Disney landed themselves in a PR nightmare 23 years ago with this failed theme park
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On November 11, 1993, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner announced a new project called Disney's America — "a unique and historically detailed environment celebrating the nation’s richness of diversity, spirit and innovation."
There's a reason you've probably never heard of it. “Disney’s America would be one of Disney’s worst ideas and most public failures, a footnote in the company’s official history, one that has been largely forgotten,” Atlas Obscura's Jacqui Shine writes.
Just 13 months after the announcement, Disney backed away from the plan to build a small-scale park in Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C. People were not into a Disney version of Colonial Williamsburg, especially after the proposed park's creative director made a mention of including a slavery experience.
"How can you do a park on America and not talk about slavery?" Bob Weis said during a press conference. "This park will deal with the highs and lows . . . We want to make you feel what it was like to be a slave, and what it was like to escape through the Underground Railroad."
Academic historians and authors spoke out against Disney through features in The New York Times and Washington Post, calling the plan “contrived” and an “appalling commercialization and vulgarization of the scene of our most tragic history.”
Eisner tried to reel the conversation in and clarify their intentions. "We are going to be sensitive, but we will not be showing the absolute propaganda of the country,” he said to the Washington Post.
According to Atlas Obscura, protest rallies were held at the Washington, D.C. premiere of “The Lion King,” and environmental groups filed lawsuits opposing the selection of a land parcel so close to historic and cultural landsites like Civil War battlefields.
In the fall of 1994, Eisner announced they were withdrawing from the planned Virginia site. The public had spoken.
For better or worse, we’ll never know if Disney could have pulled off a this new type of theme park centered on historical education and celebration. But, as Jacqui Shine points out, “American history has always been contested, sanitized, and neutralized.” Perhaps Disney is simply best left out of the efforts to unsanitize it.
You can read Shine's story here.
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