Magic Kingdom or Magic Dungeon? Disney’s Nightmare in Reedy Creek

Siege of the Magic Kingdom

The Magic Kingdom has been making a lot of news lately, all of it bad. In December of 2023 the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District published an investigation of the Walt Disney Company’s management of the district once known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. The Reedy Creek Improvement District was a public government run under the auspices of the Disney Company since 1967 — a power which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to take from the House of Mouse’s control after he dueled with Disney in a highly publicized political fight over parental rights legislation. The company attempted to use its influence to stop passage of that bill; after this, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature finally ended the company’s hold over Reedy Creek in 2023. They installed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in the Reedy Creek government’s place.

Yahoo! news stated that the “38.5-square-mile Reedy Creek Improvement District gave Disney significant control of its property surrounding its Walt Disney World complex in Orange and Osceola counties.”

According to The Orlando Sentinel, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (hereinafter referred to as the CFTOD), stated in its report that, “[Disney] had established an extra-constitutional governing authority— ‘an experimental absolute monarchy’ — within the borders of the State of Florida, and, accordingly, [sic] the United States —one that strikingly resembled, without exaggeration, a kingdom of yore.”

Since taking control of the district, the CFTOD has said it has found evidence of massive fraud and tax evasion on the part of Disney Company and Reedy Creek. Legal Mindset creator Andrew Esquire, a Florida lawyer, goes into detail about the allegations made against Disney by the CFTOD in the video below:

Disney's DOZEN Criminal Allegations - HUGE Audit Bombshell

One writer over at The Park Place, LW Ghost, lists these same allegations from Legal Mindset. According to both Esquire and Ghost, the accusations include but are not limited to:

1. Theft and Misappropriation of Public Funds,

2. Misuse of Public Position,

3. Bribery,

4. Official Misconduct,

5. Breach of Fiduciary Duty,

6. Fraud and False Statements (which involves Federal law and thus the Federal government as well the laws and government of the state of Florida),

7. Public Offering Fraud,

8. MSRB (Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board) violations,

9.  Falsification of Records; Securities Fraud,

10.  Misuse of Federal Funds,

11.  RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).

Additionally, there are reports that Disney paid the property taxes of some government officials, which looks very, very bad indeed.

The Reedy Creek Improvement District was a “quasi-government.” It served the residents of Reedy Creek as well as the Disney Company, but Disney reportedly did not treat the Reedy Creek employees as public servants. Rather they gave Reedy Creek public employees “park passes, special access to private employee events, 40% discounts on Disney Cruise lines and a host of other benefits”. As a public government — “a special taxing district that oversaw the Walt Disney Company’s property in Orange and Osceola counties” — Reedy Creek and its employees are supposed to be public servants not beholden to the Disney Company or influenced by it, meaning this decision by Disney to reward them with gifts IS a very, very big problem for all concerned.

By all reports currently available, Reedy Creek was supposed to be run by public servants which Disney could pick but not pay as company employees. Yet Disney treated them like employees of their company and, worse, the previous District government apparently allowed them to do so.

Essentially, these “gifts” could be seen as bribes corrupting the officials to do things that would benefit Disney rather than the people living in the Reedy Creek Improvement District and paying taxes to the district government.

Per Deadline’s citing of the CFTOD report:

“What is now evident is that Disney not just controlled the Reedy Creek Improvement District, but did so by effectively purchasing loyalty. The vast majority of employees at the RCID were working hard to do their jobs and were diligent in doing so. Nonetheless, because of the decisions made by RCID management and the Board of Supervisors, their work was tainted with the appearance of impropriety. As comprehensively documented within, for years, the company treated district employees like Disney employees by, for instance, providing complimentary annual passes and steep discounts — benefits and perks that were akin to bribes. Not surprisingly then, the District’s employees believed that it was their job to prioritize the interests of Disney.”

The report also says “control over the inner workings of the District was exercised in additional ways. For instance, contract offers were sent out only to a closed list of approved bidders. Not only was there no way for new businesses to enter the mix, no mechanism existed to determine whether the district was receiving the services rendered at fair-market prices.”

In November of 2023, the CFTOD noted that the Reedy Creek employees who received these gifts from Disney never reported them on their taxes and were, it has been reported, told by the Reedy Creek government that they did not have to do so. These employees thus might owe more than $2 million dollars in back taxes to the IRS, a quandary the CFTOD is trying to rectify to the benefit of the employees. The CFTOD is hoping to negotiate that the employees be given grace by the IRS since, having replaced the Reedy Creek government, paying these back taxes could ultimately fall to the CFTOD.

However, Legal Mindset emphasizes that there is one way the CFTOD could make Disney foot the bill for the District employees. They can do this by assessing Disney properties within the confines of the district, meaning that the penalty or penalties the IRS chooses to apply to the CFTOD will still be paid specifically by Disney. Legal Mindset goes into the details on that potentiality here and the local WKMG 6 Orlando Florida report on the same subject is available here.

On December 6, 2023, Andrew Esquire (creator of Legal Mindset) and his co-host Jonas J. Campbell live-streamed their reaction to the CFTOD’s filmed public meeting to hear testimony from those who had investigated Disney’s financial practices in Reedy Creek. The 25-minute video below exposes quite a bit of the apparent malfeasance and fraud committed by the Disney Company and the Reedy Creek District as forensic accountant Mr. Jennings takes the stand:

Disney's Reedy Creek Corruption EXPOSED LIVE by Forensic Accountant

Mr. Jennings states in the video that:

• It wasn’t until 1998 that there were separate payrolls for Reedy Creek employees and Disney employees.

• Most of the Reedy Creek employees were retired Disney workers, which could be seen as more than a little suspicious even if the matter is entirely above board.

• Disney had the power to build a nuclear power plant in the District (though they apparently did not do this). The relevance of this point will come up later.

• Disney and Reedy Creek had to ensure that everyone living in Reedy Creek – but neither employed by its government nor by the Disney company – had a fire department. Though the District does possess its own fire department, those who worked for it were given passes to Disney World “as a training device,” in Mr. Jennings’ words.

• Roads that would take customers to Disney World and Disney properties were maintained, but roads that served the people living in the District were neglected, according to Mr. Jennings.

Furthermore, Mr. Jennings states that Disney had a utility scam using bond money. The legislation authorizing the CFTOD’s creation put sole responsibility for Disney’s bond debt on the company, not on neighboring Orange and Osceola counties nor on the Reedy Creek district itself. If it is proven that Disney had a program of this type in place at Reedy Creek, it could cost the Disney Company a great deal.

Mr. Jennings goes on to say that though the Reedy Creek District had eight utilities to “provide critical services to the district,” when he looked into these, he “created quite the firestorm” by asking the human resource manager for a meeting with the “first utility employee.” Apparently, the reason for this “firestorm” is that the utility employees for the District are all Disney employees. They did NOT work for the Reedy Creek Improvement District or the CFTOD. The district employees and the utility employees cannot deal with one another and in fact the CFTOD employees were “not permitted” (in Mr. Jennings’ words) to meet with or talk to the utility employees at all.

When Mr. Jennings then tried to inspect the electrical power plant in the district after this, he found that Reedy Creek possesses no power plant of its own (even though a nuclear power plant could have been built therein). All the electricity comes from third parties, according to Jennings. The electrical power plant he wished to see is “there in case of emergency” and while he did not get to speak to any of the utility employees, he states that activating the plant in an actual emergency would take so much time as to be counterproductive. The power plant is apparently an empty building that does nothing, which means that by claiming to have it and collecting taxes to pay for its upkeep, Disney and the Reedy Creek District have committed fraud.

You can view the entire live testimony before the CFTOD that Andrew Esquire and Jonas Campbell live-streamed and reacted to in the video below:

Disney EXPOSED in Live CFTOD Meeting - Experts Testify on RCID Corrupt History

All of this would be bad enough if the company was in full health and making money hand over fist. This is not the case – Disney’s Star Wars park, Galaxy’s Edge, is an abysmal failure. The park underperformed so badly that employees’ hours were cut, and the woman who ran it saw her position terminated as a result. The lockdowns in 2020 further damaged the parks’ bottom line.

Tales of Disney’s creative departments being filled with activists and their decision to hire based on physical characteristics rather than skill abound. Meanwhile, Disney+ and Hulu have not paid back Disney’s investment in them. According to The Freedom Front:

Disney reported in September that it expects to fall tens of millions short of its 2024 profit goals for Disney + and Hulu.

Nationwide boycotts and the rise of subscription rates caused subscribers to flee Disney + and Hulu. The company has lost over 4 million subscribers.

Disney had hit a 9-year low last summer. Its market cap dropped from $350.09 billion in March 2022 to $154.04 billion or a 56% massive drop.

Rumors that Ryan Reynolds has gotten into a fight with Bob Iger over the latter’s attempt to make creative changes to Deadpool 3 are also flying. One reason for this is, apparently, that Reynolds wanted Gina Carano (who is now suing Disney with the help of Elon Musk and who claims she was stalked and harassed after being fired), to come back for a cameo in the third film after starring in the first Deadpool movie. Gina Carano was fired from Disney Star Wars’ The Mandalorian for her conservative comments on Twitter (now X), so Disney and Iger understandably do not want her back.

But Reynolds apparently does want her back, and so does his co-star, Hugh Jackman. The entire film crew reportedly is backing up the two stars to have Carano return. They have all apparently been fighting behind the scenes with Iger and Disney throughout the filming for Deadpool 3, creating yet another headache for the company.

Speaking of the CEO for Disney, Bob Iger recently took a pay cut after the company’s parks around the world underperformed. This is in addition to the Marvel films released last year largely dying at the box office, Disney+ and Hulu not turning a profit, and Disney’s other projects losing money. Legal Mindset also has a live-stream about Disney settling rather than fighting a lawsuit from TSG Entertainment, which began in August of 2023. The TSG lawsuit claimed that Disney had “fail[ed] to pay the financier what it was owed, licensing TSG-backed films for less than they were worth and wrongfully charging TSG millions of dollars in distribution fees.”

TSG would produce movies for Disney (among others) and Disney – according to the suit – did not pay them what they were due. Mr. Esquire at Legal Mindset states that by settling with them rather than fighting them, Disney will now have to pay TSG more every time the company finances a film, and that other producers will also demand a higher price from Disney as well.

On top of this, Disney (and National Geographic, which is a subsidiary of the company) is being sued by Green Beret Thomas Kasza for not blurring out the faces of Afghani allies and American troops in their film Retrograde, which Kasza has said led to the death of at least one Afghani ally at the hands of the Taliban. Universal Studios is planning a theme park to challenge Disney’s as well, something the company plans to counter with “new investments” (from where?). Disney is also dealing with a sex and race discrimination lawsuit for “discriminating against white actors, Christian and Jewish actors, and American actors.” This is in addition to Ike Perlmutter, former CEO of Marvel Entertainment, trying to obtain control of at least one quarter of Disney’s board with the help of Nelson Peltz and former Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo. Sharks smell blood, and Disney is bleeding profusely everywhere one looks.

It is also worth noting that Disney has begun to cease DVD production in Australia and other regions, a practice they may bring to the States. Should this happen it would be wise to hold on to anything Disney-related one has at present. Piracy is bound to increase with the decision to cease DVD production, something other companies are doing or at least considering.

At present, Disney is caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Lawsuits on every side, money bleeding out of the company, and competence declining, they are in for a very rough future. One can only hope there will be some way to salvage all the good the company has done when it inevitably falls, because one thing is certain: the Magic Kingdom has become a Magic Dungeon, and they are making Pinocchio blush. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has flooded the basement and it remains to be seen what will be done to drain the waters.

Whatever is left will need some serious mopping up. Best to grab a bucket, a sponge, and as many rags as one can. This is going to be messy.