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I have never been to Disney World, and I have not thought about the infrastructure required to build an amusement park of its scale. Aaron Goldberg’s Buying Disney’s World: The Story of How Florida Swampland Became Walt Disney World tells the behind-the-scenes story of Disney’s massive operation to buy and build Disney World. 

I appreciated the forethought and planning the company utilized to build a $400 million park in 1971 with almost no debt. The company learned from its mistakes in building in Disney Land. The company purchased close to 10,000 acres secretly, acted as their own general contractors when others failed them, and heavily utilized corporate partnerships to finance the park. The company also created two municipalities to build its visionary theme park features while also creating its own utilities infrastructure. Disney World has stood the test of time, and the State of Florida has benefited greatly for giving the company unprecedented control. 

I thought Goldberg told an easy-to-read and cohesive story without getting too mired in the details of the operation. It is inspiring to see how Walt and Roy Disney made this park with a huge vision happen against steep odds and a brutal timeline.

Quotes

“Walt, Roy, and their collection of sly proxies had done it. By late spring of 1965 they had purchased over forty-three square miles—equal to the size of San Francisco and roughly twice the size of Manhattan—for about $5 million. The average price per acre was under $200.”

“Walt was once asked why he didn’t run for office. His response was, “Why be a governor or a senator when you can be king of Disneyland?” 

“The Seven Seas Lagoon, which is 200 acres large, nearly a mile square, and has a depth of about ten feet. To carve out the lagoon, over eight million cubic yards of earth were moved—it was considered the biggest earth moving operation since the Hoover Dam—along with the clearing of 1,500 trees. Many of these trees were either replanted around Disney property or used to help to bolster its one-hundred-acre tree farm. Disney took the fill from the lagoon and raised the entire area for the park by over fourteen feet, thus allowing it to build safely on the land.”

“In creating the Hall of Presidents, two full-time research librarians devoted eighteen months to providing writers, designers and painters with more than 600 books, 300 magazines, and 5,000 photographs as references to accurately create and portray the past leaders of the country.”