The rumour goes that in the mid-1980s during the early years of Michael Eisner's leadership the Walt Disney Company was still reeling from the consequences of a failed hostile takeover and a continuing string of box office failures and as such was in desperate need of new revenue. That's when Eisner had an idea to turn the contemporary resort into an on property casino albeit one without Disney branding. You see the state of Florida was going to have a series of referendums in 1986 one of which called Amendment 2 would have allowed for hotels of 500 rooms or more to offer casino gambling. In the lead up to the 1986 vote Eisner apparently even went as far as to add additional electrical outlets to areas of the hotel where they were planning to place the slot machines. However the referendum ultimately failed and after the Little Mermaid and the beginning of the Disney renaissance Eisner and the executive team apparently lost all interest in the idea of gambling coming to Disney World with the company going as far as to pay local lobbyists to try and keep gambling illegal in the counties that surround the Disney World resort. I am curious to see if anyone else has heard of this rumour before and whether or not anyone else thinks there's some truth to it.
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1 Comment
Rumours are always incredibly hard to fact check, but they don't appear from thin air. Checking all of the facts within the rumour like the 1986 Amendment 2, etc. it all checks out! I can definitely see Michael Eisner pushing for something like this as a last ditch effort to cash inject the resort and considering that he had a 'my way or the highway' mentality at the start which a lot of people respected.
Disney will always keep to their ideals until it's not profitable like what we've constantly seen through history. We've seen it with alcohol in the parks, a change to the dress standards of employees including facial hair changes over the years, and one day if they get desperate they could open up a casino on-property.