Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his fight on “woke” culture by threatening to tax Disney hotels and put tolls on the highways leading into Disney theme parks.
Whatever the cost, we will see that the Florida policy prevails. That’s why they should continually trying new things. During a Thursday speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan, he assured the audience, “We are going to win on every single issue involving Disney.”
He criticized the corporation, saying, “They are not superior to the people of Florida.”
He openly stated his intention to target Disney’s wealth by using the state’s ability to tax the firm.
Tourists to Central Florida would be stung hard by any increases in hotel taxes or road tolls because such expenses are already built into a trip to Disney World. It would also increase the already high price of a trip to Disney World.
For the last quarter of the 2022 fiscal year, Disney made a stunning $7.4 billion from its parks, an increase of 70% from the same period the previous year as the company continued to recover from COVID shutdowns.
The theme park now charges for parking ($30) and the Genie+ app ($15), both of which used to be free. The classic Mickey Mouse ears have had a price increase of nearly a third, from $29.99 to $39.99, since 2021.
Before the epidemic, Disney World had a yearly average of 18 million guests; today, a night at the discount hotel in the park, Pop Century, will set you back around $168; this is an increase of more than $70 from 2013, when a night at the resort would set you back $95. More than a seventy-seven percent gain.
Over the 2010s, the park’s ticket costs more than doubled the rate of inflation, reaching over $100.
And DeSantis said he would try to compete with Disney’s ambitions to develop the area around its theme parks.
‘We’re not only going to invalidate the development deal they tried to execute; we’re going to look at things like taxes on the hotels, tolls on the highways, and developing some of the property that the district controls,’ he added.
The Republican governor also promised that the state legislature, which his party controls, will overturn the agreements Disney had made with the monitoring board it controlled before DeSantis created a new board.
Disney was able to negotiate a 30-year monopoly on the project’s development as part of one of its accords. However, DeSantis administration officials told Politico that the deal violates state expansion regulations. Regardless of when the legislation was enacted, if it conflicts with a development agreement, the agreement must be amended or terminated.
Disney is refusing to back down, maintaining that its actions were legal under Florida law, leaving DeSantis scrambling in the wake of the revelation of the last-minute arrangements the business had struck.