The battle between Walt Disney World and the state of Florida continues, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. This week Walt Disney World amended the lawsuit it filed against Governor Ron DeSantis and other key political figures in Florida in a way that appeared to be trolling as much as it was a legal move. Now Florida has followed through on a threat to increase inspections on Disney World property, starting with thew famous Monorail.
Yesterday, DeSantis signed HB 1305 according to Click Orlando, a transportation bill which, among other things, gives the state the right to conduct inspections on Walt Disney World’s Monorail transportation system. Previously, Florida law allowed major theme parks like Disney World, Universal and SeaWorld to conduct all their own inspections, but the state’s vendetta against Disney has seen those abilities eroded, but only for Disney. Specifically, the new Florida law applies to…
[A]ny governmentally or privately owned fixed-guideway transportation systems operating in this state which are located within an independent special district created by local act which have boundaries within two contiguous counties.
In case there was any question, this language is specific enough that it only applies to one thing, the Disney World Monorail. This is exactly the sort of move that led to Disney filing the lawsuit against the governor, claiming that the company was being unfairly targeted and punished for exercising its right to freedom of speech. It will not be shocking to see Disney update its lawsuit yet again with this information.
Assuming the state does exercise this new power, it has the potential to cause problems in the parks that Disney World guests don't usually see. We could actually see monorail service interrupted during a park day in order to conduct inspections. Although, that would punish Disney World visitors, including many locals, so things might not go quite that far.
Disney has largely been using Governort DeSantis’ own words against him, as he and others have not been shy about making it clear that the actions being taken, such as the dissolving of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, are specifically because Disney chose to speak out against the Parental Rights in Education Act, known by detractors as “Don’t Say Gay.” The timeline of the battle between Disney World and DeSantis now stretches for more than a year.
Most recently Disney amended its lawsuit, adding an epigraph of a recent DeSantis speech in which he said “This all started, of course, with our parents’ rights bill.” Adding the quote was an unusual move but one that certainly focused attention on the retaliation that Disney is claiming, it also, maybe not accidentally, makes one think of the classic Walt Disney quote that Disney “was all started by a mouse.”
The move against the Monorail also came a day after Bob Iger spoke about the lawsuit on the Disney Company’s Q2 2023 quarterly earnings call, where he suggested that Disney could focus its future theme park investments elsewhere if doing so in Florida becomes more difficult and costly.
