Word: disneyized
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Despite a formidable array of opponents, the project moved ahead last Saturday when the expiring session of the Virginia general assembly approved a $163 million package of incentives for roads, highway signs, worker training and tourism promotion designed to entice embattled Disney to stay in the Old Dominion. Final victory for the innovative park project is sensed, but not yet in Disney's grasp. There are many memories of how one invader or another snatched defeat from the jaws of victory back when Robert E. Lee strode this countryside...
...battle started last November in Richmond with Virginia's new Republican Governor, George Allen Jr., allying himself with "the mouse," a sobriquet used by the locals and even Disney itself to describe the dozens of lawyers and lobbyists who descended on the state capitol. The mouse was managed by Mark Pacala, a negotiator who threatened to walk out of Virginia if Disney did not get what it demanded. Many legislators, while incensed, were still scared of losing such a potential cash cow. After months of wrangling, Virginia will give Disney the support structure it wants but will force the company...
...stake is a business that Disney says will create 19,000 jobs, generate $1.5 billion in state and county taxes over 30 years and create a billion- dollar building boom. Critics doubt all those figures. But Prince William County and the nearby town of Haymarket (pop. 483), while redolent with history, have been suffering from downturns in defense jobs and real estate prices...
...Disney's America would also bring a daily horde of 30,000 visitors in 25,000 vehicles, swarming far beyond the Disney enclave to "destroy our battlefield," in the words of Annie Snyder, 72, feisty guardian of the meaning and mood of the national park established along the old Bull...
Exact plans for Disney's America are in a state of evolution. At first they included a water adventure with Lewis and Clark through pristine America, a factory town with a high-speed ride around a vat of molten steel, a county fair with a 60-ft.-high Ferris wheel, a Civil War fort and simulated skirmishes, old trains, a working farm and a Victory field where kids could parachute from a plane and operate tanks. These concepts are being reworked, but Disney is secretive on just...