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Celebration Florida: The Story of a Utopia that Never Was · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
0:14
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and that makes this the happiest
0:16
Speaker 1: podcast on Earth. Stuff you should know.
0:21
Speaker 2: I think we need to CoA this one. Unfortunately.
0:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of like really dark violent discussion
0:28
Speaker 1: in here.
0:30
Speaker 2: What else just the violence? You know, you'd think of
0:35
Speaker 2: a podcast episode about Disney's own branded neighborhood would be
0:41
Speaker 2: safe for all ears, And it is except for the
0:44
Speaker 2: five percent of it where we talk about the awful
0:46
Speaker 2: crimes that have happened there.
0:48
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, which will be okay, something something I think
0:51
Speaker 1: that was a good good thing to do. But something
0:55
Speaker 1: to know about Celebration Florida if you don't know anything
0:58
Speaker 1: about it. We're talking about a town that Disney built,
1:02
Speaker 1: not figuratively but literally. Yeah technically it was in Walt Disney,
1:05
Speaker 1: but the Disney Company did. Okay, so get off my
1:08
Speaker 1: back because it was this town meant to be. Outside
1:16
Speaker 1: of real life, everyone outside of Celebration is fascinated with
1:23
Speaker 1: anything that can possibly be construed as dark or twisted
1:28
Speaker 1: or bizarre or awful. It's almost like people want to
1:32
Speaker 1: root for it to be messed up. I don't get it,
1:35
Speaker 1: but it's all over the place.
1:36
Speaker 2: Yes, is it really interesting? Okay, yeah, if.
1:39
Speaker 1: You read articles about it. I think every major publication
1:42
Speaker 1: within the last ten or so years has at least
1:45
Speaker 1: one article about the dark side of Celebration Florida. And
1:49
Speaker 1: it's all the same stuff.
1:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:51
Speaker 2: I mean, I think if you are doing a thing
1:54
Speaker 2: where you're like, Hi, we're going to build a town
1:57
Speaker 2: that harkens back to the good old days of peach
2:01
Speaker 2: pie and picket fences and the ultimate eden for your
2:06
Speaker 2: for your family to live in, and then these kind
2:08
Speaker 2: of things happen, then of course it's going to get
2:11
Speaker 2: I'm not saying they're asking for that kind of treatment,
2:14
Speaker 2: but when it's billed as such a you know, Wonder
2:17
Speaker 2: Years sort of thing, right, that's like if the Wonder
2:20
Speaker 2: Years had episodes with murder and sexual assault.
2:24
Speaker 1: Right, what the very special two parterre of different.
2:28
Speaker 2: Strokes, Oh exactly.
2:30
Speaker 1: It was stunning. Yeah, it kind of puts a target
2:33
Speaker 1: on your back. Even though these people just want to
2:36
Speaker 1: be left alone, they want to go live off in
2:37
Speaker 1: their own bubble. It's kind of the point of the
2:40
Speaker 1: whole thing. And as a matter of fact, people who
2:42
Speaker 1: live in Celebration I'm not sure if they still do,
2:44
Speaker 1: but at the heyday, toward the beginning of it, people
2:47
Speaker 1: definitely referred to it as living in the bubble. Yeah,
2:51
Speaker 1: And I say we get to the backstory first, because
2:54
Speaker 1: there's a very interesting backstory about the Disney companies and
2:58
Speaker 1: Walt Disney in particulars machinations that ended up leading to
3:02
Speaker 1: Celebration Florida being established. I love this stuff.
3:06
Speaker 2: Some might say the backstory is the best part.
3:09
Speaker 1: I don't know who would say that, but sure it's
3:12
Speaker 1: good for sure.
3:13
Speaker 2: All right, So let's go back in time then to
3:16
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen sixties, specifically sixty four and sixty five,
3:22
Speaker 2: when Disney, Walt Disney, the real person, was like, Hey,
3:26
Speaker 2: this is Disneyland out here in California is a huge hit.
3:29
Speaker 2: Let to do the same thing in Florida. And so they,
3:33
Speaker 2: the corporation that is, went in and very quietly, one
3:37
Speaker 2: might even say, in a clandestine manor bought up about
3:40
Speaker 2: forty three square miles over twenty seven thousand acres in
3:45
Speaker 2: the Orlando area through I guess, I mean, were they
3:48
Speaker 2: shell companies or just different arms or set up just
3:51
Speaker 2: to do this.
3:52
Speaker 1: They were shell companies set up just to do this.
3:55
Speaker 1: They were aliases used.
3:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the companies was called not Walt
3:59
Speaker 2: Disney Llc'.
4:02
Speaker 1: Ricky Rouse Enterprises. Like it was all legal. But the
4:06
Speaker 1: point that they were doing that for was because if
4:10
Speaker 1: any landowner at the time had been like, oh, Disney's
4:12
Speaker 1: buying up a bunch of land, I'm sure they're gonna
4:14
Speaker 1: need my parcels, so I'm gonna triple the asking price,
4:18
Speaker 1: it definitely would have happened. So they were very smart,
4:21
Speaker 1: and by the time people caught on, they'd finished their
4:23
Speaker 1: buying spree and they were finally outed in the Orlando Sentinel.
4:27
Speaker 1: I think in I don't know, sixty five maybe as
4:31
Speaker 1: surely the people who were behind this buying spree, you
4:34
Speaker 1: said something about them, like Walt Disney saying like, hey,
4:37
Speaker 1: let's try Disneyland in Florida. He definitely wanted to do that,
4:41
Speaker 1: but he wanted to do it on just such a
4:44
Speaker 1: vastly larger, more sweeping, more imaginative scale that it was
4:49
Speaker 1: almost like, it's just amazing that this man ever lived.
4:53
Speaker 1: And there's tons of criticism of him, rightfully so in
4:56
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but his imagination and like what
5:00
Speaker 1: he got done and what he gave the world is
5:03
Speaker 1: just it's remarkable.
5:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one thing we need to point out about
5:07
Speaker 2: this land is it was not like you know, prime land,
5:10
Speaker 2: especially in nineteen sixty four, before there was Disney World there.
5:15
Speaker 2: It was not the Orlando that we know today. And
5:17
Speaker 2: this land, like a lot of it was swampland that
5:20
Speaker 2: they had to spend a lot of money and time,
5:24
Speaker 2: you know, dredging, draining, building canals and making it a
5:29
Speaker 2: you know, a habitable place.
5:31
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw that they moved ten million cubic yards
5:34
Speaker 1: of dirt. Yeah, they had to develop twenty thousand of
5:38
Speaker 1: the twenty four thousand acres because it's just basically swamp.
5:42
Speaker 1: And it dug fifty miles of canals and they were
5:47
Speaker 1: doing all this. Like you said, Orlando wasn't the Orlando
5:49
Speaker 1: that it is today. Orlando is the way it is
5:52
Speaker 1: today because of what they were doing during this period.
5:54
Speaker 1: This is what started it.
5:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think anyone is under any misc inceptions
6:00
Speaker 2: about like what built that town. Sure, and it was
6:04
Speaker 2: a guy with a little pencilly mustache, but the town
6:08
Speaker 2: that ended up there celebration is not what the original
6:12
Speaker 2: plan was. The original plan was way cooler because if
6:16
Speaker 2: you've ever been to Epcot, their Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,
6:21
Speaker 2: one of their theme parks there, and you walked around
6:24
Speaker 2: and looked at the vision for this idylic society, that
6:28
Speaker 2: was what they were trying to build. They were it
6:30
Speaker 2: was supposed to be a neighborhood where people lived, and
6:32
Speaker 2: it actually Epcot was a real place and not a
6:35
Speaker 2: theme park.
6:36
Speaker 1: Did you see that the photo spread of the Epcot model,
6:41
Speaker 1: the original Epcot model I sent you.
6:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of those houses were pretty sweet.
6:45
Speaker 1: Isn't that sweet? Yeah, it was really cool. And I
6:47
Speaker 1: saw that Walt Disney planned for Epcot, the Experimental Prototype
6:53
Speaker 1: Community of Tomorrow, to never be finished, to never be complete,
6:58
Speaker 1: to always be trying new stuff ABTNS I think is
7:03
Speaker 1: what he said. Yeah, and it didn't quite go that way.
7:08
Speaker 1: They after he died, and when they finally did build Epcot,
7:12
Speaker 1: they called it that and they it is like meant
7:15
Speaker 1: to demonstrate future cool technology and then also kind of
7:19
Speaker 1: confusingly all the countries and nations of the world at
7:22
Speaker 1: the same time. But it is a really cool park,
7:25
Speaker 1: but it's nothing like what he wanted. The people don't
7:28
Speaker 1: live there, it's not like an experimental community, and that
7:32
Speaker 1: would actually become Celebration later on.
7:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he kind of wanted it to be
7:37
Speaker 2: like Tomorrowland, which is, you know, people parking their cars
7:42
Speaker 2: in tunnels underground, moving around on the monorails and the
7:46
Speaker 2: people movers and again just sort of this idyllic suburban
7:52
Speaker 2: but like a new type of suburbia. And in fact,
7:57
Speaker 2: what would eventually go to be called in the eighties
7:59
Speaker 2: and the early eighties new urbanism, which was this you know,
8:02
Speaker 2: we'll get well, I guess we can get to that
8:03
Speaker 2: right now, huh.
8:04
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, because they kind of prefigured it.
8:07
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, for sure. New urban urbanism came along in
8:11
Speaker 2: the early eighties, and it was based on this idea
8:15
Speaker 2: of you know, nice looking architecture houses with you know,
8:21
Speaker 2: where different people of different income levels would live very
8:24
Speaker 2: walkable set up in a nice grid and you could
8:27
Speaker 2: walk to the store and to the playground and to
8:30
Speaker 2: work into school and it's super safe and it you know,
8:33
Speaker 2: this was just sort of again that a deal like
8:35
Speaker 2: idyllic vision of the future, right.
8:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is what Celebration ended up being. It's
8:43
Speaker 1: considered a new urbanist town. But again, like I think
8:47
Speaker 1: Epcot opened in nineteen eighty two, right, yeah, and it
8:52
Speaker 1: would be that was a full decade or so before
8:54
Speaker 1: they even really started to think about building celebration. But
8:59
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I have to say, I want to
9:01
Speaker 1: give the obligatory shout out anytime we mentioned Epcot to
9:04
Speaker 1: the I think it's on Dangerous Minds website about the
9:09
Speaker 1: group of friends who hid out in the Horizon's ride
9:11
Speaker 1: at Epcot in the late eighties and photo documented their
9:16
Speaker 1: time there. It's really cool to check out. And then
9:19
Speaker 1: one other thing there I found this year's back. But
9:23
Speaker 1: they planned an airport, and there actually were flights that
9:27
Speaker 1: went directly to Disney World for a very brief time,
9:30
Speaker 1: I think in the early seventies. But on the landing strip,
9:35
Speaker 1: you know rumble strips when you'd like start to go
9:37
Speaker 1: off of the highway on the shoulder, it's got those
9:40
Speaker 1: those ripples that like make it sound and wake you up.
9:44
Speaker 1: They created a rumble strip on the runway for the
9:48
Speaker 1: plane to run over that when you run over it,
9:50
Speaker 1: and you can do this in your car. I think
9:52
Speaker 1: at about forty five miles an hour it plays when
9:54
Speaker 1: you wish upon a star as a rumble strip.
9:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have those in row in different countries and
10:02
Speaker 2: it's not like a solid strip, but it just hits
10:04
Speaker 2: various you know, tiny little bumps that caused musical notes.
10:08
Speaker 1: That's neat. I didn't know that.
10:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
10:11
Speaker 1: Okay, So back to it. So we've got Epcot in
10:15
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, and by the mid eighties there was
10:17
Speaker 1: a guy named Michael Eisner running this show, right.
10:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should point out that, you know, one
10:21
Speaker 2: of the big reasons that the original Epcot idea of
10:25
Speaker 2: a like a lovable real space when the other direction
10:28
Speaker 2: is because Walt Disney died in the interim, and after
10:32
Speaker 2: that everything kind of changed and that's when it became
10:35
Speaker 2: a theme park. But yeah, Eisner would come on board
10:38
Speaker 2: in the early I guess mid eighties and eighty four,
10:41
Speaker 2: big new urbanism guy was a big architecture guy, still is,
10:46
Speaker 2: and things were like, this was the early to mid
10:49
Speaker 2: eighties when Disney World was really really in a big,
10:52
Speaker 2: big growth pattern I guess, you know, hotels and expanding
10:57
Speaker 2: the park and all kinds of stuff. And they said,
11:00
Speaker 2: all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna we're
11:03
Speaker 2: gonna lop off part of this southeast corner of the
11:06
Speaker 2: property on the east side of I four, and we're
11:09
Speaker 2: just gonna reserve that for now think about what to
11:12
Speaker 2: do with it. And they started to get a little
11:15
Speaker 2: nervous that they were taking too long to think about
11:17
Speaker 2: it and that the state may come in and be like, hey,
11:19
Speaker 2: you're not developing it like you said you would. We're
11:21
Speaker 2: taking that.
11:22
Speaker 1: Back, right, So they decided to build a community. They
11:27
Speaker 1: kind of took up that part of EPCOT that had
11:30
Speaker 1: been cut off of the actual executed plan and see
11:34
Speaker 1: what they could do with it. Right, So they in
11:36
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five they started they started figuring out how
11:40
Speaker 1: to do this, and they put out a request for bids.
11:44
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the last word is, but sure
11:48
Speaker 1: like a brief, Yeah, a request for proposal RFP.
11:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, those those business things that we've never had to do.
11:57
Speaker 1: No, thank god. And then for architects. Firms submitted their
12:01
Speaker 1: ideas and I think two were selected to put together
12:06
Speaker 1: the final plan, and the whole thing started to take
12:10
Speaker 1: off from there, starting in nineteen eighty five. I saw
12:13
Speaker 1: that as far as at the beginning, they were starting
12:17
Speaker 1: to like kind of test names for the place, like
12:19
Speaker 1: right off the bat and focus groups. Terrible names. Tell
12:23
Speaker 1: them some of the names.
12:26
Speaker 2: The Golden Oberon Jubilee. Okay, where do you live? You know,
12:31
Speaker 2: Golden Oberon Jubilee or Godge goch what else?
12:36
Speaker 1: Odyssey, Ventura, Horizon's Landmark or Oval?
12:43
Speaker 2: How about Aurora, Solaris, Rainbow Majestic.
12:48
Speaker 1: Seriously, they sound like CIA projects.
12:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's ASRM, not to be confused to ASMR.
12:56
Speaker 1: Right. I also saw Fantasia Jubilee in hyperionra Like they
13:01
Speaker 1: were just I don't know what they were doing, Like,
13:04
Speaker 1: how could you even waste money on a focus group
13:06
Speaker 1: with these ideas?
13:07
Speaker 3: Right?
13:07
Speaker 1: So finally they're like, well how about something shorter?
13:13
Speaker 3: Right?
13:14
Speaker 1: Horizons? No, they used that on the ride already a
13:17
Speaker 1: Maritown that's a little on the nose. Yeah, somebody said
13:21
Speaker 1: celebration and they went celebrations it man, celebrations it uh
13:26
Speaker 1: And they fired that person so that they couldn't take
13:28
Speaker 1: any credit for coming up with the idea, and they
13:31
Speaker 1: told everybody Michael Eisner.
13:33
Speaker 2: Did I'm surprised that they didn't literally name it like
13:37
Speaker 2: Mouseville or something.
13:39
Speaker 1: H Yeah, I mean, that's better than Odyssey Ventura Horizons.
13:46
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like a Horsey book like tweet.
13:50
Speaker 2: Oh that's good stuff, all right. So they also, you know,
13:54
Speaker 2: it was a good move for Disney at the time
13:56
Speaker 2: because in the mid nineteen eighties had a little bit
13:58
Speaker 2: of a black eye because of this tens of millions
14:04
Speaker 2: of dollar infrastructure money that Disney didn't steal, but they
14:09
Speaker 2: kind of kept, yeah, or used for themselves.
14:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, essentially, So, as we'll see in a second, Disney
14:19
Speaker 1: was granted essentially the same status as a city or
14:23
Speaker 1: a town. A municipality in Florida has a lot of
14:26
Speaker 1: the same rights, and one of the things it can
14:28
Speaker 1: do is apply for state money for its projects.
14:31
Speaker 3: Right.
14:32
Speaker 1: So Orange County apparently went to go apply for a
14:37
Speaker 1: bunch of grants to help to build low income housing,
14:41
Speaker 1: and they found that they were too late. That Disney
14:44
Speaker 1: itself had hoovered up all of the money that was
14:48
Speaker 1: earmarked for Central Florida fifty cities and towns had hoovered
14:52
Speaker 1: up all of that almost sixty million dollars for its
14:55
Speaker 1: own infrastructure. Yeah, Like, Central Florida was not happy about
15:00
Speaker 1: this at all. Orange County had to actually go to
15:03
Speaker 1: Disney and be like, can we borrow one point eight
15:05
Speaker 1: million of that for this low income housing project? Disney like, sure, sure,
15:09
Speaker 1: at eighty percent interest. So it was a big scandal.
15:12
Speaker 1: So them announcing celebration was a big like, hey, look
15:15
Speaker 1: over here kind of thing. Look, we're still a big
15:17
Speaker 1: part of this, We're sinking money into this area. Don't
15:20
Speaker 1: be mad at us kind of thing exactly.
15:22
Speaker 2: And that sort of quasi governmental group that you spoke
15:26
Speaker 2: of was the made a lot of news in the
15:28
Speaker 2: past few years. The Reedy Creek Improvement District, you may
15:33
Speaker 2: have if you're outside the state of Florida, you probably
15:35
Speaker 2: never heard those four words until twenty twenty two when
15:39
Speaker 2: the governor of the state of Florida got into a well,
15:42
Speaker 2: got into a fight with Disney and dissolved it, and
15:45
Speaker 2: it is now the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The
15:50
Speaker 2: irons is on the oversight, Yeah, for sure. The irony
15:54
Speaker 2: here is is the Reedy Creek Improvement District came about
15:57
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven because Disney Company successfully lobbied to
16:01
Speaker 2: get this whatever new designation, in large part on the
16:05
Speaker 2: strength of that original Epcot plan. So they oh, really,
16:09
Speaker 2: they gave them this because of this EPCOT. You know,
16:12
Speaker 2: neighborhood idea bailed on that and then ended up being like, hey,
16:16
Speaker 2: we got our own little mini government here.
16:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much so, I mean like it. It was
16:21
Speaker 1: a government up until very recently, like they could tax
16:24
Speaker 1: residents and businesses in the area. They One of the
16:29
Speaker 1: reasons why they were granted this was so that the
16:31
Speaker 1: company could undertake things like infrastructure programs like providing sewer
16:35
Speaker 1: and water and stuff like that, generating power they could
16:40
Speaker 1: have as long as the improvement district goes around. They
16:43
Speaker 1: were allowed by law to have built a Mickey Mouse
16:47
Speaker 1: nuclear power plant if they'd wanted to. Like, they were
16:50
Speaker 1: that legal. It was a city essentially, right, So yeah,
16:53
Speaker 1: it was a big deal to have that taken away.
16:56
Speaker 1: But the upshot of that part was they were able
17:00
Speaker 1: to use some money to help build celebration. But then secondly,
17:06
Speaker 1: the people who live in the Reedy Creek Improvement District
17:09
Speaker 1: are able to vote to decide what happens with Disney
17:12
Speaker 1: World and stuff like that. But that amounts to less
17:16
Speaker 1: than sixty people who live in that district, and they
17:18
Speaker 1: all work for Disney, so they all vote the way
17:21
Speaker 1: Disney wants them to vote well with celebration. They were
17:24
Speaker 1: planning on bringing like twenty thousand families in and that
17:28
Speaker 1: would really dilute Disney's vote about their own their own
17:32
Speaker 1: theme park, their own business. So they were like, you
17:35
Speaker 1: know what this is actually outside of Reedy Creek.
17:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, you know that nuclear power
17:40
Speaker 2: plant would have had mouse heres at the top of
17:42
Speaker 2: the silos.
17:43
Speaker 1: Do they have high voltage like towers and they're they're
17:49
Speaker 1: in the shape of Mickey Mouse. Yeah, around that area.
17:52
Speaker 1: It's really something to see.
17:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, So here's what they did. Like you said, twenty
17:57
Speaker 2: thousand families is what the original proposal was or was
18:01
Speaker 2: it twenty thousand people twenty thousand residents? I think?
18:04
Speaker 1: Oh was it? Okay?
18:05
Speaker 2: Sorry, still it's a lot, yeah, a lot of people.
18:07
Speaker 2: So they announced this publicly in nineteen ninety one as like, hey,
18:11
Speaker 2: this is going to be open for business if you
18:13
Speaker 2: want to essentially live in a Disney World like environment.
18:19
Speaker 2: They held a lottery in nineteen ninety five for families
18:22
Speaker 2: to buy plots. I think for the four hundred and
18:25
Speaker 2: seventy four spots. They had about five thousand entries into
18:29
Speaker 2: that lottery and it should be no surprise that most
18:32
Speaker 2: of those people were like big Disney people that were thinking, like,
18:36
Speaker 2: what could be better than living in like a Disney neighborhood.
18:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, or essentially like a Disney Yeah, Disney neighborhood, like
18:44
Speaker 1: in the every sense of the word. And the first
18:47
Speaker 1: family moved in in nineteen ninety six, Larry and Terry
18:51
Speaker 1: the Habers. Isn't that cute?
18:53
Speaker 2: Yeah?
18:54
Speaker 1: And a few months later Downtown was finally completed and
18:57
Speaker 1: it was a big deal, like everybody knew about Celebration
19:00
Speaker 1: and it was being built. I think Disney ultimately shelled
19:03
Speaker 1: out about four billion dollars yeah, for the creation of Celebration.
19:09
Speaker 2: In the eighties and nineties.
19:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess so in like late nineties dollars. Yeah,
19:14
Speaker 1: you want to take a break?
19:17
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, gosh, we have to.
19:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. It was kind of rhetorical.
19:22
Speaker 2: All right, we'll be right back.
19:38
Speaker 3: Softly, jaw.
19:44
Speaker 2: Soff. All right. So when they started mapping out what
19:52
Speaker 2: they wanted Celebration to look like, they really reversed course
19:56
Speaker 2: on the whole Epcot idea, which was again a little
19:59
Speaker 2: more like Tomorrowland, and they were like, you know, what
20:02
Speaker 2: we need to do is make it like Chuck was
20:05
Speaker 2: talking about.
20:06
Speaker 1: Frontier Land and Act one not quite.
20:08
Speaker 2: Frontier Land, somewhere in the middle, which is to say,
20:11
Speaker 2: you know, old small town America. Pick at Vince's. You know,
20:15
Speaker 2: they talked about a new American town of block parties
20:18
Speaker 2: and Fourth of July parades, spaghetti dinners and surprise, it
20:21
Speaker 2: didn't say pancake breakfast, school bake sales, lollipops and fireflies
20:25
Speaker 2: and a jar. So you know, they're selling and I'm
20:28
Speaker 2: not making fun of this, they're there, but they were
20:31
Speaker 2: selling an idea as much as they were selling houses.
20:34
Speaker 1: They were selling a way of life. And they're like,
20:36
Speaker 1: who cares If this is this idyllic past never actually existed,
20:41
Speaker 1: We're going to make it exist here and you can
20:43
Speaker 1: come live here. And if you like Disney, it's gonna
20:46
Speaker 1: knock your socks off. And so they modeled it kind of.
20:48
Speaker 1: And the reason I laughed because it reminds me of
20:50
Speaker 1: the real Seymour Skinner when he comes back and claims
20:54
Speaker 1: is his identity. Yeah, he becomes principal and he says
20:58
Speaker 1: that he loves and bees and skin and knees. And
21:01
Speaker 1: if that's corny, then corn me up. That's just kind
21:05
Speaker 1: of what they reminded me of.
21:07
Speaker 2: I remember apart from that episode where he said whoever
21:10
Speaker 2: introduced him said, we would like to introduce the real
21:13
Speaker 2: principal Seymour Skinner, Principal Seymore Skinner or something like that.
21:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, Superintendent Chalmers, So that for sure. Yeah, so
21:21
Speaker 1: I don't remember where I was headed with that point. Oh,
21:25
Speaker 1: that they modeled it on Main Street, USA, Like, yeah,
21:28
Speaker 1: you first come into Disney World, like super cute pastel
21:32
Speaker 1: storefronts with wholesome stores behind them, just like everything's kind
21:38
Speaker 1: of close together so you can walk and feel like
21:40
Speaker 1: you're part of a community. That's what they went with.
21:42
Speaker 1: And apparently Walt and Roy Disney were kind of obsessed
21:46
Speaker 1: with that turn to the century, turn of the twentieth
21:49
Speaker 1: century America because they spent about five years in a
21:52
Speaker 1: town called Marceline, Missouri, the Disney family did from nineteen
21:56
Speaker 1: oh six to nineteen eleven, and that's kind of where
22:00
Speaker 1: they were inspired to love that kind of life. That's
22:04
Speaker 1: what they're trying to recreate with Celebration for sure.
22:07
Speaker 3: Oh.
22:07
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they're they're literal, like municipal seal or whatever. I
22:14
Speaker 2: guess that's what you call it. Right, Yeah, municipal seal.
22:16
Speaker 2: Yeah was a girl riding a bike with a little
22:21
Speaker 2: dog chasing her and a literal picket fence and a
22:24
Speaker 2: tree and it's just you know, it's that that's what
22:28
Speaker 2: they were selling. They hired, you know, branding specialist. They
22:32
Speaker 2: hired some really high profile architects and a lot of
22:36
Speaker 2: the you know, I'm not saying again it sounds like
22:38
Speaker 2: I'm like picking on it, but a lot of these
22:41
Speaker 2: buildings were really cool. Like that that post office, the
22:44
Speaker 2: design of it is super awesome. That that Spanish style
22:48
Speaker 2: hospital is beautiful. They built a googie cinema that a
22:53
Speaker 2: mc ran if you remember our googie architecture like it was,
22:56
Speaker 2: you know, it's some cool looking stuff.
22:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just a no that the Celebration City seal
23:02
Speaker 1: that you described. Olivia helped us out with this and
23:05
Speaker 1: she described it as aggressively idyllic. Yeah, a boy, I
23:10
Speaker 1: think that it casculated perfectly right. Yeah, But yeah, those
23:15
Speaker 1: buildings downtown were all designed. Each one was designed by
23:18
Speaker 1: a very very famous, very well respected architect. Each one
23:22
Speaker 1: had its own architect like Philip Johnson, the guy who
23:24
Speaker 1: designed the glass house, designed the bank at Celebration, like
23:27
Speaker 1: it was. This place was a big deal when it
23:30
Speaker 1: first opened. The thing is, well, I'm not even going
23:33
Speaker 1: to spoil it yet, you can you can just wait.
23:36
Speaker 1: So back to what they had. One of the other
23:38
Speaker 1: things that it touted was an experimental public school. Yeah,
23:42
Speaker 1: that house K through twelve. There's no other school like
23:45
Speaker 1: it in the area. Normally they have like a grade school,
23:48
Speaker 1: maybe a middle school, and then a high school. This
23:50
Speaker 1: was everything kindergarteners to seniors in high school, all going
23:53
Speaker 1: to school in the same building.
23:55
Speaker 2: That's right, which you know other people have done. That's
23:58
Speaker 2: not the most radical thing world, but it is radical
24:03
Speaker 2: at the time in the mid nineties to have a
24:05
Speaker 2: public school that had such a sort of progressive model
24:08
Speaker 2: of education. You can go to any you throw a
24:12
Speaker 2: rock in Atlanta and you'll hit some hippie dippy private
24:15
Speaker 2: school that does this kind of stuff on a very
24:18
Speaker 2: small scale. But to try to do a K twelve
24:21
Speaker 2: school where you have these new progressive teaching methods where
24:26
Speaker 2: you don't really give grades, but you give assessments, where
24:29
Speaker 2: you have combined classrooms, which Ruby School has combined classrooms,
24:33
Speaker 2: there's a lot of benefits to that. Yeah, it's like
24:35
Speaker 2: it's an awesome, proven thing, but it's a class of
24:41
Speaker 2: you know, twelve or thirteen kids with two teachers. That's all.
24:44
Speaker 2: At one point they had eighty kids to a class
24:47
Speaker 2: and two to three teachers in some of these big classes.
24:50
Speaker 1: Eighty kids just all going nuts at the same time.
24:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to give away kind of where we're headed,
24:56
Speaker 2: but the idea was progressive and sort of very forward
25:02
Speaker 2: thinking at the time for public school.
25:05
Speaker 1: It definitely was, for sure, and that attracted a lot
25:07
Speaker 1: of people too, Like they're like, not only are we
25:09
Speaker 1: going to give you like a community to live in
25:11
Speaker 1: like this, your kids are going to be experimented on
25:13
Speaker 1: by Walt Disney Corporation drink this. They also had Celebration Place,
25:21
Speaker 1: which was an office complex because one of the hallmarks
25:24
Speaker 1: of new urbanism is that you work nearby your home,
25:29
Speaker 1: like you can essentially walk or bike to work, like
25:32
Speaker 1: your community is basically your whole world.
25:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:36
Speaker 1: They also had retail stores. There was a Wolfgang Bakery
25:40
Speaker 1: still there today. I think it was one of the
25:42
Speaker 1: original stores and it's still there, which is impressive. But
25:45
Speaker 1: one of the things that they definitely did, at least
25:48
Speaker 1: at first, if you were a chain, you could not
25:51
Speaker 1: get a foothold into this community. You also couldn't put
25:55
Speaker 1: billboards up like it was very strictly controlled who could come.
26:00
Speaker 1: And they definitely favored small, independently owned businesses. And if
26:05
Speaker 1: it was a chain, it would be a regional chain
26:07
Speaker 1: at best at tops.
26:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can get on board with some of that stuff.
26:11
Speaker 1: Sure, for sure, it's not true anymore. There's a Starbucks there, right,
26:14
Speaker 1: I think there's a Starbucks absolutely everywhere, you know.
26:18
Speaker 2: True. And I did see that one of the videos.
26:20
Speaker 2: You know, I got a little bit of a chuckle.
26:23
Speaker 2: So if you decided to move there and build a
26:27
Speaker 2: house there, you couldn't just say, like, jeez, you know
26:31
Speaker 2: what do I want to build? What kind of house
26:32
Speaker 2: really fits me? They would hand you a book of
26:36
Speaker 2: about seventy pages thick that said, here's one of six
26:39
Speaker 2: style houses. You can build in one of one, two
26:43
Speaker 2: through four, five different colors, and you're going to have
26:46
Speaker 2: a front porch, and you're going to have that picket fence.
26:49
Speaker 2: At least at first. You can't park your car in
26:53
Speaker 2: the driveway at first, you got to park that car
26:55
Speaker 2: out back. You got to keep it up. Don't even
26:57
Speaker 2: think about parking a boat in your driveway and some
27:01
Speaker 2: of the stuff that I've seen online. I tried to confirm,
27:04
Speaker 2: like one absolutely, but I couldn't. But I also saw
27:07
Speaker 2: there was one hundred and sixty page just sort of
27:10
Speaker 2: rule book for living there, Yeah, including that you every
27:15
Speaker 2: house had to have a hidden Mickey mouse somewhere in it.
27:17
Speaker 1: Mm hmm is that true. Yeah, I saw that as well.
27:21
Speaker 1: I didn't read the book itself, but yes, I saw
27:24
Speaker 1: that referenced as well from some legitimate source or other.
27:28
Speaker 2: And it did see somewhere that you could park one
27:30
Speaker 2: car in the driveway and everything else had to be
27:33
Speaker 2: around back. So I'm not really sure the rules there.
27:35
Speaker 2: But what about those lamp posts.
27:38
Speaker 1: Okay, so if you went downtown, depending on the time
27:41
Speaker 1: of year, the lamp posts might be shooting out leaf
27:44
Speaker 1: shaped confetti on you that would be in the fall.
27:49
Speaker 1: Typically sometimes they would also shoot out soap side or
27:52
Speaker 1: shaving cream snow, so it would snow on you, and
27:56
Speaker 1: I guess you'd get soapy as you were walking to work.
27:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
28:00
Speaker 1: I also said that they also they imported leaves and
28:02
Speaker 1: fakes know as well. At times. I didn't see that elsewhere,
28:07
Speaker 1: but I just saw it in one place. But it
28:09
Speaker 1: was like that kind of place. Also, wherever you're walking
28:13
Speaker 1: down town, they're playing like forties and fifties, like hits music, pop,
28:17
Speaker 1: praisic sure, sure, and then and other places they'll have
28:20
Speaker 1: hidden speakers that play recorded bird.
28:23
Speaker 2: Song bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum
28:26
Speaker 2: bum bum bum bum.
28:28
Speaker 1: And I think here's this is where we've reached the
28:31
Speaker 1: point where it's starting to become understandable why outsiders are
28:34
Speaker 1: like this is psychotic.
28:36
Speaker 2: It gets a little creepy sounding. Yeah, something out of
28:40
Speaker 2: a movie, you know.
28:41
Speaker 1: Right, it's so artificial that there's almost no room for
28:46
Speaker 1: nature or reality to come in. And yeah, like are
28:50
Speaker 1: there actual birds there or are they been driven away
28:53
Speaker 1: by the bird song? Who knows? Like, I think that's why.
28:57
Speaker 1: And people often compare it to the neighborhood from the
29:00
Speaker 1: Stepford Wives.
29:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, or that one last year or a couple of
29:04
Speaker 2: years ago, Bavarium No, the one with uh oh god,
29:10
Speaker 2: Nick Cral's the only person I can think of the
29:12
Speaker 2: Senate and he's not the lead Harry Styles and.
29:15
Speaker 1: Uh oh, don't worry Darling.
29:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
29:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also the Truman Show. It gets compared to that.
29:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's interesting because the Truman Show was filmed
29:24
Speaker 1: in Seaside, Florida, and Seaside is also like a very
29:29
Speaker 1: almost textbook example of a new urbanist Florida beachtown.
29:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Seaside is a little more of a
29:38
Speaker 2: real place though, right, Like, yeah, they don't have like
29:41
Speaker 2: fake bird song and stuff like that.
29:43
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, they don't have that. And also I'm
29:45
Speaker 1: not I don't believe.
29:47
Speaker 3: So.
29:47
Speaker 1: One of the other things about Celebration that we'll see
29:49
Speaker 1: is they have that one hundred and sixty page rule book.
29:52
Speaker 1: It's it's enforced, like if your lawn goes, you know,
29:56
Speaker 1: over the allowed height I think it's three or three
29:59
Speaker 1: and a half inch, you'll get a letter from the
30:02
Speaker 1: HOA saying cut your lawn. Or if you do have
30:04
Speaker 1: that boat in your driveway, they'll be like, you got
30:06
Speaker 1: to move that boat. You can get a letter if
30:08
Speaker 1: you take your Christmas decorations down one day too late,
30:12
Speaker 1: like everyone takes their Christmas decorations down by a certain date.
30:16
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like the HOA is very strict
30:19
Speaker 1: and if you like rules and you like not having
30:21
Speaker 1: to go tell your neighbors to take their stupid Christmas
30:24
Speaker 1: lights down because it's March. You would love to live
30:27
Speaker 1: at celebration. I think that's the appeal for a lot
30:28
Speaker 1: of people.
30:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So if you're going to have a
30:31
Speaker 2: new urbanist society or neighborhood, one of the you know,
30:36
Speaker 2: kind of main tenants of that is like different kinds
30:39
Speaker 2: of people can live here, of different ethnicities and in
30:42
Speaker 2: different financial categories, financial categories, pay groups. What would you
30:50
Speaker 2: call that?
30:50
Speaker 1: Would I would say different folks from different strokes.
30:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I don't know why I couldn't think of
30:56
Speaker 2: a very simple term there, but so early on early
31:01
Speaker 2: pay categories. Economic diversity is what we're looking for, is
31:05
Speaker 2: what they said at first. And they did advertise to
31:08
Speaker 2: you know, black and Latino families. They did have some
31:12
Speaker 2: African American employees in the sales office. But you know,
31:16
Speaker 2: if you're going to do something like that, sometimes you
31:18
Speaker 2: need to, like and this happens all the time in cities,
31:21
Speaker 2: might subsidize some of the housing if you want to
31:23
Speaker 2: really bring in true diversity. And instead they took close
31:27
Speaker 2: to a million bucks and move people out of there
31:31
Speaker 2: that they didn't want there to other places.
31:33
Speaker 1: They said, you live over here, we're not going to
31:36
Speaker 1: build anything here. We'll build some low income housing, but
31:39
Speaker 1: we're not going to do it in Celebration. You stay
31:41
Speaker 1: outside of Celebration. Yes, the racial diversity push was a valid, valiant,
31:48
Speaker 1: i should say, attempt, but it became pretty clear pretty
31:51
Speaker 1: quickly that it didn't work. By the time the two
31:53
Speaker 1: thousand census came around, it revealed that Celebration, Florida in
31:57
Speaker 1: two thousand was eighty eight percent white, and that was
32:02
Speaker 1: like thirty thirty percent higher than the surrounding county the
32:10
Speaker 1: rate for the surrounding county, and a lot of black
32:14
Speaker 1: families were priced out, Like if you moved to Celebration,
32:17
Speaker 1: you were paying about thirty percent more than you would
32:20
Speaker 1: for a comparable house out in Osiola County outside of Celebration.
32:26
Speaker 1: It's just much more expensive to live there, and traditionally
32:29
Speaker 1: black families have less family wealth to buy a house
32:32
Speaker 1: that's thirty percent more expensive. And then as the place
32:35
Speaker 1: became whiter and whiter, fewer and fewer black families felt
32:38
Speaker 1: comfortable living there, So it just became more and more white,
32:41
Speaker 1: until more and more Hispanic families started moving in and
32:45
Speaker 1: kind of diluted the racial makeup a little more.
32:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you want to feel if you want
32:51
Speaker 2: to either have a laugh or have a cry about
32:54
Speaker 2: home prices these days. The average price of a home
32:58
Speaker 2: in Celebration Florida in those earth early years was one
33:00
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four thousand dollars, which was twenty percent
33:04
Speaker 2: higher than the complete national average. That's nuts, man, Yeah,
33:09
Speaker 2: the good old days.
33:10
Speaker 1: I saw that. Now it's something like I think six
33:14
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy seven is the national no, the median average,
33:18
Speaker 1: the medium price for celebration I don't know about nationally. Yeah, man,
33:22
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty grand.
33:24
Speaker 2: And that was twenty percent higher. That's not even You
33:28
Speaker 2: can't even lose like one hundred grand, I guess.
33:29
Speaker 1: As a down payment these days.
33:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, good luck with that.
33:32
Speaker 1: Crazy. So okay, back to it, Chuck, I think it's
33:36
Speaker 1: about here. Well, should we take another break or no?
33:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
33:42
Speaker 1: Okay. I was not expecting that, but here we go.
33:44
Speaker 3: Everybody an stoftly jaw.
34:11
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. Now we get to, since we are technically
34:14
Speaker 1: a media outlet, the darker side of Celebration Florida.
34:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can't not talk about it because
34:24
Speaker 2: it was a situation where Disney rushed the project allegedly,
34:28
Speaker 2: and these third party contractors sometimes were under the gun
34:32
Speaker 2: to get these houses built, and what you ended up
34:34
Speaker 2: with was collapsing front porches. Apparently like seventy of the
34:39
Speaker 2: houses needed new roofs, their foundations were cracking, plumbing was leaking,
34:44
Speaker 2: and not necessarily every single house, but it seemed like
34:48
Speaker 2: a lot of them were poorly built.
34:50
Speaker 1: They were poorly built, so the construction was shoddy from
34:53
Speaker 1: the outset, especially when Disney wasn't directly involved in the construction. Right,
34:58
Speaker 1: that's a huge, huge deal that will come and to
35:00
Speaker 1: play a little bit down the road. The school itself
35:04
Speaker 1: very quickly, the parents were like, I don't know about
35:07
Speaker 1: not assigning my kids homework for the entire year or
35:12
Speaker 1: telling them what books they should go read. And they're
35:15
Speaker 1: not even giving them grades. What is this? Everybody wins
35:18
Speaker 1: on their report card. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
35:22
Speaker 1: So the parents revolted very quickly and they're like, no,
35:25
Speaker 1: we're not doing this. We want to make this more traditional,
35:27
Speaker 1: and eventually they lopped off the high school from it
35:30
Speaker 1: built another high school in celebration, but it was a
35:33
Speaker 1: public high school open to other areas around celebration, not
35:37
Speaker 1: just celebration itself.
35:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also saw it was pretty much a nightmare
35:41
Speaker 2: for the teachers and staff. Yeah, and the principal quit
35:44
Speaker 2: after a year, along with about twenty five percent of
35:47
Speaker 2: the staff. It's after year one, and it was you know,
35:51
Speaker 2: when you've got classrooms at size and it's especially with
35:55
Speaker 2: a new kind of structure, it was supposedly pretty chaotic.
35:59
Speaker 1: Again, eighty children grades. I think they had grades like
36:04
Speaker 1: three to five in the same classroom. Eighty of those kids,
36:08
Speaker 1: and you're one teacher trying to teach all these kids.
36:11
Speaker 1: I can't. I mean, how do they not just look
36:13
Speaker 1: at that paper and be like, this is a bad idea.
36:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the idea with mixed grades now is
36:20
Speaker 2: and may have been then, but that's probably too many.
36:22
Speaker 2: Is you mix two grades and one year your kid
36:26
Speaker 2: is the younger and you get good help from older
36:29
Speaker 2: buddies and it really socially kind of helps. And then
36:32
Speaker 2: the next year you the older, and then that you
36:34
Speaker 2: are the more of the mentor type, and that all
36:37
Speaker 2: plays out in the end to just, you know, socially
36:40
Speaker 2: and emotionally pretty great. But again, with eighty kids, it's.
36:45
Speaker 1: Just tough, right, that's my ultimate point. What you're describing
36:48
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. And I also saw that one of the
36:50
Speaker 1: reasons for putting grades together in the same I think
36:53
Speaker 1: they call them neighborhoods or whatever, is because kids progress
36:56
Speaker 1: at different rates, some slower than others, and so if
36:59
Speaker 1: you put a bunch of grades together, those kids who
37:02
Speaker 1: are going to progress faster can progress faster, and the
37:04
Speaker 1: kids who are going to take their own time can
37:06
Speaker 1: take their own time. That makes sense to me too. Again,
37:09
Speaker 1: it's the eighty kids in a single classroom. That's just
37:14
Speaker 1: that in and of itself is nuts. What about crime,
37:16
Speaker 1: because this is where everybody's like.
37:18
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, yeah. And here's where parents, You know, if
37:22
Speaker 2: you want to not listen to these next five minutes
37:24
Speaker 2: with your kids, it might be advisable because there has
37:27
Speaker 2: been some crime, just like any place in the world.
37:30
Speaker 2: What they didn't do was build some huge wall around
37:33
Speaker 2: this town, and you would still even have crime, sure,
37:37
Speaker 2: because that's just what happens. But in nineteen eighty eight
37:39
Speaker 2: there was a I'm sorry ninety eight, there was a
37:41
Speaker 2: home invasion where a couple was bound and gagged and
37:44
Speaker 2: robbed in their house.
37:46
Speaker 1: It wasn't Terry and Larry, was it?
37:48
Speaker 2: I don't think, so this was a pretty big deal.
37:53
Speaker 2: In November twenty ten, the first murder in celebration happened
37:59
Speaker 2: when Matteo Patrick Geovandito, a fifty year old retired school teacher,
38:05
Speaker 2: was living alone and was found dead, strangled with a
38:08
Speaker 2: shoelace and you know, had some acts work done on him.
38:13
Speaker 2: And that's horrific enough, but then it comes out later
38:17
Speaker 2: that his killer, David Israel Xenon Marillo, was there to
38:22
Speaker 2: wash his car and then brought inside drugged with a beer,
38:27
Speaker 2: and when he woke up, Matteo Patrick Giovendido was on
38:32
Speaker 2: top of him sexually assaulting him. And this guy went
38:35
Speaker 2: nuts and killed him.
38:36
Speaker 1: He did, And the guy's story sounded a little far
38:40
Speaker 1: fetched until I think two years later, a couple of
38:44
Speaker 1: reporters from the Daily Beasts it must have been tipped
38:46
Speaker 1: off because they started tracking down former students, reading depositions,
38:51
Speaker 1: looking at court filings and found that Geovandido had a
38:57
Speaker 1: long history of sexually abusing his students, even going on
39:01
Speaker 1: like trips with them abroad, like just him and a
39:04
Speaker 1: student or two. Yeah, So like that doesn't excuse him
39:09
Speaker 1: being bludgeoned to death with an axe, but it definitely
39:11
Speaker 1: backs up the dude's story, you know. And I even
39:14
Speaker 1: saw in a I think an article right after it happened.
39:18
Speaker 1: I think that Marillo was quoted as saying he got
39:21
Speaker 1: what he deserved, Like this guy been arrested and he
39:24
Speaker 1: was telling the press he got what he deserved when
39:26
Speaker 1: I killed him with an axe.
39:28
Speaker 2: He he got a second degree murdered life sentence for that.
39:32
Speaker 2: And also, to just to be clear, if we weren't
39:36
Speaker 2: the victim was not a teacher in Celebration. He had
39:40
Speaker 2: retired by that time.
39:41
Speaker 1: Oh, good point, good point.
39:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:43
Speaker 1: A couple of days later it went kind of buck
39:46
Speaker 1: wild and celebration again.
39:47
Speaker 2: Right, Was this the the swat standoff or the Okay,
39:52
Speaker 2: I didn't know if that was the family homicide. No,
39:56
Speaker 2: I guess we'll get to both of them.
39:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all of that's right. No, okay, So the
40:01
Speaker 1: family homicide was ten years later. This was a few
40:04
Speaker 1: days after Giovandido's body was found in twenty ten. There
40:08
Speaker 1: was a guy named Craig Fouchet who was a Celebration resident,
40:12
Speaker 1: and he barricaded himself in his house and started firing
40:15
Speaker 1: at the cops who came.
40:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember when this happened actually, oh really yeah,
40:20
Speaker 2: oh yeah, it was all over the news. It was
40:22
Speaker 2: a fourteen hour standoff. Eventually the police, you know, going
40:25
Speaker 2: there with tear gas and everything, and found that he
40:27
Speaker 2: had already taken his own life and it was you know,
40:30
Speaker 2: one of the situations where he was going bankrupt, going
40:33
Speaker 2: through divorce, foreclosure, all that kind of thing.
40:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's called high risk for a self inflicted injury
40:40
Speaker 1: for sure.
40:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. And not to dwell on the crimes, but there
40:44
Speaker 2: was one last ghastly thing you said, I think Tenure
40:47
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, when a man murdered his wife and
40:51
Speaker 2: three kids and dog and was living with their decomposing
40:56
Speaker 2: bodies when the police caught up to him.
40:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was around Christmas, right, and they didn't find
41:00
Speaker 1: it until January sometime.
41:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very grizzly and sad.
41:06
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that people are like, see,
41:09
Speaker 1: you can't get away from it, and that stuff happens elsewhere.
41:12
Speaker 1: It's just when you put it in the context of
41:15
Speaker 1: a place that has been created to not have that
41:18
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, it just is that much more ghastly,
41:22
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, absolutely, So back to there were a
41:26
Speaker 1: few other things that weren't crimes but still kind of
41:28
Speaker 1: gave Celebration a strange reputation. There was something called the
41:32
Speaker 1: Celebration Death Pond. There was a weird curve in a
41:36
Speaker 1: road at an intersection, and it wasn't clear which way
41:38
Speaker 1: you should go, and if you didn't turn the right way,
41:40
Speaker 1: you would drive right into this fifteen foot retention pond.
41:43
Speaker 1: And that happened to three teenagers who just disappeared one
41:46
Speaker 1: day and weren't found for nine months, and they were
41:49
Speaker 1: finally found in that pond. They eventually fixed it, but
41:53
Speaker 1: not before it Celebration Death Pond became a bit of
41:55
Speaker 1: a moniker on the internet.
41:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, they built a wall with flashing lights. Yeah, you
42:02
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't dead into a lake with the road going
42:05
Speaker 2: left and right like on those hard curves. Another reason
42:09
Speaker 2: it's called the death pond is when they were down
42:11
Speaker 2: there diving and looking and found this car, they found
42:16
Speaker 2: four other cars down there, no, and they're like, oh,
42:20
Speaker 2: there's turns out this has happened before.
42:22
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. Oh yeah, I saw there was
42:25
Speaker 1: as I was researching that I found an article from
42:28
Speaker 1: Oklahoma where they found the car of three teenagers who'd
42:33
Speaker 1: gone missing in nineteen seventy and they found it like
42:36
Speaker 1: forty years later, and they found another car with a
42:40
Speaker 1: group of three people that had gone missing in nineteen
42:42
Speaker 1: sixty and ten years apart. These cars ended up right
42:45
Speaker 1: next to each other in this lake.
42:47
Speaker 3: Wow.
42:48
Speaker 1: I know, it's just so strange, But I did not
42:51
Speaker 1: know that about Celebration death pond.
42:52
Speaker 2: That's crazy, all right, So we should get back to
42:57
Speaker 2: Celebration itself. And kind of happened with the town and
43:02
Speaker 2: the HOA there because in two thousand and four, Disney
43:06
Speaker 2: sold the downtown town Center in the business district, which
43:09
Speaker 2: was twenty one buildings, nine commercial, ten mixed use, and
43:13
Speaker 2: two residential, to a private firm called Lexin Capital L
43:18
Speaker 2: E XI N. And all of a sudden, because they
43:23
Speaker 2: had all those different buildings, they were the majority vote
43:28
Speaker 2: in the HOA. So, all of a sudden, if you
43:31
Speaker 2: lived in Celebration, Florida, you lived in this neighborhood, you
43:37
Speaker 2: essentially had zero say over anything that went on there
43:40
Speaker 2: because LExEN owned the vote and owned the HOA essentially.
43:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's bad enough. I mean, that's just a
43:48
Speaker 1: situation right for abuse. But the Lexin is well known
43:51
Speaker 1: around Celebration for being the opposite of transparent. Yeah, and
43:55
Speaker 1: so over the course of a good decade or more,
44:00
Speaker 1: this homeowners association started to notice like lex and Capital
44:05
Speaker 1: wasn't responding to any calls for repairs. And remember we
44:09
Speaker 1: said Celebration was built really quickly, often by third party
44:14
Speaker 1: construction companies, often very shoddily. And the townhouses, the residential
44:19
Speaker 1: stuff downtown that lex and Capital bought were really showing
44:23
Speaker 1: signs of disrepair and nobody was showing up to repair it.
44:26
Speaker 1: And because of the structure of the ownership, the people
44:30
Speaker 1: who lived in the condominiums only owned the interiors, so
44:33
Speaker 1: even if they wanted to pay somebody to come fix
44:35
Speaker 1: the roof, they couldn't legally do that. That's just nuts,
44:39
Speaker 1: it is, but it's common with condos in particular. They
44:43
Speaker 1: but normally the people who are in charge of that
44:46
Speaker 1: will come and have the roof repaired. But when they
44:50
Speaker 1: finally sued lex and Capital, they found all sorts of
44:53
Speaker 1: terrible stuff had been going on and that they were
44:56
Speaker 1: in big trouble. And now Lexin was saying, we're going
44:59
Speaker 1: to assess fifteen or ten or fifteen million dollars to
45:03
Speaker 1: make these repairs. Even though you guys have been paying
45:05
Speaker 1: into THEA your HOA dues, which are meant to keep
45:08
Speaker 1: up with those repairs. We're saying you owe ten million
45:11
Speaker 1: more and we don't know what happened to the money
45:14
Speaker 1: that you put in.
45:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they were saying, you haven't been paying
45:18
Speaker 2: your dues and they were like, no, we have. You
45:21
Speaker 2: can't just say that, like where's the money we paid?
45:24
Speaker 2: And I don't even know, like has this even been resolved?
45:27
Speaker 1: No, as far as I know, it's not, and it's
45:29
Speaker 1: going to take a long time to unravel. One of
45:32
Speaker 1: the things I saw is that they in court proceedings,
45:34
Speaker 1: they found out that LExEN had not once but twice
45:38
Speaker 1: refinanced the mortgage that it had on its its holdings
45:43
Speaker 1: in celebration and took out like twenty million and then
45:46
Speaker 1: another fifteen million in equity. So they were sucking the money,
45:50
Speaker 1: the value out of the town and then not putting
45:53
Speaker 1: a nickel back into it to keep it up.
45:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. Flash forward a couple of years, and all of
46:17
Speaker 2: a sudden, we're a country in the middle of a
46:20
Speaker 2: housing crisis and foreclosure crisis, and between two thousand and
46:24
Speaker 2: nine and twenty ten, one and twenty residents of Celebration
46:30
Speaker 2: had to go through foreclosure. This is compared to one
46:33
Speaker 2: in forty eight for Florida overall. At the time AMC
46:37
Speaker 2: shut down that theater. I don't think we mentioned that
46:39
Speaker 2: they're cool, giggy theater. They were like, hey, no, sexy
46:43
Speaker 2: shoot them ups. We're only going to show like really
46:46
Speaker 2: clean movies. And people turns out like going and seeing
46:51
Speaker 2: sexy shoot them ups. And they're like, we can't keep
46:53
Speaker 2: running Pleasantville over and over in the Truman Show.
46:56
Speaker 1: They're like pleasant Hills to dirty and suggestive.
46:59
Speaker 2: So they see, at least for their part, got out
47:02
Speaker 2: of that theater and it shut down.
47:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what's going on with the theater
47:05
Speaker 1: right now, if somebody some independent persons running it or not,
47:09
Speaker 1: or if it's just abandoned.
47:12
Speaker 2: I bet you it's open again, but that's just a.
47:14
Speaker 1: Guess I would hope. So. So, despite all this, and
47:18
Speaker 1: despite the troubles of the people living in the downtown
47:21
Speaker 1: area with lex and Capital, outside of downtown, it seems
47:25
Speaker 1: to be pretty much happiness generally among the owners at Celebration.
47:31
Speaker 1: I think the initial almost crazy expectations from what celebration
47:39
Speaker 1: would be and could offer has been replaced by a
47:43
Speaker 1: little more realistic understanding.
47:46
Speaker 2: But I think it's settled in.
47:47
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a great way to put it. But the
47:49
Speaker 1: people there like, yeah, it's not just some amazing perfect place,
47:54
Speaker 1: but it's also not the psychotic Stepford neighborhood that you
47:58
Speaker 1: guys are making it. It's a really really nice place
48:01
Speaker 1: to live and we love living here, so leave us alone.
48:04
Speaker 1: And that seems to be kind of the general consensus
48:07
Speaker 1: of the people living in the bubble from what I
48:08
Speaker 1: can tell.
48:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, if it achieved its new urbanism goals,
48:13
Speaker 2: it did in certain ways. They do have that town
48:16
Speaker 2: center and you can walk to a lot of stuff,
48:20
Speaker 2: you can bike to a lot of stuff. There are
48:24
Speaker 2: a lot of playgrounds and things like that. But there
48:27
Speaker 2: are also a lot of cars. And beyond that, it
48:30
Speaker 2: did not hit the criteria of things like off you know,
48:34
Speaker 2: employment opportunities for people who actually live there to work there,
48:38
Speaker 2: affordable housing, that kind of thing. Like you said, the
48:42
Speaker 2: Latino and Hispanic population increased, I think to about sixteen percent.
48:48
Speaker 2: They're down to seventy two percent non Hispanic white population now,
48:53
Speaker 2: and I think about sixty percent of the residents own
48:57
Speaker 2: their own house, and like you can't rest or renters.
49:00
Speaker 2: But even if you own a house, like there are
49:02
Speaker 2: no airbnbs or vrbos, like you can't rent a house
49:05
Speaker 2: shop from there.
49:07
Speaker 1: Way yeah, no, it's literally laughable the idea. Yes, you
49:13
Speaker 1: got anything else about Celebration.
49:15
Speaker 2: Florida, got nothing else?
49:17
Speaker 1: I've got one more thing. If you like this and
49:20
Speaker 1: like to hear us talking about Celebration Florida, you can
49:23
Speaker 1: also go listen to us talking about Celebration Florida with
49:26
Speaker 1: our friends over at the Big Flop.
49:27
Speaker 3: Right.
49:28
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we were guests on the show. They pitched Celebration
49:32
Speaker 2: Florida because you know, the idea of the show is
49:34
Speaker 2: things that flopped, and we thought we would do our
49:37
Speaker 2: version to acquaint ourselves more with it, you know, before
49:41
Speaker 2: we recorded with them. I think THEIRS is going to
49:43
Speaker 2: come out first though, right.
49:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, we said, wow, what a coincidence,
49:47
Speaker 1: We're about to do an episode on Celebration Florida.
49:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, but check it out.
49:51
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun, Yeah, super fun. And
49:54
Speaker 1: since Chuck and I agreed that being on the Big
49:57
Speaker 1: Flop was a lot of fun. Obviously, that's unlockable listener mail.
50:04
Speaker 2: Hey guys, my family and I completed our annual road
50:07
Speaker 2: trip summer vacation. On the way back home, I was
50:09
Speaker 2: a loss for what to listen to on the twelve
50:12
Speaker 2: hour drive that was suitable for me and my two boys,
50:15
Speaker 2: Liam and Nathan, teenagers.
50:17
Speaker 1: Liam and Neeson.
50:19
Speaker 2: Liam and Neeson. He's got a very particular set of skills,
50:22
Speaker 2: that child. That's when Liam asked if I ever had
50:26
Speaker 2: ever heard of stuff you should know. Not much of
50:28
Speaker 2: a podcast listener, but and hadn't heard of the show,
50:31
Speaker 2: but it turned it on and we listened the entire
50:33
Speaker 2: way back. We learned about whistling, Wikipedia, Guinness Records. I
50:38
Speaker 2: was about to say they just went straight back. Actually
50:40
Speaker 2: I think they did. Wore the World's Panic, Dumb Criminals, hitchhiking,
50:44
Speaker 2: Fort Knox, Peanuts, Alien abductions, Multitasking, Star Wars Christmas Special. Okay,
50:49
Speaker 2: they're jumping around a bit, which was Liam's personal favorite.
50:53
Speaker 2: Was the history of the board game Clue.
50:57
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good one. Liam agreed.
51:00
Speaker 2: We enjoyed learning about the kill Dozer and watched the
51:02
Speaker 2: documentary tread to see that thing in action. Since getting
51:05
Speaker 2: turned onto the show, I can't help but listen to
51:07
Speaker 2: y'all even when I'm driving around town running errands. I
51:10
Speaker 2: appreciate the knowledge for you guys for giving me and
51:12
Speaker 2: my voice along with something to bond over. And that
51:15
Speaker 2: is from Paul Newfield in Louisiana.
51:18
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thanks Paul, Thanks Liam for turning your dad
51:21
Speaker 1: on to Stuff you Should Know. We appreciate a big time.
51:23
Speaker 1: The check is in the mail.
51:25
Speaker 2: Yes, and Nathan and Nisan.
51:27
Speaker 3: Yes.
51:28
Speaker 1: If you want to be like Liam and Nathan and
51:31
Speaker 1: Paul and you want to get in touch with us
51:33
Speaker 1: to say how much you like what we do, we
51:34
Speaker 1: love hearing that kind of stuff. You can send it
51:37
Speaker 1: via email to stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
51:43
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
51:46
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