Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen [Hiaasen, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307764881
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1998-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

Fantasy Fantasy Island

IN A FEW MONTHS, an eighty-five-thousand-ton ocean liner will be launched from a shipyard in Marghera, Italy. The ship is decorated like no other of its kind. Etched into the steep prow is a portrait of that renowned mariner, Mickey Mouse. At the other end: a fifteen-foot likeness of Goofy, swinging from a boatswain’s chair while pretending to paint the stern. The ship’s horn is specially tuned to play “When You Wish upon a Star.”

The name of this extraordinary vessel is Disney Magic, Team Rodent’s maiden venture into the lucrative cruise-line trade. Carrying twenty-four hundred passengers (most of whom have spent the preceding days at Disney World), the ship will serve as both a floating extension of the Orlando theme park and a marketing barge. Nightclubs, theaters, swimming pools, and spas will offer no refuge from Magic Kingdom characters; in one restaurant, “live” walls will display Disney art evolving from sketch to full animation.

Even the lifeboats will be tricked out—painted bright yellow and styled to match the old vessels depicted in Steamboat Willie. Undoubtedly the workmanship will be top-notch and authentic-looking, but imagine yourself far out at sea aboard a sinking ocean liner. Would your first choice of a rescue vessel be a lifeboat whose design was inspired by a 1928 cartoon?

The Disney Magic will leave Port Canaveral for three-or four-day excursions to Nassau and Castaway Cay, billed as the company’s “private Bahamian island.” Here passengers will debark and frolic in a manicured tropical setting, with separate beaches provided for kids, families, and adults (Disney is hoping for a big newlywed trade).

While other cruise lines have purchased small Bahamian islands as quickie stopovers, not many can boast the lively history of Disney’s—a history the company is unlikely to share with its seagoing passengers. “Castaway Cay” is the newly Imagineered name for the island, but locals know it as Gorda Cay. It was a very busy place in the 1970s and 1980s, the main draw being a secluded and unpatrolled airfield, upon which many tons of marijuana, Quaaludes, and cocaine were landed en route to the U.S. mainland.

During that era Gorda Cay fell under the control of an American smuggler named Frank Barber, who ferried the dope up from Colombia and used the island for storage and refueling. Later the stuff was flown to small landing strips in south Florida, a nocturnal enterprise that owed much of its success to Barber’s recruitment and bribery of a U.S. drug enforcement agent named Jeffrey Scharlatt. Both men wound up in prison. Shortly after their operation was exposed, a Commission of Inquiry convened in Nassau to investigate drug smuggling and corruption throughout the commonwealth; Gorda Cay was listed as one of the favorite stopovers for international dope runners.

The island’s notoriety presented no serious public-relations hurdle for Disney, which merely changed the name after buying the place. It’s a small illustration of how Team Rodent untarnishes reality, acquiring and recasting to its own designs. Be certain that the company’s security forces scoured Gorda Cay and left no coconut unturned, in case Mr.

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