The question of how well Disney World’s narratives reflect the true diversity of America has continued to be asked at the park over its history.
Fifty years ago on October 25, the official dedication with all the pomp and circumstance of marching bands and celebrity appearances got underway. Roy O. Disney, brother of Walt and then C.E.O of the Walt Disney Company, stood elbow to elbow with Mickey Mouse to read from a bronze plaque, expressing the hope for Walt Disney World to “bring Joy and Inspiration and New Knowledge to all who come to this happy place.”
This past weekend, as similarly celebratory festivities got underway, audio speakers across the park repeatedly broadcasted the words of Roy Disney’s dedication speech, read by current Disney cast members. As if to recommit, Jeff Vahle, Walt Disney World’s president, and vice president Melissa Valiquette, both gave voice to Roy Disney’s wish of “Joy and Inspiration and Knowledge to all.”
To achieve that today, Disney World must reckon with an American population more diverse than ever before, and predicted to become only more so. What was reassuring to a larger population of whites in 1971, serves only as a reminder of the many challenges we face today across the spectrum of racial and wealth inequality, social justice and global climate change.
What happens to a place built on stories of reassurance for a white middle class when today those stories can feel offensive and hardly reassuring at all? In the case of the Disney parks, the answer is: you change, or you risk becoming culturally and economically irrelevant as guests look elsewhere for reassurance.
Since its founding, Walt Disney World has been able to both change and add to its narratives. In the past, cultural changes at the Disney Parks were subtle, noticeable only by avid Disney goers: the “Indian War Canoes” attraction was renamed the “Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes,” smoking was confined to smaller and smaller areas until it was finally banned altogether in 2019, the Aunt Jemima Pancake House Restaurant became River Belle Terrace. Changes have come and gone to Tom Sawyer Island’s depiction of a settler cabin, and the policy on fake guns included in attractions has evolved.
Beginning in the late 2010s, updates went from a trickle to a flow, with Disney acknowledging implicitly and occasionally explicitly that they were changing because certain pieces of “reassurance” in the theme parks were not so any longer—or perhaps never were. The changes in the parks being announced were grand enough to attract the attention of even the most casual Disney-goer, and even non-Disney fans.