Walt Disney World and DeSantis Agree to Play Nice

Ron DeSantis’s two-year-long nightmare of beefing with a theme park (the one he got married at) is finally over. The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District has accepted a settlement offered by the Walt Disney Company. The settlement “ends much of the litigation between the company and state officials” and essentially ends the stalemate over the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Back in 2020, Disney at first took a neutral stance toward the Florida governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. When Disney employees protested, the company issued a statement saying the bill “should never have passed.” DeSantis got steamed and revoked Disney’s control over the Reedy Creek Improvement District — the special taxing district for the land on which Walt Disney World sits. Disney used to be able to make most civic decisions for the roads, building permits, and whatnot on that land; they could even have operated a nuclear power plant without the state’s permission. DeSantis took that all away. In response, Disney used a “royal clause” to strip DeSantis’s new board of its powers.

This settlement winds the clock back on all that, putting forth a “2020 comprehensive plan,” per the Sentinel. The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District will make decisions but will “consult with Disney” when doing so. DeSantis also seemed to reverse his “Disney grooms children” stance, or at least walk it back to accusing only California’s Disney employees. “A lot of what happened with parents’ rights in education, some of that stuff was really driven by Burbank,” he said at a press conference. “It was not driven by Orlando … I think that there is a desire to move forward.” Burbank may still be on notice because Disney’s federal free-speech lawsuit is still pending appeal.