Stealthy mouse

It’s November 1963. Brothers Walt and Roy walk down the stairs of an airplane at Herndon Airport.

They’re here to visit Central Florida’s premiere attraction, the Florida Citrus Tower in Clermont.

They journey to the top of the 226-foot-tall structure, the highest observation point in Florida, and see vast expanses of empty, available land.

The land was marshy and covered in orange groves, but Walt saw everything he wanted — endless acres of open land and warm weather just south of the frost line. He had been looking for the perfect fit for a sequel to Disney Land, one that he could keep open year-round, and he had found it in Central Florida.

The two brothers surveyed land in Ocala as well, knowing it would be easier to access for those living on the east coast because of Interstate 95, and for those coming from the west who would take Interstate 75.

But just after that trip to Central Florida, they discovered two particular pieces of information that would seal the deal for Orlando instead of Ocala. First, Interstate 4 had been designed and funded to run from Daytona Beach to Tampa, allowing access from both 95 and 75, and second, that Florida’s Turnpike was going to be extended up to 75.

“‘X’ marked the spot, literally,” said Chad Emerson, author of “Project Future: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Disney World”.

“This is a real true-life adventure — how and why Disney ended up in Central Florida as opposed to someplace else — because it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that they’d end up in Florida, especially in some marshland in Central Florida.

“A series of coincidental events came together just perfectly, otherwise we may not be here.”

That was just one of the fascinating anecdotes Emerson discovered while writing a law article for Florida State University. Emerson is a professor of law at Faulkner University and specializes in land-planning law, intellectual property law and amusement and leisure law.

He spoke on Sept. 29 in the University of Central Florida Library about his book.

He also said Walt and Roy Disney almost bought 400 acres of land in northern Palm Beach County from Florida’s version of Howard Hughes, John MacArthur, but plans fell through when Roy realized Walt had almost agreed to a much smaller amount of land than they had been looking for.

“I never knew that Disney World could’ve ended up in north Palm Beach County,” said Deanna Hall, a junior education major at UCF who attended the event. “Orlando wouldn’t be anything like how it is today if Disney hadn’t ended up here.”

Thankfully, Orlando won.

“Disney wanted to purchase all this land, upwards of 27,000 acres, and they wanted to do it secretly because if people knew it was Disney, land prices would go up. So they created all of these dummy corporations to buy the land,” Emerson said.

Now Disney just needed a point person in Florida to handle the legal side of things, but needed a discreet attorney to keep everything out of the spotlight.

“Thankfully one of Disney’s national law firms at the time, Donovan Leisure, was run by former OSS-WWII spy William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who referred Disney to his former spy colleague Paul Helliwell, who had started a law firm in Miami,” Emerson said.

All of these undercover operations are still relevant to today’s student.

Karl Sooder, a marketing and business professor at UCF, is using Emerson’s book as required reading.

“We’re going to be starting a new class in the spring called contemporary marketing issues in Florida, and this book will be used as a case history study for the students.”

The land purchase was big news in the ‘60s.

“It’s so exciting to get to read about all of the mystery, intrigue, suspense and excitement that went into the final days before the land purchase was finally announced,” said Frank Allen, associate director at the UCF Library.

“Isn’t that just like Disney? That even before they broke ground, there was a little magic involved.”