On Wednesday, we brought you the breaking news that a federal judge dismissed Disney’s lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), Florida’s Secretary of Commerce J. Alex Kelly, and the members of the board of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTOD), the district that replaced the Disney-run Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID).
Judge Allen Winsor issued the order to dismiss the suit because Disney had no standing to sue DeSantis and Kelly and because the claim against the CFTOD board had no merit. This was a massive victory for the state of Florida against Disney’s attempts to reclaim its dangerous quasi-governmental authority over its property.
As soon as I heard the good news, I knew one thing that would happen: the Disney fan clickbait media would pounce on the story. Just to give you some background on this subset of media I’m talking about, there are a few media outlets that cater to fans of Disney content in general and Disney theme parks in particular. I follow these sites because they occasionally have important information that helps guests prepare for trips and sometimes have hilarious stories about guests who act the fool on Disney property.
But for the most part, these sites offer tons of clickbait. A typical article on these sites will have an eye-catching headline, a ton of background information about the topic (“You mean like what you’re doing now?” I’m sure you’re asking me right now), and a nothing-burger story that makes the original headline look silly.
Here’s a recent example: Disney Dining offered an article with the headline, “Reedy Creek Firefighters Will No Longer Answer Calls For Help From Disney World.” After a few paragraphs blaming the change on DeSantis and his supposed vendetta against Disney, author Becky Burkett finally admits that the reason the Reedy Creek Fire Department will no longer service Disney property is that the department’s name is changing to the “District Fire Department.”
Related: Some Disney Fans Are Up in Arms Because the State of Florida Is — GASP — Inspecting the Monorails
Right on cue, the Disney fan clickbait sites offered ridiculous takes on the dismissal of the lawsuit. At Disney Dining, Krysten Swensen, the same author who thought it was beyond the pale that Florida would inspect the monorails like it does any other transportation system in the Sunshine State, offered an overdramatic take.
Swensen paints DeSantis as some sort of mustache-twirling baddie who was trying to make Disney suffer for not kowtowing to him. Her description of replacing RCID with CFTOD drips with frantic worry about Disney losing its power:
Mr. DeSantis and the Republican-led state legislature quickly dissolved the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which stripped Disney of its right to self-govern. They then voted to move Disney’s monorail system under state inspection control. The Governor appointed his own loyalists to lead the district formerly known as Reedy Creek. That new board is now having its own issues with the company.
Why is she so obsessed with monorail inspections? And the only issue the new board is having with the company is that Disney can’t control it.
But the funniest part of it all is that Swensen writes at one point, “Many constitutional law experts said that Disney had a very strong case.” That statement is true, but she links it to a piece that she wrote at another site, Disney Fanatic, that claimed that these experts predicted DeSantis would lose. They didn’t; all they said was that Disney had a strong case.
The next hilarious take comes from Emmanuel Detres at Inside the Magic. Detres’ article starts out with a straightforward description of the dismissal, but he includes a laughably ominous appraisal of the situation:
The Florida Governor is no longer a Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency after formally removing himself from the run and fully endorsing former President Donald Trump; DeSantis aims to go full throttle against Disney. With DeSantis no longer the Republican Presidential candidate, time will tell how long it takes for a full assault on Disney, Walt Disney World, and Disney CEO Bob Iger.
No, seriously.
What’s fascinating about all of this is that these sites make it sound like a personal vendetta — as if the whole situation is DeSantis’ one-man personal quest to ruin Disney. That’s simply untrue.
This hyperventilating from the clickbait sites denies the reality that everything at Disney will go on as normal. No guests are going to experience anything negative, and Walt Disney World vacations will go on as normal. Some people just can’t stand for a Republican to win.