What do you get when you take two journalists, one of them an ace investigative reporter for The New York Times, and plunk them down for a year or two in Celebration, Florida, Disney’s much-ballyhooed planned community, where they and their two kids get to observe, participate in, and (of course) report on the behind-the-scenes comings and goings of the citizenry of this carefully groomed suburban Utopia?
If the words “hatchet job” sprang to mind, you are not alone. That, quite frankly, was what I was expecting. “The Media,” after all, seems to believe that if you can’t say something bad you simply say nothing at all.
So “Celebration, U.S.A.” by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins comes as a refreshing surprise. Oh, it’s no mindless puff piece. Frantz and Collins are too good for that. They are, as the book proves, consummate journalists who know how to research a story to a fare-thee-well, conduct interviews that get to the heart of the matter at hand, and weave it all into a compelling narrative.
Although they don’t come right out and say so, I got the impression that Frantz and Collins (who are married, by the way) arrived at Celebration not really expecting to like it all that much. Here were two people with impeccable Northeastern intellectual credentials moving to a place where their neighbors cling to the quaint practice of married couples sharing the same surname. So the gradual way in which they fall in like with the place becomes an intriguing subplot of “Celebration, U.S.A.”
Celebration, for those who may not know, is a planned community built on a former swamp that is part of the vast Walt Disney World land holdings near Orlando, Florida. In an odd sort of way it is the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) that Walt Disney once envisioned, but that was transformed after his death into just another theme park. But whereas the dream of EPCOT was unabashedly futuristic, Celebration harkens back to an earlier era, when folks walked to work or the corner grocery, sat out on their porches at night, and actually knew their neighbors. The architecture (rigidly controlled by the Disney corporation) is faux traditional, evoking small town New England here and Savannah row houses there.
The announcement of Celebration was greeted with joy by Disney cultists, many of whom vowed then and there to move to what surely must be paradise. The actuality proved something else. For one thing, a small, but still surprising number of those among Celebration’s earliest residents were there more or less by accident. For another, running a real live town proved to be a very different proposition from running a theme park, whose “residents” are costumed characters on the company payroll.
It is this clash between expectations and reality that Frantz and Collins chronicle so entertainingly. The reality was that a town filled with real people facing real problems is a messy affair. Surprise, surprise! In that respect, reading about Celebration’s growing pains will be a bit like reading about your own neighborhood politics or the doings of the board of your New York City coop. On the other hand, Celebration’s residents arrived with a higher set of expectations than most people have when moving into the typical, rather anonymous, American community.
One of the most jarring surprises for those with school age kids was the Celebration School, which proved to be about as far from the “traditional” small town schooling of our rosy imagination as it is possible to get. Here classrooms are “neighborhoods” filled with kids of various ages and teachers (“learning leaders”) speak a sort of New Age, politically correct sociobabble. Here antiquated concepts like “grades” are jettisoned in favor of meaningless bromides about multicultural sensitivity. Parents of high schoolers were forced to put their kids in private schools if only so they could have transcripts that a college could take seriously.
There were successes, too. The design of Celebration actually did foster the neighborliness and interaction (with all its unexpected consequences) that its creators envisioned. And Disney proved to be less the dictatorial tyrant the Disney-haters predicted.
Frantz and Collins take care to place Celebration in context with other “Utopian” communities and the general history of American urban and suburban theory and practice. I found this an invaluable addition to the discussion; anyone who thinks Celebration is just another expression of the hubris of Disney’s imagineers will find much food for thought here.
In the end, Frantz and Collins decide that Celebration is not for them but they also graciously admit to their considerable admiration for those who remain and are working to make Celebration a living community that will provide its residents with a qualitatively different experience from most suburbs or gated communities. They even have kind words for Disney, which is given credit for its measured and well-intentioned responses to the inevitable turmoil of what is, after all, a rather bold social experiment.
Well-written, honest, and entertaining, “Celebration, U.S.A.” will prove an eye-opener for Disney devotees and distractors alike.
Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney’s Brave New Town is published by Henry Holt. Hardback, $25.00
ISBN: 0805055606
