Disney, Anaheim, and a “Happiness Surcharge”

[Part of our series on the “Disneyland Forward” proposal; taken from my speech at the 1/23/2024 Disneyland Forward workshop at Anaheim Council.]

We love Disney!  What a towering juggernaut of creativity and imagination, bringing some kind of happiness to millions and millions around the world, for nearly a century!  Don’t try to tell us that we hate Disney, ever!  (Look at this hat, look at this coat!)

We just want the Disney Corporation to be better corporate citizens in their host city of Anaheim, like they were decades ago when Walt Disney was still alive.  We don’t think Walt would recognize the Burbank-based corporation that bears his name any more, we think he’d disown it.  This corporation just takes and takes while giving back as little as possible.

• Leave aside how hard they’ve fought for 5 years NOT to follow Anaheim law and pay their cast members a Living Wage – even after losing at the Supreme Court last year, they’re still making them wait another year for their back wages and interest – like Disney Corporation can’t afford it!

• Leave aside how they invest 1 to 2 million into each of our Council elections, hoping that these Councilmembers will dependably give them anything they demand. 

• Leave aside how their government affairs lobbyist Carrie Nocella helped lead the secretive “retreat” that the FBI and JL Group told us about, the main topic of which was how the Chamber and Disney could keep control of our extra $100 million in LPMR revenue – the added revenue we should be getting when we’ve finished paying off the bonds we TOOK OUT FOR DISNEY in the 90’s.  Yes, the retreat was for planning how to keep that money OUT of the hands of our elected Council, and Disney’s Carrie Nocella was part of that.

• Leave aside A LOT OF THINGS, HERE’S THE BIG PICTURE:

Disneyland Resort revenue in 2022, according to MagicGuides.com, was $6.28 BILLION.  Meanwhile Anaheim gets $140 MILLION a year from that (after you subtract the bond payments we’re still making.  THAT IS 2.2 PERCENT. Meanwhile Anaheim has poverty, homelessness, a housing crisis, our government is in debt – if you were dropped into most neighborhoods from a spaceship you’d never guess we had such a profitable company running things here.

And NOW comes “Disneyland Forward” – a proposal to “build another Disneyland INSIDE Disneyland.”  (Kind of like how John Cena looks “like Mark Wahlberg ate Mark Wahlberg.”)  They won’t say, but don’t you think that would get their annual revenue up to something like TEN BILLION?

They plan to take over at least one of our highly-traveled public streets, which they plan to buy “at market value” – but how do you compute the value, or the cost to neighbors who use those streets regularly to get to the freeway, or the added traffic ALL of us will see on Ball and Katella?

They’ll be hiring over 13,000 new employees, while contributing – well, first they said they’d contribute nothing, now they’re saying $30 million over five years – enough to build a couple dozen more affordable housing units.  This while a lot of CURRENT Disney employees are homeless, living in their cars, couch-surfing.

They expect 5-10 MILLION more visitors per year.  Think of the new traffic, the crowding, the noise, as well as the impacts to the folks who live near the Park as they build right up to their walls.

The best way for the Disney Corporation to mitigate ALL of these  impacts is to agree to a 2%… um… “Happiness Surcharge.”  (Since nobody wants to vote for anything called a tax.)  Just like the Gate Taxes every other town has that depends on an entertainment venue.  Anaheim residents can be excluded from this 2% Happiness Surcharge.  And it would add a dearly needed $100 million a year to our treasury.

Of course that is up to YOU, the Council – and then it will have to go to a vote of Anaheim’s people.

We really hope to see our Council, even though most of you were elected with Disney money, act in the interests of Anaheim’s people and treasury this year, rather than the Disney Corporation.  IT COULD HAPPEN.  And it’s probably a good thing to remember, politically, that TWO of them are up for “election” later this year.  (For Natalie Rubalcava, a recall election in late summer; for the appointed Norma Kurtz, her first election.)

Anaheim is awakened.  Anaheim is paying attention.  Thank you and try to do the right thing.