Disney World's "Learn to Code" Moment

The following is a pre-release, pre-edit article we're working on by LW Ghost. This one will likely have two authors on it as I have a bit to add. As part of your Patreon access, we're giving you an early read on what is sure to drive a TON of conversation over the next week all across the theme park news outlets. Take a look:

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At the recent press event put on by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the CFTOD District folks at the former HQ of the Reedy Creek Improvement District (the Disney-corrupted managing government of the entire Walt Disney World property since 1968) lots of big things were shared, and I point you to my article covering the details here on TPP. 

But one little part of the disclosures has had me thinking ever since, and I’d like to ask that you indulge this semi-deep dive into the wonderful world of “Code Enforcement” and see what you think. Thanks. “Code Enforcement” is the process whereby rules and regulations for such things as the construction of roads, buildings, facilities and other stuff that people use are kept open, honest, and aboveboard. 

The government—city, county, state, federal, whoever—writes these laws to make sure we’re all safe, make sure things don’t collapse or otherwise fail to great injury and expense, and generally keep the playing field level for all involved in building and using our world. This leads to the necessity of having a process in which, if, let’s say, an electrician is found to have wired your home renovation poorly, unsafely, and not up to code and is fined and forced to make repairs by the government, that contractor has what is a virtual “court” to defend themselves and refute the claims. These courts are handled by someone called a  “Code Enforcement Magistrate” and are there to insure openness, fairness, and transparency in the code process. They exist in virtually every government in the USA. They are commonplace. They are required. They are routine. 

Except, as it turns out, in the former RCID which ruled for about 60 YEARS without ever having, as we learned at the press conference this week from the newly-appointed Code Enforcement Magistrate for the new CFTOD which took over the government duty per Florida law, attorney Drew Crawford. 

In fact, his careful inspection of the records proved there has NEVER been ANY code enforcement regime there until his hiring in the past few weeks. That’s what got me thinking and should get you thinking, too. When Governor DeSantis mentioned that the WDW Monorail system which carries tens of thousands of families a day had NEVER been inspected by the government at ANY time during construction or operation, the audience audibly gasped with shock. But as dangerous as that could be for passengers, if your room in a Disney hotel collapsed on you instead of the crash of your Monorail car, you and your kids would be just as dead. 

THIS brings me to wonder larger. 

We have all seen, for just one example, the amazing aerial photos of the new Universal “Epic Universe” park being built in Orlando and can see and further imagine just how many construction folks—skilled trades, laborers, supervisors, etc. etc.—are working on the massive site at any given hour of the day or night to get it ready for opening next year. But as big as it is, surely the total number of people who’ve been on the payroll at Disney itself or their subcontractors since 1968 building the theme parks, water parks, hotels, golf courses, roads, bridges, etc. etc. is larger by a factor of 100 or 1,000. 

That brings this to my mind: Did ANYONE EVER get paid to do inspections at Disney under RCID? 

IF there was literally NO code enforcement during all of those years, that means there was nobody on the govt/RCID payroll with the job title of “Building Inspector” or “Code Approver” or anything like it. Not a single, solitary soul (with the possible exception of somebody in an RCID office holding the title but with no authority nor mechanism to do the job since there was no enforcement program at all.) Let’s say there were 50,000 construction, maintenance, and operation “cast members” at Disney over those many decades either to build or to keep up and running everything from the pipes and wires to the monorails and the horse-drawn trolleys. Not ONE person to inspect them during construction and not a SINGLE solitary soul to do so during operation? NOBODY home at all? It sure would be interesting, would it not, to check the payroll records over the years and look for anyone with “Code Enforcement Inspector” as their job title, or for that matter with prior experience doing that in their resumes. And here’s the final and biggest point: Nobody noticed, or at least nobody cared. NONE of those thousands upon thousands of hard-hats who’d surely worked outside of RCID in their lives even asked “Uh, hey, when is the inspector coming?” or, if they did, they were told to shut up about that and forget it? And EVERYONE at ALL levels of management had to KNOW this was going on, even if only for the financial fact that code compliance costs money, and without it projects fairly estimated at X dollars really come in lower at Y.  

And that gets us into "where did the money they SAID was for this REALLY go?" and all sorts of potential financial and stockholder issues I leave to your imagination. 

This has to be one of the biggest “open secrets” regarding construction, maintenance, and operation in the history of modern American government. And the fact that it never was revealed, there were zero whistle-blowers, zero disgruntled-and-talking ex-employees, and zero journalists investigating and revealing this fact or that anyone who dared was threatened or bought off is, in, well, an “Epic Universe” of Disney scandals and crimes, maybe the biggest and most wide-ranging yet. It seems that a big “part of the magic” is effectively covering up the truth that all of us who’ve ever visited Disney’s magical world in Florida have been victims or potential victims of an astoundingly dangerous crime for nearly 60 years.