Progress City, U.S.A.

Yes, what about that, Mr. Eisner?

With all the fooferall surrounding recent rumors of a fifth gate (or 4th and a half gate) in Florida, I’ve been reminded of an odd period in Disney history when, from 2000 until 2002, Disney operated a website called thirdthemepark.com. Occasionally when I make joking reference to the site as a generic verbal stand-in for any gross instance of managerial hubris, I find that Disney fans don’t remember or were not aware that this page once existed.

Click to enlarge

Thirdthemepark.com is a fairly interesting piece of Disney theme park lore, especially for those interested in the NeverWorld of lost park concepts. While the site itself is long gone (its URL is currently owned by an individual in Colorado), one can still view elements of it courtesy of the Internet Archive. So lets travel back, forty thousand years (or, say, seventeen), and take a look at this mysterious website and the process leading up to its creation.

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“Every day, a diverse and unlikely society, made up of every culture and race on earth, is working together to build a great nation. We have a single vision - a new order based on the promise of democracy.

Our resources for building this nation are a rich mixture of land, family and beliefs - which we apply with our own fiety brand of spirit, humor and innovation.

As the nation has grown and changed, we are constantly reminded of how impossibly far we’ve come - and how far we still have to go.

DISNEY’S AMERICA celebrates these qualities which have always been the source of our strength and the beacon of
hope to people everywhere.”

- Disney Promotional Material, 1994

As we in the States gather around the table today to gorge ourselves on unreasonable amounts of lethargy-inducing slather, I thought it would be good to take a moment and reflect on what we have to be thankful for. Then I ran out of those, and started thinking about things I’m not thankful for. Namely, the year 1994 and Michael Eisner’s complete creative and personal meltdown that began the disastrous eleven-year stretch that wrapped up his career at the Disney company. If not for the year 1994 and a number of factors both controllable and not, I would be able to spend my turkey day a few hours away in rural Virginia enjoying Disney’s tribute to American history, Disney’s America.

Just over fourteen years ago, on November 11th, 1993, Michael Eisner and other Disney officals gathered in Haymarket, Virginia to announce the Disney’s America project. The announcement was rushed, as Disney had been forced by press leaks to move the press conference up and thus try and get ahead of the story. Secrecy had allowed Disney to either purchase or option 3,000 acres of property in the area, but made them unable to quickly respond to area critics who were both well-connected and very well funded. Nearly a year later, in September of 1994, Disney would announce that they were no longer seeking to build the park in Prince William County. While the story of Eisner’s ‘year of hell’ and the political and business machinations that helped torpedo the park are significant, what’s really important here is the park we missed out on. So let’s take a look at the process that brought us the park, and specifically what we’re missing on this Turkey Day.

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