Carl Hiaasen (4 page)

On the night of August 31, 1994, Disney World guards spotted two young men goofing around on the roof of a covered walkway at the Contemporary Resort. The young men quickly scrambled to the ground, ran to a pickup truck, and sped away. A Disney security van pursued, its red lights flashing.

The chase reached speeds approaching eighty miles per hour. A mile outside Disney World’s gates, the pickup crashed, killing the passenger, eighteen-year-old Robb Sipkema.

In Florida, all traffic deaths are investigated by the state highway patrol. The troopers assigned to the Sipkema case found Disney not at all helpful. Incredibly, the company refused to let them interview Susan Buckland, the “security hostess” who was at the wheel of the van during the pursuit. Disney also declined to release transcripts of the radio communications between Buckland and the company dispatcher during the fatal chase. The lead investigator, Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Scott Walter, complained to the
Orlando Sentinel
that Disney officials “would only release the information that wouldn’t hurt them.”

Robb Sipkema’s parents sued, setting off a legal battle that has partially raised the curtain on Disney’s private government. The Sipkemas charged that the security guard caused their son’s death by pursuing the pickup truck, even though she was not a sworn law enforcement officer. Buckland said she did nothing wrong and never drove her vehicle off Disney property that night.

Florida has a broad public-records law that applies to all state and local government entities—
including, one would reasonably assume, the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Because Disney provides policelike services for Reedy Creek, the family of Robb Sipkema demanded a copy of the company’s security manual and policy on traffic control.

Disney said no. Its attorneys asserted that, as a private corporation, Disney wasn’t required to open its records.

Eventually Team Rodent voluntarily produced the security manual, but the Sipkemas pressed for more files. Their lawyers noted that Disney and Reedy Creek were one and the same, and that Disney security guards acted as a de facto police force. The “hosts” and “hostesses” conducted traffic stops, answered 911 calls, and investigated crimes “to the point of arrest.” When communicating over the radio, they even spoke in the same 10-codes as real cops.

It wasn’t enough to convince Orange County Circuit Judge Belvin Perry Jr. He sided with Disney, ruling that its law enforcement activities at Reedy Creek were part of a private security arrangement—in other words, a contract with itself. Bottom line: The public, including the Sipkemas, would not be allowed to see internal company documents.

The decision rankled lots of folks familiar with the Reedy Creek charade, especially those in Orange County. In 1990 they had competed with the district for $57.7 million in tax-free bonds. Orange officials needed to raise money for low-income housing. Reedy Creek wanted to expand the sewage-treatment capacity for Disney’s fast-growing theme parks.

The county’s poor lost out. Mickey and Minnie won.

So if Disney enjoys the powers of municipal government, including the right to sell tax-free bonds, shouldn’t it be governed by the same laws of open disclosure? In 1997 an appeals court said no, upholding the ruling against Robb Sipkema’s family, the state attorney general, and several newspapers that had joined the lawsuit. The panel of judges agreed with the trial court’s puzzling position that Disney guards aren’t like real police and perform only basic “night watchman” duties.

Which apparently have been broadened to include high-speed car chases of suspected trespassers. “Outrageous,” said John Hargrove, one of the lawyers who argued for the side of the Sipkemas. “Talk about a family getting screwed.”

Without access to Disney’s files, the Sipkemas
hit a wall. They have dropped the lawsuit over their son’s death.

Meanwhile, the
Orlando Sentinel
reports that the flashing lights on Disney’s security vehicles have been changed from red to amber, so as not to be taken for those of real cop cars. In addition, Disney’s uniformed guards—the “hosts” and “hostesses”—no longer use
Dragnet
-style police codes when talking over the radio.

Goofy’s gendarmes still do an impressive job of keeping order, though. Every now and then reality intrudes—a shoplifter, a flasher, a fistfight between tourists, an accidental fall, a fatal heart attack on the Space Mountain roller coaster. Such incidents are handled with astounding swiftness and discretion, the scene usually cleared and back to normal within minutes. Team Rodent’s crisis squads appear ready for every imaginable emergency.

Well, maybe not
every
emergency. As I write this, a potentially breathtaking drama is unfolding within stalking distance of Adventureland. A full-grown African lioness has escaped from a roadside zoo called JungleLand, on State Road 192. Also known as the Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, it’s one of Florida’s all-time unsightliest thoroughfares, crammed with T-shirt shops, fast-food joints,
cut-rate car rental lots, bargain motels, and souvenir kiosks. The road looks like this for one reason: It’s on the way to Disney World.

The escaped cat is called Nala, named (predictably) after a lioness character in Disney’s animated blockbuster
The Lion King
. The real-life Nala has vanished into a stretch of heavy woods off 192, not far from an International House of Pancakes. Teams of armed searchers and wildlife officers are trying to track the animal, while journalists from all over the world cluster in safety along the shoulder of the highway. Even the major TV networks are keeping tabs on the slapdash safari. Like other Florida newspapers, the
Miami Herald
has published a locator map showing the estimated proximity of the fugitive lioness to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and the Disney-MGM Studios. Presumably this information will help tourists weigh the risk of a visit and plan their routes accordingly. Indeed, much of the news coverage deals with speculation that the big cat is making her way toward Disney property.

Sweet Jesus, just imagine: the hot-blooded 450-pound namesake of a Disney cartoon lion, bounding down Main Street U.S.A. (perhaps during the nightly SpectroMagic Parade!) and with one lightning swipe of a paw taking down
Goofy or Pluto, or maybe one of those frigging chipmunks. A harrowing primal eruption—and Disney could blame no one but itself!

Because Nala wouldn’t be loose in Orlando if there was no JungleLand, and there would be no JungleLand if there was no Walt Disney World.

So the escaped lioness has a secret fan club that believes a split second of raw predation might be good for Team Rodent’s soul. And while it is being widely reported that the big cat is declawed, I choose not to believe it.

Forgive us our fantasies.

I
N DECEMBER
1997
DISNEY
chairman Michael D. Eisner exercised company stock options that brought him $565 million in a single swoop. The notion of attaching such a sum to one man’s job is both obscene and hilarious on its face, yet it’s pointless to debate whether or not Eisner deserves it. He got the dough.

It happened in the same month that
Business Week
chose Disney’s board of directors as the worst in America. The reason: Many seemed to have been handpicked not so much for their business expertise as for their loyalty to the autocratic Eisner. Among the company’s directors are his personal architect, his personal attorney, the principal of his children’s elementary school, and seven
current and former Disney executives. “Fantastic” is how Eisner has described his choices for the board, but critics say it’s a meek and malleable group. That’s precisely what was needed to sit still for the ludicrous $75 million platinum parachute given to Michael Ovitz as compensation for fourteen whole months as president of the Walt Disney Company. Hiring the Hollywood super-agent had been Eisner’s idea, but the decision to part was said to be mutual. Eisner is so hyperactively involved with Team Rodent’s many enterprises that Ovitz had been left with not enough to do.

As exorbitant as the mistake turned out to be, Disney could easily afford it. The company has experienced astounding growth in the fourteen years since Insane Clown Michael’s arrival, and he’s not shy about rattling off all the new ventures: radio and TV stations, cable systems, newspapers, books, home video, theatrical productions, computer games and programs, professional sports teams, and of course Times Square. Of all the new endeavors, the most expensive and ambitious was the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC and its affiliated broadcast networks, which instantly gave Disney a huge self-marketing apparatus.

Perhaps Eisner is a true genius—a visionary, a brilliant motivator, a magnetic communicator. If so, you wouldn’t know it from the following communiqué, which Eisner sent to Disney shareholders and employees as part of the 1996 annual report:

Obviously, Eisner wrote the letter himself—no PR flack in his right mind would’ve sent out such hyperbolic twaddle. But as fulsome and windy as it is, the letter fairly depicts the company’s fast-tightening grip on the global entertainment
culture. One cannot overstate Disney’s reach, and there’s no better example than Eisner’s superhyped 101
Dalmatians
.

As soon as word got out that Disney was producing a live-action remake of its popular 1961 feature-length cartoon, puppy mills across America began breeding dalmatians like rats. It was a sure bet. Once the movie opened, thousands upon thousands of parents went shopping for puppies to put under the Christmas tree for their smitten children. Just as Eisner had bubbled: cute dalmatians everywhere!

Unfortunately, dalmatians aren’t the ideal breed for every family. They can be high-strung, snappish, and intolerant of youngsters. In other words: Not cute. Less than a year after the film’s release, animal shelters and Humane Societies got swamped with young dogs that had failed to deliver the cuddliness promised by their lovable big-screen counterparts. South Florida shelters reported a 35 percent increase in the number of dalmatians, many of them facing a sad and predictable fate. The story was the same all across the country.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not laying a single euthanized puppy at the feet of Michael Eisner. The parents who dashed out to buy those dogs
should have known better; they should have steeled themselves against sentiment. They should have known that captivation is the mission of a Disney film, a Disney theme park, a Disney merchandise store, a Disney
anything
. Charm, captivate, and conquer—that’s how the empire advances. In the case of
101 Dalmatians
, Mom and Dad’s imagination got as carried away as the kids’.

It’s easy to sympathize. When I was sixteen Disney released a movie called
Rascal
, the adventures of a mischievous yet adorable baby raccoon. My own parents sensibly forbade me from sneaking into the woods and capturing my own ring-tailed varmint, but shortly after college I acquired one. Picture the scene in a small two-bedroom apartment: father, mother, one three-year-old toddler, and one wild raccoon. An absolutely adorable critter, as advertised, until the day it rebelled against the mildest of discipline, climbed up on my portable Smith-Corona, and (in a gesture that transcended mischief) took a long hard piss.

The pathetic truth is that, like millions of others, I’d succumbed to the spell of Disney make-believe. Real raccoons don’t behave like movie raccoons, any more than real dogs behave like movie dogs.