that. But that amounts to less
than sixty people who live in that district, and they
all work for Disney, so they all vote the way
Disney wants them to vote well with celebration. They were
planning on bringing like twenty thousand families in and that
(17:28):
would really dilute Disney's vote about their own their own
theme park, their own business. So they were like, you
know what this is actually outside of Reedy Creek.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah. And by the way, you know that nuclear power
plant would have had mouse heres at the top of
the silos.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Do they have high voltage like towers and they're they're
in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Yeah, around that area.
It's really something to see.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, So here's what they did. Like you said, twenty
thousand families is what the original proposal was or was
it twenty thousand people twenty thousand residents? I think?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Oh was it? Okay?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Sorry, still it's a lot, yeah, a lot of people.
So they announced this publicly in nineteen ninety one as like, hey,
this is going to be open for business if you
want to essentially live in a Disney World like environment.
They held a lottery in nineteen ninety five for families
to buy plots. I think for the four hundred and
(18:25):
seventy four spots. They had about five thousand entries into
that lottery and it should be no surprise that most
of those people were like big Disney people that were thinking, like,
what could be better than living in like a Disney neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, or essentially like a Disney Yeah, Disney neighborhood, like
in the every sense of the word. And the first
family moved in in nineteen ninety six, Larry and Terry
the Habers. Isn't that cute?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And a few months later Downtown was finally completed and
it was a big deal, like everybody knew about Celebration
and it was being built. I think Disney ultimately shelled
out about four billion dollars yeah, for the creation of Celebration.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
In the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, I guess so in like late nineties dollars. Yeah,
you want to take a break?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Oh yeah, gosh, we have to.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, I know. It was kind of rhetorical.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Softly, jaw.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Soff. All right. So when they started mapping out what
they wanted Celebration to look like, they really reversed course
on the whole Epcot idea, which was again a little
more like Tomorrowland, and they were like, you know, what
we need to do is make it like Chuck was
(20:05):
talking about.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Frontier Land and Act one not quite.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Frontier Land, somewhere in the middle, which is to say,
you know, old small town America. Pick at Vince's. You know,
they talked about a new American town of block parties
and Fourth of July parades, spaghetti dinners and surprise, it
didn't say pancake breakfast, school bake sales, lollipops and fireflies
and a jar. So you know, they're selling and I'm
not making fun of this, they're there, but they were
(20:31):
selling an idea as much as they were selling houses.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
They were selling a way of life. And they're like,
who cares If this is this idyllic past never actually existed,
We're going to make it exist here and you can
come live here. And if you like Disney, it's gonna
knock your socks off. And so they modeled it kind of.
And the reason I laughed because it reminds me of
the real Seymour Skinner when he comes back and claims
is his identity. Yeah, he becomes principal and he says
(20:58):
that he loves and bees and skin and knees. And
if that's corny, then corn me up. That's just kind
of what they reminded me of.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I remember apart from that episode where he said whoever
introduced him said, we would like to introduce the real
principal Seymour Skinner, Principal Seymore Skinner or something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, no, Superintendent Chalmers, So that for sure. Yeah, so
I don't remember where I was headed with that point. Oh,
that they modeled it on Main Street, USA, Like, yeah,
you first come into Disney World, like super cute pastel
storefronts with wholesome stores behind them, just like everything's kind
of close together so you can walk and feel like
(21:40):
you're part of a community. That's what they went with.
And apparently Walt and Roy Disney were kind of obsessed
with that turn to the century, turn of the twentieth
century America because they spent about five years in a
town called Marceline, Missouri, the Disney family did from nineteen
oh six to nineteen eleven, and that's kind of where
(22:00):
they were inspired to love that kind of life. That's
what they're trying to recreate with Celebration for sure.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Absolutely, they're they're literal, like municipal seal or whatever. I
guess that's what you call it. Right, Yeah, municipal seal.
Yeah was a girl riding a bike with a little
dog chasing her and a literal picket fence and a
tree and it's just you know, it's that that's what
(22:28):
they were selling. They hired, you know, branding specialist. They
hired some really high profile architects and a lot of
the you know, I'm not saying again it sounds like
I'm like picking on it, but a lot of these
buildings were really cool. Like that that post office, the
design of it is super awesome. That that Spanish style
hospital is beautiful. They built a googie cinema that a
(22:53):
mc ran if you remember our googie architecture like it was,
you know, it's some cool looking stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, and just a no that the Celebration City seal
that you described. Olivia helped us out with this and
she described it as aggressively idyllic. Yeah, a boy, I
think that it casculated perfectly right. Yeah, But yeah, those
buildings downtown were all designed. Each one was designed by
a very very famous, very well respected architect. Each one
(23:22):
had its own architect like Philip Johnson, the guy who
designed the glass house, designed the bank at Celebration, like
it was. This place was a big deal when it
first opened. The thing is, well, I'm not even going
to spoil it yet, you can you can just wait.
So back to what they had. One of the other
things that it touted was an experimental public school. Yeah,
(23:42):
that house K through twelve. There's no other school like
it in the area. Normally they have like a grade school,
maybe a middle school, and then a high school. This
was everything kindergarteners to seniors in high school, all going
to school in the same building.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
That's right, which you know other people have done. That's
not the most radical thing world, but it is radical
at the time in the mid nineties to have a
public school that had such a sort of progressive model
of education. You can go to any you throw a
rock in Atlanta and you'll hit some hippie dippy private
school that does this kind of stuff on a very
(24:18):
small scale. But to try to do a K twelve
school where you have these new progressive teaching methods where
you don't really give grades, but you give assessments, where
you have combined classrooms, which Ruby School has combined classrooms,
there's a lot of benefits to that. Yeah, it's like
it's an awesome, proven thing, but it's a class of
(24:41):
you know, twelve or thirteen kids with two teachers. That's all.
At one point they had eighty kids to a class
and two to three teachers in some of these big classes.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Eighty kids just all going nuts at the same time.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, not to give away kind of where we're headed,
but the idea was progressive and sort of very forward
thinking at the time for public school.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
It definitely was, for sure, and that attracted a lot
of people too, Like they're like, not only are we
going to give you like a community to live in
like this, your kids are going to be experimented on
by Walt Disney Corporation drink this. They also had Celebration Place,
which was an office complex because one of the hallmarks
of new urbanism is that you work nearby your home,
(25:29):
like you can essentially walk or bike to work, like
your community is basically your whole world.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
They also had retail stores. There was a Wolfgang Bakery
still there today. I think it was one of the
original stores and it's still there, which is impressive. But
one of the things that they definitely did, at least
at first, if you were a chain, you could not
get a foothold into this community. You also couldn't put
billboards up like it was very strictly controlled who could come.
(26:00):
And they definitely favored small, independently owned businesses. And if
it was a chain, it would be a regional chain
at best at tops.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, I can get on board with some of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Sure, for sure, it's not true anymore. There's a Starbucks there, right,
I think there's a Starbucks absolutely everywhere, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
True. And I did see that one of the videos.
You know, I got a little bit of a chuckle.
So if you decided to move there and build a
house there, you couldn't just say, like, jeez, you know
what do I want to build? What kind of house
really fits me? They would hand you a book of
about seventy pages thick that said, here's one of six
(26:39):
style houses. You can build in one of one, two
through four, five different colors, and you're going to have
a front porch, and you're going to have that picket fence.
At least at first. You can't park your car in
the driveway at first, you got to park that car
out back. You got to keep it up. Don't even
think about parking a boat in your driveway and some
(27:01):
of the stuff that I've seen online. I tried to confirm,
like one absolutely, but I couldn't. But I also saw
there was one hundred and sixty page just sort of
rule book for living there, Yeah, including that you every
house had to have a hidden Mickey mouse somewhere in it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Mm hmm is that true. Yeah, I saw that as well.
I didn't read the book itself, but yes, I saw
that referenced as well from some legitimate source or other.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And it did see somewhere that you could park one
car in the driveway and everything else had to be
around back. So I'm not really sure the rules there.
But what about those lamp posts.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Okay, so if you went downtown, depending on the time
of year, the lamp posts might be shooting out leaf
shaped confetti on you that would be in the fall.
Typically sometimes they would also shoot out soap side or
shaving cream snow, so it would snow on you, and
I guess you'd get soapy as you were walking to work.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I also said that they also they imported leaves and
fakes know as well. At times. I didn't see that elsewhere,
but I just saw it in one place. But it
was like that kind of place. Also, wherever you're walking
down town, they're playing like forties and fifties, like hits music, pop,
praisic sure, sure, and then and other places they'll have
(28:20):
hidden speakers that play recorded bird.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Song bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
bum bum bum bum.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And I think here's this is where we've reached the
point where it's starting to become understandable why outsiders are
like this is psychotic.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It gets a little creepy sounding. Yeah, something out of
a movie, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, it's so artificial that there's almost no room for
nature or reality to come in. And yeah, like are
there actual birds there or are they been driven away
by the bird song? Who knows? Like, I think that's why.
And people often compare it to the neighborhood from the
Stepford Wives.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, or that one last year or a couple of
years ago, Bavarium No, the one with uh oh god,
Nick Cral's the only person I can think of the
Senate and he's not the lead Harry Styles and.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Uh oh, don't worry Darling.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah. Also the Truman Show. It gets compared to that.
Oh yeah, that's interesting because the Truman Show was filmed
in Seaside, Florida, and Seaside is also like a very
almost textbook example of a new urbanist Florida beachtown.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I think Seaside is a little more of a
real place though, right, Like, yeah, they don't have like
fake bird song and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
No, no, no, no, they don't have that. And also I'm
not I don't believe.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
One of the other things about Celebration that we'll see
is they have that one hundred and sixty page rule book.
It's it's enforced, like if your lawn goes, you know,
over the allowed height I think it's three or three
and a half inch, you'll get a letter from the
HOA saying cut your lawn. Or if you do have
that boat in your driveway, they'll be like, you got
to move that boat. You can get a letter if
(30:08):
you take your Christmas decorations down one day too late,
like everyone takes their Christmas decorations down by a certain date.
It's just kind of like the HOA is very strict
and if you like rules and you like not having
to go tell your neighbors to take their stupid Christmas
lights down because it's March. You would love to live
at celebration. I think that's the appeal for a lot
(30:28):
of people.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, for sure. So if you're going to have a
new urbanist society or neighborhood, one of the you know,
kind of main tenants of that is like different kinds
of people can live here, of different ethnicities and in
different financial categories, financial categories, pay groups. What would you
(30:50):
call that?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Would I would say different folks from different strokes.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I couldn't think of
a very simple term there, but so early on early
pay categories. Economic diversity is what we're looking for, is
what they said at first. And they did advertise to
you know, black and Latino families. They did have some
African American employees in the sales office. But you know,
(31:16):
if you're going to do something like that, sometimes you
need to, like and this happens all the time in cities,
might subsidize some of the housing if you want to
really bring in true diversity. And instead they took close
to a million bucks and move people out of there
that they didn't want there to other places.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
They said, you live over here, we're not going to
build anything here. We'll build some low income housing, but
we're not going to do it in Celebration. You stay
outside of Celebration. Yes, the racial diversity push was a valid, valiant,
i should say, attempt, but it became pretty clear pretty
quickly that it didn't work. By the time the two
thousand census came around, it revealed that Celebration, Florida in
(31:57):
two thousand was eighty eight percent white, and that was
like thirty thirty percent higher than the surrounding county the
rate for the surrounding county, and a lot of black
families were priced out, Like if you moved to Celebration,
you were paying about thirty percent more than you would
(32:20):
for a comparable house out in Osiola County outside of Celebration.
It's just much more expensive to live there, and traditionally
black families have less family wealth to buy a house
that's thirty percent more expensive. And then as the place
became whiter and whiter, fewer and fewer black families felt
comfortable living there, So it just became more and more white,
(32:41):
until more and more Hispanic families started moving in and
kind of diluted the racial makeup a little more.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, and if you want to feel if you want
to either have a laugh or have a cry about
home prices these days. The average price of a home
in Celebration Florida in those earth early years was one
hundred and twenty four thousand dollars, which was twenty percent
higher than the complete national average. That's nuts, man, Yeah,
(33:09):
the good old days.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I saw that. Now it's something like I think six
hundred and seventy seven is the national no, the median average,
the medium price for celebration I don't know about nationally. Yeah, man,
one hundred and twenty grand.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And that was twenty percent higher. That's not even You
can't even lose like one hundred grand, I guess.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
As a down payment these days.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, good luck with that.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Crazy. So okay, back to it, Chuck, I think it's
about here. Well, should we take another break or no?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Okay. I was not expecting that, but here we go.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Everybody an stoftly jaw.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Okay, Chuck. Now we get to, since we are technically
a media outlet, the darker side of Celebration Florida.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean, you can't not talk about it because
it was a situation where Disney rushed the project allegedly,
and these third party contractors sometimes were under the gun
to get these houses built, and what you ended up
with was collapsing front porches. Apparently like seventy of the
houses needed new roofs, their foundations were cracking, plumbing was leaking,
(34:44):
and not necessarily every single house, but it seemed like
a lot of them were poorly built.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
They were poorly built, so the construction was shoddy from
the outset, especially when Disney wasn't directly involved in the construction. Right,
that's a huge, huge deal that will come and to
play a little bit down the road. The school itself
very quickly, the parents were like, I don't know about
not assigning my kids homework for the entire year or
(35:12):
telling them what books they should go read. And they're
not even giving them grades. What is this? Everybody wins
on their report card. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
So the parents revolted very quickly and they're like, no,
we're not doing this. We want to make this more traditional,
and eventually they lopped off the high school from it
built another high school in celebration, but it was a
(35:33):
public high school open to other areas around celebration, not
just celebration itself.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, I also saw it was pretty much a nightmare
for the teachers and staff. Yeah, and the principal quit
after a year, along with about twenty five percent of
the staff. It's after year one, and it was you know,
when you've got classrooms at size and it's especially with
a new kind of structure, it was supposedly pretty chaotic.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Again, eighty children grades. I think they had grades like
three to five in the same classroom. Eighty of those kids,
and you're one teacher trying to teach all these kids.
I can't. I mean, how do they not just look
at that paper and be like, this is a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, I mean the idea with mixed grades now is
and may have been then, but that's probably too many.
Is you mix two grades and one year your kid
is the younger and you get good help from older
buddies and it really socially kind of helps. And then
the next year you the older, and then that you
are the more of the mentor type, and that all
(36:37):
plays out in the end to just, you know, socially
and emotionally pretty great. But again, with eighty kids, it's.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Just tough, right, that's my ultimate point. What you're describing
sounds awesome. And I also saw that one of the
reasons for putting grades together in the same I think
they call them neighborhoods or whatever, is because kids progress
at different rates, some slower than others, and so if
you put a bunch of grades together, those kids who
are going to progress faster can progress faster, and the
kids who are going to take their own time can
(37:06):
take their own time. That makes sense to me too. Again,
it's the eighty kids in a single classroom. That's just
that in and of itself is nuts. What about crime,
because this is where everybody's like.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Mm yeah, yeah. And here's where parents, You know, if
you want to not listen to these next five minutes
with your kids, it might be advisable because there has
been some crime, just like any place in the world.
What they didn't do was build some huge wall around
this town, and you would still even have crime, sure,
because that's just what happens. But in nineteen eighty eight
(37:39):
there was a I'm sorry ninety eight, there was a
home invasion where a couple was bound and gagged and
robbed in their house.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It wasn't Terry and Larry, was it?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I don't think, so this was a pretty big deal.
In November twenty ten, the first murder in celebration happened
when Matteo Patrick Geovandito, a fifty year old retired school teacher,
was living alone and was found dead, strangled with a
shoelace and you know, had some acts work done on him.
(38:13):
And that's horrific enough, but then it comes out later
that his killer, David Israel Xenon Marillo, was there to
wash his car and then brought inside drugged with a beer,
and when he woke up, Matteo Patrick Giovendido was on
top of him sexually assaulting him. And this guy went
(38:35):
nuts and killed him.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
He did, And the guy's story sounded a little far
fetched until I think two years later, a couple of
reporters from the Daily Beasts it must have been tipped
off because they started tracking down former students, reading depositions,
looking at court filings and found that Geovandido had a
(38:57):
long history of sexually abusing his students, even going on
like trips with them abroad, like just him and a
student or two. Yeah, So like that doesn't excuse him
being bludgeoned to death with an axe, but it definitely
backs up the dude's story, you know. And I even
saw in a I think an article right after it happened.
(39:18):
I think that Marillo was quoted as saying he got
what he deserved, Like this guy been arrested and he
was telling the press he got what he deserved when
I killed him with an axe.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He he got a second degree murdered life sentence for that.
And also, to just to be clear, if we weren't
the victim was not a teacher in Celebration. He had
retired by that time.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Oh, good point, good point.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
A couple of days later it went kind of buck
wild and celebration again.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Right, Was this the the swat standoff or the Okay,
I didn't know if that was the family homicide. No,
I guess we'll get to both of them.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, yeah, all of that's right. No, okay, So the
family homicide was ten years later. This was a few
days after Giovandido's body was found in twenty ten. There
was a guy named Craig Fouchet who was a Celebration resident,
and he barricaded himself in his house and started firing
at the cops who came.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, I remember when this happened actually, oh really yeah,
oh yeah, it was all over the news. It was
a fourteen hour standoff. Eventually the police, you know, going
there with tear gas and everything, and found that he
had already taken his own life and it was you know,
one of the situations where he was going bankrupt, going
through divorce, foreclosure, all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, that's called high risk for a self inflicted injury
for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah. And not to dwell on the crimes, but there
was one last ghastly thing you said, I think Tenure
in twenty twenty, when a man murdered his wife and
three kids and dog and was living with their decomposing
bodies when the police caught up to him.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah. It was around Christmas, right, and they didn't find
it until January sometime.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, it was very grizzly and sad.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
That's the kind of thing that people are like, see,
you can't get away from it, and that stuff happens elsewhere.
It's just when you put it in the context of
a place that has been created to not have that
kind of stuff, it just is that much more ghastly,
you know, yeah, absolutely, So back to there were a
few other things that weren't crimes but still kind of
(41:28):
gave Celebration a strange reputation. There was something called the
Celebration Death Pond. There was a weird curve in a
road at an intersection, and it wasn't clear which way
you should go, and if you didn't turn the right way,
you would drive right into this fifteen foot retention pond.
And that happened to three teenagers who just disappeared one
day and weren't found for nine months, and they were
(41:49):
finally found in that pond. They eventually fixed it, but
not before it Celebration Death Pond became a bit of
a moniker on the internet.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, they built a wall with flashing lights. Yeah, you
probably shouldn't dead into a lake with the road going
left and right like on those hard curves. Another reason
it's called the death pond is when they were down
there diving and looking and found this car, they found
four other cars down there, no, and they're like, oh,
(42:20):
there's turns out this has happened before.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I didn't see that. Oh yeah, I saw there was
as I was researching that I found an article from
Oklahoma where they found the car of three teenagers who'd
gone missing in nineteen seventy and they found it like
forty years later, and they found another car with a
group of three people that had gone missing in nineteen
(42:42):
sixty and ten years apart. These cars ended up right
next to each other in this lake.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I know, it's just so strange, But I did not
know that about Celebration death pond.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's crazy, all right, So we should get back to
Celebration itself. And kind of happened with the town and
the HOA there because in two thousand and four, Disney
sold the downtown town Center in the business district, which
was twenty one buildings, nine commercial, ten mixed use, and
(43:13):
two residential, to a private firm called Lexin Capital L
E XI N. And all of a sudden, because they
had all those different buildings, they were the majority vote
in the HOA. So, all of a sudden, if you
lived in Celebration, Florida, you lived in this neighborhood, you
(43:37):
essentially had zero say over anything that went on there
because LExEN owned the vote and owned the HOA essentially.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah, and that's bad enough. I mean, that's just a
situation right for abuse. But the Lexin is well known
around Celebration for being the opposite of transparent. Yeah, and
so over the course of a good decade or more,
this homeowners association started to notice like lex and Capital
(44:05):
wasn't responding to any calls for repairs. And remember we
said Celebration was built really quickly, often by third party
construction companies, often very shoddily. And the townhouses, the residential
stuff downtown that lex and Capital bought were really showing
signs of disrepair and nobody was showing up to repair it.
(44:26):
And because of the structure of the ownership, the people
who lived in the condominiums only owned the interiors, so
even if they wanted to pay somebody to come fix
the roof, they couldn't legally do that. That's just nuts,
it is, but it's common with condos in particular. They
but normally the people who are in charge of that
will come and have the roof repaired. But when they
(44:50):
finally sued lex and Capital, they found all sorts of
terrible stuff had been going on and that they were
in big trouble. And now Lexin was saying, we're going
to assess fifteen or ten or fifteen million dollars to
make these repairs. Even though you guys have been paying
into THEA your HOA dues, which are meant to keep
up with those repairs. We're saying you owe ten million
(45:11):
more and we don't know what happened to the money
that you put in.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, I mean, they were saying, you haven't been paying
your dues and they were like, no, we have. You
can't just say that, like where's the money we paid?
And I don't even know, like has this even been resolved?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
No, as far as I know, it's not, and it's
going to take a long time to unravel. One of
the things I saw is that they in court proceedings,
they found out that LExEN had not once but twice
refinanced the mortgage that it had on its its holdings
in celebration and took out like twenty million and then
another fifteen million in equity. So they were sucking the money,
(45:50):
the value out of the town and then not putting
a nickel back into it to keep it up.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah. Flash forward a couple of years, and all of
(46:17):
a sudden, we're a country in the middle of a
housing crisis and foreclosure crisis, and between two thousand and
nine and twenty ten, one and twenty residents of Celebration
had to go through foreclosure. This is compared to one
in forty eight for Florida overall. At the time AMC
shut down that theater. I don't think we mentioned that
(46:39):
they're cool, giggy theater. They were like, hey, no, sexy
shoot them ups. We're only going to show like really
clean movies. And people turns out like going and seeing
sexy shoot them ups. And they're like, we can't keep
running Pleasantville over and over in the Truman Show.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
They're like pleasant Hills to dirty and suggestive.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
So they see, at least for their part, got out
of that theater and it shut down.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah. I don't know what's going on with the theater
right now, if somebody some independent persons running it or not,
or if it's just abandoned.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I bet you it's open again, but that's just a.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Guess I would hope. So. So, despite all this, and
despite the troubles of the people living in the downtown
area with lex and Capital, outside of downtown, it seems
to be pretty much happiness generally among the owners at Celebration.
I think the initial almost crazy expectations from what celebration
(47:39):
would be and could offer has been replaced by a
little more realistic understanding.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
But I think it's settled in.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, that's a great way to put it. But the
people there like, yeah, it's not just some amazing perfect place,
but it's also not the psychotic Stepford neighborhood that you
guys are making it. It's a really really nice place
to live and we love living here, so leave us alone.
And that seems to be kind of the general consensus
of the people living in the bubble from what I
(48:08):
can tell.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah, you know, if it achieved its new urbanism goals,
it did in certain ways. They do have that town
center and you can walk to a lot of stuff,
you can bike to a lot of stuff. There are
a lot of playgrounds and things like that. But there
are also a lot of cars. And beyond that, it
(48:30):
did not hit the criteria of things like off you know,
employment opportunities for people who actually live there to work there,
affordable housing, that kind of thing. Like you said, the
Latino and Hispanic population increased, I think to about sixteen percent.
They're down to seventy two percent non Hispanic white population now,
(48:53):
and I think about sixty percent of the residents own
their own house, and like you can't rest or renters.
But even if you own a house, like there are
no airbnbs or vrbos, like you can't rent a house
shop from there.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Way yeah, no, it's literally laughable the idea. Yes, you
got anything else about Celebration.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Florida, got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
I've got one more thing. If you like this and
like to hear us talking about Celebration Florida, you can
also go listen to us talking about Celebration Florida with
our friends over at the Big Flop.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Absolutely, we were guests on the show. They pitched Celebration
Florida because you know, the idea of the show is
things that flopped, and we thought we would do our
version to acquaint ourselves more with it, you know, before
we recorded with them. I think THEIRS is going to
come out first though, right.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, I was gonna say, we said, wow, what a coincidence,
We're about to do an episode on Celebration Florida.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, but check it out.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
It was a lot of fun, Yeah, super fun. And
since Chuck and I agreed that being on the Big
Flop was a lot of fun. Obviously, that's unlockable listener mail.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Hey guys, my family and I completed our annual road
trip summer vacation. On the way back home, I was
a loss for what to listen to on the twelve
hour drive that was suitable for me and my two boys,
Liam and Nathan, teenagers.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Liam and Neeson.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Liam and Neeson. He's got a very particular set of skills,
that child. That's when Liam asked if I ever had
ever heard of stuff you should know. Not much of
a podcast listener, but and hadn't heard of the show,
but it turned it on and we listened the entire
way back. We learned about whistling, Wikipedia, Guinness Records. I
was about to say they just went straight back. Actually
(50:40):
I think they did. Wore the World's Panic, Dumb Criminals, hitchhiking,
Fort Knox, Peanuts, Alien abductions, Multitasking, Star Wars Christmas Special. Okay,
they're jumping around a bit, which was Liam's personal favorite.
Was the history of the board game Clue.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Oh, that's a good one. Liam agreed.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
We enjoyed learning about the kill Dozer and watched the
documentary tread to see that thing in action. Since getting
turned onto the show, I can't help but listen to
y'all even when I'm driving around town running errands. I
appreciate the knowledge for you guys for giving me and
my voice along with something to bond over. And that
is from Paul Newfield in Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That's awesome. Thanks Paul, Thanks Liam for turning your dad
on to Stuff you Should Know. We appreciate a big time.
The check is in the mail.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yes, and Nathan and Nisan.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
If you want to be like Liam and Nathan and
Paul and you want to get in touch with us
to say how much you like what we do, we
love hearing that kind of stuff. You can send it
via email to stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
and Jerry's here too, and that makes this the happiest
podcast on Earth. Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I think we need to CoA this one. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of like really dark violent discussion
in here.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
What else just the violence? You know, you'd think of
a podcast episode about Disney's own branded neighborhood would be
safe for all ears, And it is except for the
five percent of it where we talk about the awful
crimes that have happened there.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yes, Yeah, which will be okay, something something I think
that was a good good thing to do. But something
to know about Celebration Florida if you don't know anything
about it. We're talking about a town that Disney built,
not figuratively but literally. Yeah technically it was in Walt Disney,
but the Disney Company did. Okay, so get off my
back because it was this town meant to be. Outside
(01:16):
of real life, everyone outside of Celebration is fascinated with
anything that can possibly be construed as dark or twisted
or bizarre or awful. It's almost like people want to
root for it to be messed up. I don't get it,
but it's all over the place.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yes, is it really interesting? Okay, yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
You read articles about it. I think every major publication
within the last ten or so years has at least
one article about the dark side of Celebration Florida. And
it's all the same stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I mean, I think if you are doing a thing
where you're like, Hi, we're going to build a town
that harkens back to the good old days of peach
pie and picket fences and the ultimate eden for your
for your family to live in, and then these kind
of things happen, then of course it's going to get
I'm not saying they're asking for that kind of treatment,
(02:14):
but when it's billed as such a you know, Wonder
Years sort of thing, right, that's like if the Wonder
Years had episodes with murder and sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, what the very special two parterre of different.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Strokes, Oh exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
It was stunning. Yeah, it kind of puts a target
on your back. Even though these people just want to
be left alone, they want to go live off in
their own bubble. It's kind of the point of the
whole thing. And as a matter of fact, people who
live in Celebration I'm not sure if they still do,
but at the heyday, toward the beginning of it, people
definitely referred to it as living in the bubble. Yeah,
(02:51):
And I say we get to the backstory first, because
there's a very interesting backstory about the Disney companies and
Walt Disney in particulars machinations that ended up leading to
Celebration Florida being established. I love this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Some might say the backstory is the best part.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
I don't know who would say that, but sure it's
good for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
All right, So let's go back in time then to
the mid nineteen sixties, specifically sixty four and sixty five,
when Disney, Walt Disney, the real person, was like, Hey,
this is Disneyland out here in California is a huge hit.
Let to do the same thing in Florida. And so they,
the corporation that is, went in and very quietly, one
(03:37):
might even say, in a clandestine manor bought up about
forty three square miles over twenty seven thousand acres in
the Orlando area through I guess, I mean, were they
shell companies or just different arms or set up just
to do this.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They were shell companies set up just to do this.
They were aliases used.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, and one of the companies was called not Walt
Disney Llc'.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Ricky Rouse Enterprises. Like it was all legal. But the
point that they were doing that for was because if
any landowner at the time had been like, oh, Disney's
buying up a bunch of land, I'm sure they're gonna
need my parcels, so I'm gonna triple the asking price,
it definitely would have happened. So they were very smart,
and by the time people caught on, they'd finished their
(04:23):
buying spree and they were finally outed in the Orlando Sentinel.
I think in I don't know, sixty five maybe as
surely the people who were behind this buying spree, you
said something about them, like Walt Disney saying like, hey,
let's try Disneyland in Florida. He definitely wanted to do that,
but he wanted to do it on just such a
(04:44):
vastly larger, more sweeping, more imaginative scale that it was
almost like, it's just amazing that this man ever lived.
And there's tons of criticism of him, rightfully so in
a lot of ways, but his imagination and like what
he got done and what he gave the world is
just it's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah. And one thing we need to point out about
this land is it was not like you know, prime land,
especially in nineteen sixty four, before there was Disney World there.
It was not the Orlando that we know today. And
this land, like a lot of it was swampland that
they had to spend a lot of money and time,
you know, dredging, draining, building canals and making it a
(05:29):
you know, a habitable place.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah. I saw that they moved ten million cubic yards
of dirt. Yeah, they had to develop twenty thousand of
the twenty four thousand acres because it's just basically swamp.
And it dug fifty miles of canals and they were
doing all this. Like you said, Orlando wasn't the Orlando
that it is today. Orlando is the way it is
(05:52):
today because of what they were doing during this period.
This is what started it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I don't think anyone is under any misc inceptions
about like what built that town. Sure, and it was
a guy with a little pencilly mustache, but the town
that ended up there celebration is not what the original
plan was. The original plan was way cooler because if
you've ever been to Epcot, their Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,
(06:21):
one of their theme parks there, and you walked around
and looked at the vision for this idylic society, that
was what they were trying to build. They were it
was supposed to be a neighborhood where people lived, and
it actually Epcot was a real place and not a
theme park.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Did you see that the photo spread of the Epcot model,
the original Epcot model I sent you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Yeah, a couple of those houses were pretty sweet.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Isn't that sweet? Yeah, it was really cool. And I
saw that Walt Disney planned for Epcot, the Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow, to never be finished, to never be complete,
to always be trying new stuff ABTNS I think is
what he said. Yeah, and it didn't quite go that way.
(07:08):
They after he died, and when they finally did build Epcot,
they called it that and they it is like meant
to demonstrate future cool technology and then also kind of
confusingly all the countries and nations of the world at
the same time. But it is a really cool park,
but it's nothing like what he wanted. The people don't
live there, it's not like an experimental community, and that
(07:32):
would actually become Celebration later on.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, I mean he kind of wanted it to be
like Tomorrowland, which is, you know, people parking their cars
in tunnels underground, moving around on the monorails and the
people movers and again just sort of this idyllic suburban
but like a new type of suburbia. And in fact,
(07:57):
what would eventually go to be called in the eighties
and the early eighties new urbanism, which was this you know,
we'll get well, I guess we can get to that
right now, huh.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sure, yeah, because they kind of prefigured it.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Right, Yeah, for sure. New urban urbanism came along in
the early eighties, and it was based on this idea
of you know, nice looking architecture houses with you know,
where different people of different income levels would live very
walkable set up in a nice grid and you could
(08:27):
walk to the store and to the playground and to
work into school and it's super safe and it you know,
this was just sort of again that a deal like
idyllic vision of the future, right.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, So this is what Celebration ended up being. It's
considered a new urbanist town. But again, like I think
Epcot opened in nineteen eighty two, right, yeah, and it
would be that was a full decade or so before
they even really started to think about building celebration. But
in the meantime, I have to say, I want to
(09:01):
give the obligatory shout out anytime we mentioned Epcot to
the I think it's on Dangerous Minds website about the
group of friends who hid out in the Horizon's ride
at Epcot in the late eighties and photo documented their
time there. It's really cool to check out. And then
one other thing there I found this year's back. But
(09:23):
they planned an airport, and there actually were flights that
went directly to Disney World for a very brief time,
I think in the early seventies. But on the landing strip,
you know rumble strips when you'd like start to go
off of the highway on the shoulder, it's got those
those ripples that like make it sound and wake you up.
(09:44):
They created a rumble strip on the runway for the
plane to run over that when you run over it,
and you can do this in your car. I think
at about forty five miles an hour it plays when
you wish upon a star as a rumble strip.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, they have those in row in different countries and
it's not like a solid strip, but it just hits
various you know, tiny little bumps that caused musical notes.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That's neat. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Okay, So back to it. So we've got Epcot in
nineteen eighty two, and by the mid eighties there was
a guy named Michael Eisner running this show, right.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, and we should point out that, you know, one
of the big reasons that the original Epcot idea of
a like a lovable real space when the other direction
is because Walt Disney died in the interim, and after
that everything kind of changed and that's when it became
a theme park. But yeah, Eisner would come on board
in the early I guess mid eighties and eighty four,
(10:41):
big new urbanism guy was a big architecture guy, still is,
and things were like, this was the early to mid
eighties when Disney World was really really in a big,
big growth pattern I guess, you know, hotels and expanding
the park and all kinds of stuff. And they said,
all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're
(11:03):
gonna lop off part of this southeast corner of the
property on the east side of I four, and we're
just gonna reserve that for now think about what to
do with it. And they started to get a little
nervous that they were taking too long to think about
it and that the state may come in and be like, hey,
you're not developing it like you said you would. We're
taking that.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Back, right, So they decided to build a community. They
kind of took up that part of EPCOT that had
been cut off of the actual executed plan and see
what they could do with it. Right, So they in
nineteen eighty five they started they started figuring out how
to do this, and they put out a request for bids.
(11:44):
I can't remember what the last word is, but sure
like a brief, Yeah, a request for proposal RFP.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, those those business things that we've never had to do.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
No, thank god. And then for architects. Firms submitted their
ideas and I think two were selected to put together
the final plan, and the whole thing started to take
off from there, starting in nineteen eighty five. I saw
that as far as at the beginning, they were starting
(12:17):
to like kind of test names for the place, like
right off the bat and focus groups. Terrible names. Tell
them some of the names.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
The Golden Oberon Jubilee. Okay, where do you live? You know,
Golden Oberon Jubilee or Godge goch what else?
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Odyssey, Ventura, Horizon's Landmark or Oval?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
How about Aurora, Solaris, Rainbow Majestic.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Seriously, they sound like CIA projects.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, that's ASRM, not to be confused to ASMR.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Right. I also saw Fantasia Jubilee in hyperionra Like they
were just I don't know what they were doing, Like,
how could you even waste money on a focus group
with these ideas?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So finally they're like, well how about something shorter?
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Horizons? No, they used that on the ride already a
Maritown that's a little on the nose. Yeah, somebody said
celebration and they went celebrations it man, celebrations it uh
And they fired that person so that they couldn't take
any credit for coming up with the idea, and they
told everybody Michael Eisner.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Did I'm surprised that they didn't literally name it like
Mouseville or something.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
H Yeah, I mean, that's better than Odyssey Ventura Horizons.
I mean it sounds like a Horsey book like tweet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh that's good stuff, all right. So they also, you know,
it was a good move for Disney at the time
because in the mid nineteen eighties had a little bit
of a black eye because of this tens of millions
of dollar infrastructure money that Disney didn't steal, but they
kind of kept, yeah, or used for themselves.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, essentially, So, as we'll see in a second, Disney
was granted essentially the same status as a city or
a town. A municipality in Florida has a lot of
the same rights, and one of the things it can
do is apply for state money for its projects.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So Orange County apparently went to go apply for a
bunch of grants to help to build low income housing,
and they found that they were too late. That Disney
itself had hoovered up all of the money that was
earmarked for Central Florida fifty cities and towns had hoovered
up all of that almost sixty million dollars for its
(14:55):
own infrastructure. Yeah, Like, Central Florida was not happy about
this at all. Orange County had to actually go to
Disney and be like, can we borrow one point eight
million of that for this low income housing project? Disney like, sure, sure,
at eighty percent interest. So it was a big scandal.
So them announcing celebration was a big like, hey, look
over here kind of thing. Look, we're still a big
(15:17):
part of this, We're sinking money into this area. Don't
be mad at us kind of thing exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And that sort of quasi governmental group that you spoke
of was the made a lot of news in the
past few years. The Reedy Creek Improvement District, you may
have if you're outside the state of Florida, you probably
never heard those four words until twenty twenty two when
the governor of the state of Florida got into a well,
got into a fight with Disney and dissolved it, and
(15:45):
it is now the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The
irons is on the oversight, Yeah, for sure. The irony
here is is the Reedy Creek Improvement District came about
in nineteen sixty seven because Disney Company successfully lobbied to
get this whatever new designation, in large part on the
(16:05):
strength of that original Epcot plan. So they oh, really,
they gave them this because of this EPCOT. You know,
neighborhood idea bailed on that and then ended up being like, hey,
we got our own little mini government here.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, very much so, I mean like it. It was
a government up until very recently, like they could tax
residents and businesses in the area. They One of the
reasons why they were granted this was so that the
company could undertake things like infrastructure programs like providing sewer
and water and stuff like that, generating power they could
(16:40):
have as long as the improvement district goes around. They
were allowed by law to have built a Mickey Mouse
nuclear power plant if they'd wanted to. Like, they were
that legal. It was a city essentially, right, So yeah,
it was a big deal to have that taken away.
But the upshot of that part was they were able
to use some money to help build celebration. But then secondly,
(17:06):
the people who live in the Reedy Creek Improvement District
are able to vote to decide what happens with Disney
World and stuff like that. But that amounts to less
than sixty people who live in that district, and they
all work for Disney, so they all vote the way
Disney wants them to vote well with celebration. They were
planning on bringing like twenty thousand families in and that
(17:28):
would really dilute Disney's vote about their own their own
theme park, their own business. So they were like, you
know what this is actually outside of Reedy Creek.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah. And by the way, you know that nuclear power
plant would have had mouse heres at the top of
the silos.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Do they have high voltage like towers and they're they're
in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Yeah, around that area.
It's really something to see.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, So here's what they did. Like you said, twenty
thousand families is what the original proposal was or was
it twenty thousand people twenty thousand residents? I think?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Oh was it? Okay?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Sorry, still it's a lot, yeah, a lot of people.
So they announced this publicly in nineteen ninety one as like, hey,
this is going to be open for business if you
want to essentially live in a Disney World like environment.
They held a lottery in nineteen ninety five for families
to buy plots. I think for the four hundred and
(18:25):
seventy four spots. They had about five thousand entries into
that lottery and it should be no surprise that most
of those people were like big Disney people that were thinking, like,
what could be better than living in like a Disney neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, or essentially like a Disney Yeah, Disney neighborhood, like
in the every sense of the word. And the first
family moved in in nineteen ninety six, Larry and Terry
the Habers. Isn't that cute?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And a few months later Downtown was finally completed and
it was a big deal, like everybody knew about Celebration
and it was being built. I think Disney ultimately shelled
out about four billion dollars yeah, for the creation of Celebration.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
In the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, I guess so in like late nineties dollars. Yeah,
you want to take a break?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Oh yeah, gosh, we have to.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah, I know. It was kind of rhetorical.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Softly, jaw.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Soff. All right. So when they started mapping out what
they wanted Celebration to look like, they really reversed course
on the whole Epcot idea, which was again a little
more like Tomorrowland, and they were like, you know, what
we need to do is make it like Chuck was
(20:05):
talking about.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Frontier Land and Act one not quite.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Frontier Land, somewhere in the middle, which is to say,
you know, old small town America. Pick at Vince's. You know,
they talked about a new American town of block parties
and Fourth of July parades, spaghetti dinners and surprise, it
didn't say pancake breakfast, school bake sales, lollipops and fireflies
and a jar. So you know, they're selling and I'm
not making fun of this, they're there, but they were
(20:31):
selling an idea as much as they were selling houses.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
They were selling a way of life. And they're like,
who cares If this is this idyllic past never actually existed,
We're going to make it exist here and you can
come live here. And if you like Disney, it's gonna
knock your socks off. And so they modeled it kind of.
And the reason I laughed because it reminds me of
the real Seymour Skinner when he comes back and claims
is his identity. Yeah, he becomes principal and he says
(20:58):
that he loves and bees and skin and knees. And
if that's corny, then corn me up. That's just kind
of what they reminded me of.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I remember apart from that episode where he said whoever
introduced him said, we would like to introduce the real
principal Seymour Skinner, Principal Seymore Skinner or something like that.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah, no, Superintendent Chalmers, So that for sure. Yeah, so
I don't remember where I was headed with that point. Oh,
that they modeled it on Main Street, USA, Like, yeah,
you first come into Disney World, like super cute pastel
storefronts with wholesome stores behind them, just like everything's kind
of close together so you can walk and feel like
(21:40):
you're part of a community. That's what they went with.
And apparently Walt and Roy Disney were kind of obsessed
with that turn to the century, turn of the twentieth
century America because they spent about five years in a
town called Marceline, Missouri, the Disney family did from nineteen
oh six to nineteen eleven, and that's kind of where
(22:00):
they were inspired to love that kind of life. That's
what they're trying to recreate with Celebration for sure.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Absolutely, they're they're literal, like municipal seal or whatever. I
guess that's what you call it. Right, Yeah, municipal seal.
Yeah was a girl riding a bike with a little
dog chasing her and a literal picket fence and a
tree and it's just you know, it's that that's what
(22:28):
they were selling. They hired, you know, branding specialist. They
hired some really high profile architects and a lot of
the you know, I'm not saying again it sounds like
I'm like picking on it, but a lot of these
buildings were really cool. Like that that post office, the
design of it is super awesome. That that Spanish style
hospital is beautiful. They built a googie cinema that a
(22:53):
mc ran if you remember our googie architecture like it was,
you know, it's some cool looking stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Yeah, and just a no that the Celebration City seal
that you described. Olivia helped us out with this and
she described it as aggressively idyllic. Yeah, a boy, I
think that it casculated perfectly right. Yeah, But yeah, those
buildings downtown were all designed. Each one was designed by
a very very famous, very well respected architect. Each one
(23:22):
had its own architect like Philip Johnson, the guy who
designed the glass house, designed the bank at Celebration, like
it was. This place was a big deal when it
first opened. The thing is, well, I'm not even going
to spoil it yet, you can you can just wait.
So back to what they had. One of the other
things that it touted was an experimental public school. Yeah,
(23:42):
that house K through twelve. There's no other school like
it in the area. Normally they have like a grade school,
maybe a middle school, and then a high school. This
was everything kindergarteners to seniors in high school, all going
to school in the same building.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
That's right, which you know other people have done. That's
not the most radical thing world, but it is radical
at the time in the mid nineties to have a
public school that had such a sort of progressive model
of education. You can go to any you throw a
rock in Atlanta and you'll hit some hippie dippy private
school that does this kind of stuff on a very
(24:18):
small scale. But to try to do a K twelve
school where you have these new progressive teaching methods where
you don't really give grades, but you give assessments, where
you have combined classrooms, which Ruby School has combined classrooms,
there's a lot of benefits to that. Yeah, it's like
it's an awesome, proven thing, but it's a class of
(24:41):
you know, twelve or thirteen kids with two teachers. That's all.
At one point they had eighty kids to a class
and two to three teachers in some of these big classes.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Eighty kids just all going nuts at the same time.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, not to give away kind of where we're headed,
but the idea was progressive and sort of very forward
thinking at the time for public school.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
It definitely was, for sure, and that attracted a lot
of people too, Like they're like, not only are we
going to give you like a community to live in
like this, your kids are going to be experimented on
by Walt Disney Corporation drink this. They also had Celebration Place,
which was an office complex because one of the hallmarks
of new urbanism is that you work nearby your home,
(25:29):
like you can essentially walk or bike to work, like
your community is basically your whole world.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
They also had retail stores. There was a Wolfgang Bakery
still there today. I think it was one of the
original stores and it's still there, which is impressive. But
one of the things that they definitely did, at least
at first, if you were a chain, you could not
get a foothold into this community. You also couldn't put
billboards up like it was very strictly controlled who could come.
(26:00):
And they definitely favored small, independently owned businesses. And if
it was a chain, it would be a regional chain
at best at tops.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, I can get on board with some of that stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Sure, for sure, it's not true anymore. There's a Starbucks there, right,
I think there's a Starbucks absolutely everywhere, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
True. And I did see that one of the videos.
You know, I got a little bit of a chuckle.
So if you decided to move there and build a
house there, you couldn't just say, like, jeez, you know
what do I want to build? What kind of house
really fits me? They would hand you a book of
about seventy pages thick that said, here's one of six
(26:39):
style houses. You can build in one of one, two
through four, five different colors, and you're going to have
a front porch, and you're going to have that picket fence.
At least at first. You can't park your car in
the driveway at first, you got to park that car
out back. You got to keep it up. Don't even
think about parking a boat in your driveway and some
(27:01):
of the stuff that I've seen online. I tried to confirm,
like one absolutely, but I couldn't. But I also saw
there was one hundred and sixty page just sort of
rule book for living there, Yeah, including that you every
house had to have a hidden Mickey mouse somewhere in it.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Mm hmm is that true. Yeah, I saw that as well.
I didn't read the book itself, but yes, I saw
that referenced as well from some legitimate source or other.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And it did see somewhere that you could park one
car in the driveway and everything else had to be
around back. So I'm not really sure the rules there.
But what about those lamp posts.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Okay, so if you went downtown, depending on the time
of year, the lamp posts might be shooting out leaf
shaped confetti on you that would be in the fall.
Typically sometimes they would also shoot out soap side or
shaving cream snow, so it would snow on you, and
I guess you'd get soapy as you were walking to work.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I also said that they also they imported leaves and
fakes know as well. At times. I didn't see that elsewhere,
but I just saw it in one place. But it
was like that kind of place. Also, wherever you're walking
down town, they're playing like forties and fifties, like hits music, pop,
praisic sure, sure, and then and other places they'll have
(28:20):
hidden speakers that play recorded bird.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Song bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
bum bum bum bum.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
And I think here's this is where we've reached the
point where it's starting to become understandable why outsiders are
like this is psychotic.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It gets a little creepy sounding. Yeah, something out of
a movie, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Right, it's so artificial that there's almost no room for
nature or reality to come in. And yeah, like are
there actual birds there or are they been driven away
by the bird song? Who knows? Like, I think that's why.
And people often compare it to the neighborhood from the
Stepford Wives.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, or that one last year or a couple of
years ago, Bavarium No, the one with uh oh god,
Nick Cral's the only person I can think of the
Senate and he's not the lead Harry Styles and.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Uh oh, don't worry Darling.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah. Also the Truman Show. It gets compared to that.
Oh yeah, that's interesting because the Truman Show was filmed
in Seaside, Florida, and Seaside is also like a very
almost textbook example of a new urbanist Florida beachtown.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I think Seaside is a little more of a
real place though, right, Like, yeah, they don't have like
fake bird song and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
No, no, no, no, they don't have that. And also I'm
not I don't believe.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
One of the other things about Celebration that we'll see
is they have that one hundred and sixty page rule book.
It's it's enforced, like if your lawn goes, you know,
over the allowed height I think it's three or three
and a half inch, you'll get a letter from the
HOA saying cut your lawn. Or if you do have
that boat in your driveway, they'll be like, you got
to move that boat. You can get a letter if
(30:08):
you take your Christmas decorations down one day too late,
like everyone takes their Christmas decorations down by a certain date.
It's just kind of like the HOA is very strict
and if you like rules and you like not having
to go tell your neighbors to take their stupid Christmas
lights down because it's March. You would love to live
at celebration. I think that's the appeal for a lot
(30:28):
of people.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, for sure. So if you're going to have a
new urbanist society or neighborhood, one of the you know,
kind of main tenants of that is like different kinds
of people can live here, of different ethnicities and in
different financial categories, financial categories, pay groups. What would you
(30:50):
call that?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Would I would say different folks from different strokes.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I couldn't think of
a very simple term there, but so early on early
pay categories. Economic diversity is what we're looking for, is
what they said at first. And they did advertise to
you know, black and Latino families. They did have some
African American employees in the sales office. But you know,
(31:16):
if you're going to do something like that, sometimes you
need to, like and this happens all the time in cities,
might subsidize some of the housing if you want to
really bring in true diversity. And instead they took close
to a million bucks and move people out of there
that they didn't want there to other places.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
They said, you live over here, we're not going to
build anything here. We'll build some low income housing, but
we're not going to do it in Celebration. You stay
outside of Celebration. Yes, the racial diversity push was a valid, valiant,
i should say, attempt, but it became pretty clear pretty
quickly that it didn't work. By the time the two
thousand census came around, it revealed that Celebration, Florida in
(31:57):
two thousand was eighty eight percent white, and that was
like thirty thirty percent higher than the surrounding county the
rate for the surrounding county, and a lot of black
families were priced out, Like if you moved to Celebration,
you were paying about thirty percent more than you would
(32:20):
for a comparable house out in Osiola County outside of Celebration.
It's just much more expensive to live there, and traditionally
black families have less family wealth to buy a house
that's thirty percent more expensive. And then as the place
became whiter and whiter, fewer and fewer black families felt
comfortable living there, So it just became more and more white,
(32:41):
until more and more Hispanic families started moving in and
kind of diluted the racial makeup a little more.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, and if you want to feel if you want
to either have a laugh or have a cry about
home prices these days. The average price of a home
in Celebration Florida in those earth early years was one
hundred and twenty four thousand dollars, which was twenty percent
higher than the complete national average. That's nuts, man, Yeah,
(33:09):
the good old days.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I saw that. Now it's something like I think six
hundred and seventy seven is the national no, the median average,
the medium price for celebration I don't know about nationally. Yeah, man,
one hundred and twenty grand.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And that was twenty percent higher. That's not even You
can't even lose like one hundred grand, I guess.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
As a down payment these days.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, good luck with that.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Crazy. So okay, back to it, Chuck, I think it's
about here. Well, should we take another break or no?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Okay. I was not expecting that, but here we go.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Everybody an stoftly jaw.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Okay, Chuck. Now we get to, since we are technically
a media outlet, the darker side of Celebration Florida.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean, you can't not talk about it because
it was a situation where Disney rushed the project allegedly,
and these third party contractors sometimes were under the gun
to get these houses built, and what you ended up
with was collapsing front porches. Apparently like seventy of the
houses needed new roofs, their foundations were cracking, plumbing was leaking,
(34:44):
and not necessarily every single house, but it seemed like
a lot of them were poorly built.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
They were poorly built, so the construction was shoddy from
the outset, especially when Disney wasn't directly involved in the construction. Right,
that's a huge, huge deal that will come and to
play a little bit down the road. The school itself
very quickly, the parents were like, I don't know about
not assigning my kids homework for the entire year or
(35:12):
telling them what books they should go read. And they're
not even giving them grades. What is this? Everybody wins
on their report card. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
So the parents revolted very quickly and they're like, no,
we're not doing this. We want to make this more traditional,
and eventually they lopped off the high school from it
built another high school in celebration, but it was a
(35:33):
public high school open to other areas around celebration, not
just celebration itself.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, I also saw it was pretty much a nightmare
for the teachers and staff. Yeah, and the principal quit
after a year, along with about twenty five percent of
the staff. It's after year one, and it was you know,
when you've got classrooms at size and it's especially with
a new kind of structure, it was supposedly pretty chaotic.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Again, eighty children grades. I think they had grades like
three to five in the same classroom. Eighty of those kids,
and you're one teacher trying to teach all these kids.
I can't. I mean, how do they not just look
at that paper and be like, this is a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, I mean the idea with mixed grades now is
and may have been then, but that's probably too many.
Is you mix two grades and one year your kid
is the younger and you get good help from older
buddies and it really socially kind of helps. And then
the next year you the older, and then that you
are the more of the mentor type, and that all
(36:37):
plays out in the end to just, you know, socially
and emotionally pretty great. But again, with eighty kids, it's.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Just tough, right, that's my ultimate point. What you're describing
sounds awesome. And I also saw that one of the
reasons for putting grades together in the same I think
they call them neighborhoods or whatever, is because kids progress
at different rates, some slower than others, and so if
you put a bunch of grades together, those kids who
are going to progress faster can progress faster, and the
kids who are going to take their own time can
(37:06):
take their own time. That makes sense to me too. Again,
it's the eighty kids in a single classroom. That's just
that in and of itself is nuts. What about crime,
because this is where everybody's like.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Mm yeah, yeah. And here's where parents, You know, if
you want to not listen to these next five minutes
with your kids, it might be advisable because there has
been some crime, just like any place in the world.
What they didn't do was build some huge wall around
this town, and you would still even have crime, sure,
because that's just what happens. But in nineteen eighty eight
(37:39):
there was a I'm sorry ninety eight, there was a
home invasion where a couple was bound and gagged and
robbed in their house.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It wasn't Terry and Larry, was it?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I don't think, so this was a pretty big deal.
In November twenty ten, the first murder in celebration happened
when Matteo Patrick Geovandito, a fifty year old retired school teacher,
was living alone and was found dead, strangled with a
shoelace and you know, had some acts work done on him.
(38:13):
And that's horrific enough, but then it comes out later
that his killer, David Israel Xenon Marillo, was there to
wash his car and then brought inside drugged with a beer,
and when he woke up, Matteo Patrick Giovendido was on
top of him sexually assaulting him. And this guy went
(38:35):
nuts and killed him.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
He did, And the guy's story sounded a little far
fetched until I think two years later, a couple of
reporters from the Daily Beasts it must have been tipped
off because they started tracking down former students, reading depositions,
looking at court filings and found that Geovandido had a
(38:57):
long history of sexually abusing his students, even going on
like trips with them abroad, like just him and a
student or two. Yeah, So like that doesn't excuse him
being bludgeoned to death with an axe, but it definitely
backs up the dude's story, you know. And I even
saw in a I think an article right after it happened.
(39:18):
I think that Marillo was quoted as saying he got
what he deserved, Like this guy been arrested and he
was telling the press he got what he deserved when
I killed him with an axe.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
He he got a second degree murdered life sentence for that.
And also, to just to be clear, if we weren't
the victim was not a teacher in Celebration. He had
retired by that time.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Oh, good point, good point.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
A couple of days later it went kind of buck
wild and celebration again.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Right, Was this the the swat standoff or the Okay,
I didn't know if that was the family homicide. No,
I guess we'll get to both of them.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Yeah, yeah, all of that's right. No, okay, So the
family homicide was ten years later. This was a few
days after Giovandido's body was found in twenty ten. There
was a guy named Craig Fouchet who was a Celebration resident,
and he barricaded himself in his house and started firing
at the cops who came.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, I remember when this happened actually, oh really yeah,
oh yeah, it was all over the news. It was
a fourteen hour standoff. Eventually the police, you know, going
there with tear gas and everything, and found that he
had already taken his own life and it was you know,
one of the situations where he was going bankrupt, going
through divorce, foreclosure, all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, that's called high risk for a self inflicted injury
for sure.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Yeah. And not to dwell on the crimes, but there
was one last ghastly thing you said, I think Tenure
in twenty twenty, when a man murdered his wife and
three kids and dog and was living with their decomposing
bodies when the police caught up to him.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah. It was around Christmas, right, and they didn't find
it until January sometime.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, it was very grizzly and sad.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
That's the kind of thing that people are like, see,
you can't get away from it, and that stuff happens elsewhere.
It's just when you put it in the context of
a place that has been created to not have that
kind of stuff, it just is that much more ghastly,
you know, yeah, absolutely, So back to there were a
few other things that weren't crimes but still kind of
(41:28):
gave Celebration a strange reputation. There was something called the
Celebration Death Pond. There was a weird curve in a
road at an intersection, and it wasn't clear which way
you should go, and if you didn't turn the right way,
you would drive right into this fifteen foot retention pond.
And that happened to three teenagers who just disappeared one
day and weren't found for nine months, and they were
(41:49):
finally found in that pond. They eventually fixed it, but
not before it Celebration Death Pond became a bit of
a moniker on the internet.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, they built a wall with flashing lights. Yeah, you
probably shouldn't dead into a lake with the road going
left and right like on those hard curves. Another reason
it's called the death pond is when they were down
there diving and looking and found this car, they found
four other cars down there, no, and they're like, oh,
(42:20):
there's turns out this has happened before.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I didn't see that. Oh yeah, I saw there was
as I was researching that I found an article from
Oklahoma where they found the car of three teenagers who'd
gone missing in nineteen seventy and they found it like
forty years later, and they found another car with a
group of three people that had gone missing in nineteen
(42:42):
sixty and ten years apart. These cars ended up right
next to each other in this lake.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
I know, it's just so strange, But I did not
know that about Celebration death pond.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
That's crazy, all right, So we should get back to
Celebration itself. And kind of happened with the town and
the HOA there because in two thousand and four, Disney
sold the downtown town Center in the business district, which
was twenty one buildings, nine commercial, ten mixed use, and
(43:13):
two residential, to a private firm called Lexin Capital L
E XI N. And all of a sudden, because they
had all those different buildings, they were the majority vote
in the HOA. So, all of a sudden, if you
lived in Celebration, Florida, you lived in this neighborhood, you
(43:37):
essentially had zero say over anything that went on there
because LExEN owned the vote and owned the HOA essentially.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah, and that's bad enough. I mean, that's just a
situation right for abuse. But the Lexin is well known
around Celebration for being the opposite of transparent. Yeah, and
so over the course of a good decade or more,
this homeowners association started to notice like lex and Capital
(44:05):
wasn't responding to any calls for repairs. And remember we
said Celebration was built really quickly, often by third party
construction companies, often very shoddily. And the townhouses, the residential
stuff downtown that lex and Capital bought were really showing
signs of disrepair and nobody was showing up to repair it.
(44:26):
And because of the structure of the ownership, the people
who lived in the condominiums only owned the interiors, so
even if they wanted to pay somebody to come fix
the roof, they couldn't legally do that. That's just nuts,
it is, but it's common with condos in particular. They
but normally the people who are in charge of that
will come and have the roof repaired. But when they
(44:50):
finally sued lex and Capital, they found all sorts of
terrible stuff had been going on and that they were
in big trouble. And now Lexin was saying, we're going
to assess fifteen or ten or fifteen million dollars to
make these repairs. Even though you guys have been paying
into THEA your HOA dues, which are meant to keep
up with those repairs. We're saying you owe ten million
(45:11):
more and we don't know what happened to the money
that you put in.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, I mean, they were saying, you haven't been paying
your dues and they were like, no, we have. You
can't just say that, like where's the money we paid?
And I don't even know, like has this even been resolved?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
No, as far as I know, it's not, and it's
going to take a long time to unravel. One of
the things I saw is that they in court proceedings,
they found out that LExEN had not once but twice
refinanced the mortgage that it had on its its holdings
in celebration and took out like twenty million and then
another fifteen million in equity. So they were sucking the money,
(45:50):
the value out of the town and then not putting
a nickel back into it to keep it up.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yeah. Flash forward a couple of years, and all of
(46:17):
a sudden, we're a country in the middle of a
housing crisis and foreclosure crisis, and between two thousand and
nine and twenty ten, one and twenty residents of Celebration
had to go through foreclosure. This is compared to one
in forty eight for Florida overall. At the time AMC
shut down that theater. I don't think we mentioned that
(46:39):
they're cool, giggy theater. They were like, hey, no, sexy
shoot them ups. We're only going to show like really
clean movies. And people turns out like going and seeing
sexy shoot them ups. And they're like, we can't keep
running Pleasantville over and over in the Truman Show.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
They're like pleasant Hills to dirty and suggestive.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
So they see, at least for their part, got out
of that theater and it shut down.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah. I don't know what's going on with the theater
right now, if somebody some independent persons running it or not,
or if it's just abandoned.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
I bet you it's open again, but that's just a.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Guess I would hope. So. So, despite all this, and
despite the troubles of the people living in the downtown
area with lex and Capital, outside of downtown, it seems
to be pretty much happiness generally among the owners at Celebration.
I think the initial almost crazy expectations from what celebration
(47:39):
would be and could offer has been replaced by a
little more realistic understanding.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
But I think it's settled in.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yes, that's a great way to put it. But the
people there like, yeah, it's not just some amazing perfect place,
but it's also not the psychotic Stepford neighborhood that you
guys are making it. It's a really really nice place
to live and we love living here, so leave us alone.
And that seems to be kind of the general consensus
of the people living in the bubble from what I
(48:08):
can tell.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah, you know, if it achieved its new urbanism goals,
it did in certain ways. They do have that town
center and you can walk to a lot of stuff,
you can bike to a lot of stuff. There are
a lot of playgrounds and things like that. But there
are also a lot of cars. And beyond that, it
(48:30):
did not hit the criteria of things like off you know,
employment opportunities for people who actually live there to work there,
affordable housing, that kind of thing. Like you said, the
Latino and Hispanic population increased, I think to about sixteen percent.
They're down to seventy two percent non Hispanic white population now,
(48:53):
and I think about sixty percent of the residents own
their own house, and like you can't rest or renters.
But even if you own a house, like there are
no airbnbs or vrbos, like you can't rent a house
shop from there.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Way yeah, no, it's literally laughable the idea. Yes, you
got anything else about Celebration.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
Florida, got nothing else?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
I've got one more thing. If you like this and
like to hear us talking about Celebration Florida, you can
also go listen to us talking about Celebration Florida with
our friends over at the Big Flop.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Absolutely, we were guests on the show. They pitched Celebration
Florida because you know, the idea of the show is
things that flopped, and we thought we would do our
version to acquaint ourselves more with it, you know, before
we recorded with them. I think THEIRS is going to
come out first though, right.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah, I was gonna say, we said, wow, what a coincidence,
We're about to do an episode on Celebration Florida.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
Yeah, but check it out.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
It was a lot of fun, Yeah, super fun. And
since Chuck and I agreed that being on the Big
Flop was a lot of fun. Obviously, that's unlockable listener mail.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Hey guys, my family and I completed our annual road
trip summer vacation. On the way back home, I was
a loss for what to listen to on the twelve
hour drive that was suitable for me and my two boys,
Liam and Nathan, teenagers.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
Liam and Neeson.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Liam and Neeson. He's got a very particular set of skills,
that child. That's when Liam asked if I ever had
ever heard of stuff you should know. Not much of
a podcast listener, but and hadn't heard of the show,
but it turned it on and we listened the entire
way back. We learned about whistling, Wikipedia, Guinness Records. I
was about to say they just went straight back. Actually
(50:40):
I think they did. Wore the World's Panic, Dumb Criminals, hitchhiking,
Fort Knox, Peanuts, Alien abductions, Multitasking, Star Wars Christmas Special. Okay,
they're jumping around a bit, which was Liam's personal favorite.
Was the history of the board game Clue.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Oh, that's a good one. Liam agreed.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
We enjoyed learning about the kill Dozer and watched the
documentary tread to see that thing in action. Since getting
turned onto the show, I can't help but listen to
y'all even when I'm driving around town running errands. I
appreciate the knowledge for you guys for giving me and
my voice along with something to bond over. And that
is from Paul Newfield in Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That's awesome. Thanks Paul, Thanks Liam for turning your dad
on to Stuff you Should Know. We appreciate a big time.
The check is in the mail.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yes, and Nathan and Nisan.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
If you want to be like Liam and Nathan and
Paul and you want to get in touch with us
to say how much you like what we do, we
love hearing that kind of stuff. You can send it
via email to stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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